1 - Empathy:

We went down to the library during the time that the teachers gave us to be able to interview people. Lots of the people I interviewed were either my friends or people that I at least knew. I did that because I knew that they would give me proper answers since they knew me personally and that they would be comfortable saying anything they want which is what they wanted. I got the idea of  how the spaces in SAS were boring from Jack Kelly when he said “everyone just walks around the school looking down and onto their phones”.

2 -  Define:

We formulated a How Might We statement as a result of our findings. We went into one of the breakout rooms to define the problem (how might we statement) and to think of solutions. We started by spouting out random ideas that would relate to our How Might We statement and after that, we decided to sort them out into themes. We ultimately came down to the idea of lights and music to help liven up the spaces and improved interaction in the spaces of SAS.

3- Prototype

The way I chose to prototype on my musical instrument was to make it out of cardboard. I spent a whole day trying to figure out how to shape it so that it would be convenient for users to use and for us to move. We finished designing our prototypes and went down to the library to ask other people what they thought the prototype was and how it would function. I got several good feedback on how they wouldn’t be inclined to go there just to press buttons so I modified it into become more of a online and wireless thing. The power outlet wasn’t a problem due to the fact that we could just plug it in to any.

4 - Ideate:

After going back to the Quest room from all the questions asking people about my prototype, the group decided to discard the jukebox. Instead of fully throwing it away, we decided that since music and lights have such a huge impact on emotions and the behaviour of people, we combined the two and so make it one big light show. Lights would be flashing while sounds would be playing, it felt like a good idea.

5 - Test:

We didn’t get to test it on a full scale but we made a small little prototype of the lights and just imagined what it would be like if the sounds were to be added. We were thinking of adding a motion sensor in the future works of this product so that it would be slightly more interactive. We want to also bring this into more hallways and not just a single one. We want to be able to put the product out there and see whether or not it would be a good fit to find places that need work.

Most of my reflections took place through the videos I filmed and uploaded onto my channel, you can see them if you scroll down. This post will serve the purpose to give a rundown on what we achieved, what we could have done better, and what to take from this.

Empathize:

As students, the easiest group to identify and empathize with were... students. We looked into multiple aspects of what students feel are a concern at this school, interviewing students about what they feel is lacking. Most students noted that the enviroment lacks life and in many ways the facilities as well. After the shocking discovery that the school stole my group's idea about the "bathroom helper", I wanted to make sure that our project would not fall under the category of improving amenities in the high school. This is where we move on to defining what we can do to improve the experience that students have while at SAS. 

Define:

When defining what problem we wanted to solve we had to recognize the limitations that we had when embarking on this project. For starters, time was not on our side which I found to be a glass ceiling for majority of the groups including ourselves. We disregarded that for the time being, but we knew that our vision would not necesarily come to fruition. So we stuck with a slight ambigious How Might We statement it was something around the lines of this: How might we improve interaction and liveliness of spaces within SAS. (we eventually narrowed it down to: How might we improve liveliness in the hallways of SAS). 

Ideate:

In this NuVu section one of my group members, Will Dibiagio, posted pictures of the post-it notes we used for the ideation process. Scroll down if you wish to reference them. We came up with many ideas, ranging from placing a piano in the foyer to see what would happen, to having an a interactive game running, and lastly a hall redesigned with LEDs. One of the blunders we encounted was that our HMW statement was too broad which made the three of us concentrate on ideas distinctly different from each other. If we had selected a single idea and stuck with it from day one, our product would have probably been much more impressive. 

Prototype:

You can view the videos I uploaded to see the prototyping process with demonstrations. 

Test:

This is where our project falls short, we had all these great ideas that could have actually been implemented if we, implemented them. We were too discouraged by the time constraints and had setbacks due to the broadness of our HMW statement. If my takeaway from this proect of this unit it would be to never let a glass ceiling restrict you, rather break the glass ceiling. Definitely a lesson I will keep with me for awhile.