Georgia, Hannah & Farren

Thursday, 11 August 2016

Penguin Videos

Presentation Script Draft

We wrote out the script to use in our presentation next week:

As the urban population grows, so does the need for higher quality urban spaces that offer relief from the harshness that unmitigated density can bring. There is no better place to start than with city streets, arguably the most frequented shared space in the urban environment.

Studies show that concerns and pressures in the workplace mean that office and business workers are highly likely to have excessive amounts of stress.

What can we do to help alleviate the stresses of negotiating crowded sidewalks in the central business districts of cities?

This is Wiremu, a 25 year old intern at a law firm.

He is introverted, yet aspires to move up the ranks at work.

This is Craig, a 37 year old office worker at an insurance company.

He is family orientated and a creature of habit, going to his usual cafe for his break everyday.

This is Evelyn, a 45 year old CEO for an accounting firm.

She is high-achieving and likes routine and being organised

Wiremu finds the walk to work stressful as crowded situations require focus and energy that don’t allow him to clear his mind for work.

However, when he has positive interactions with other people on the street it makes him feel less stressed about the crowd and gives him a more enthusiastic mindset.

We need a way to encourage people like Wiremu to interact with others to take their minds off work and stress.

Craig is having a busy day and feels as though he is wasting his time waiting at the traffic lights while on his way to his usual cafe.

Interestingly he thinks his break, and therefore his chance to unwind and de-stress, is the destination, not the walk to it.

We need to provide opportunities for fun that make getting from A to B on city streets entertaining and exciting instead of irritating for people like Craig.

Evelyn is on the way to an important lunch meeting and needs an intervention to elevate her mood and take her mind off the impending situation.

But surprisingly when she encounters something unpredictable and fun she doesn’t want to engage with it as it is outside of her routine.

We need a way to make the benefits of engaging in something humorous, outweigh the stigma that fun is unprofessional to make the city streets more refreshing for people like Evelyn.

How might we facilitate humour on city streets to encourage unexpected and fun moments of connection that reduce stress?

De-stress me

Connect me

Challenge me

Entertain me

Immerse me

Unwind me

Improve my well-being

Wednesday, 10 August 2016

Style Change

We were originally planning to mix photography/video with sketched illustrations (see Farren's lovely drawings above), using the photos/videos to show the overall context and the illustrations to show our specific personas, but we have now decided that we can show our personas strongly with just photos/videos. We felt that the mix of static illustrations and videos was a bit clunky and maybe we were trying to do too much.

Tuesday, 9 August 2016

Inspiration For Booklet

We found various forms of visual inspiration to inform the look and feel of our dossier. Here are a few that we considered:

We were interested in the treatment of images in this magazine - the way that they bled off the pages and utilised white space.

This one uses black and white minimalist photography, a technique we could try?

Using the idea of a black background with white text

The placement of photos and text that overlaps them. Could we try this too?

Alternating black and white pages + Cut out details on cover

Monday, 8 August 2016

More Secondary Research

"Laughter can lead to changes in heart rate, skin temperature, blood pressure, pulmonary ventilation, skeletal muscle activity, and brain activity, which may improve overall well-being."

"Humour may influence health through moderation of stress chemicals"

"Exposure to humorous stimulus can significantly decrease self-reported stress levels."

http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=f0f70327-5d2b-43dd-a799-752e4874f57e%40sessionmgr120&vid=0&hid=127

"Among the numerous benefits to mental health, regular laughter: reduces stress, elevates mood, improves job performance, promotes a sense of connection with others."

http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/eds/detail/detail?sid=1b28043c-d388-41b8-bcbd-15745ffeaec4%40sessionmgr107&vid=0&hid=127&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#AN=34894356&db=heh

"Humour is one of the most effective forms of communication that humans employ, yet it is overlooked. Humour is such an essential ingredient in communication that it has been referred to as a lubricant for social life. Unfortunately, however, humour is generally not fully recognized as a critical tool for use in the professional setting. In fact, there is little research to support the use of humour as an essential component of interpersonal relationships. This paucity of supportive evidence can be related to subjective and varied perceptions of humour as an intervention. Most people agree that humour plays a role in nearly every situation in which people interact. In many formal settings, humour especially when it is in the form of laughter, is viewed as unprofessional."

"Humour allows for socialisation and communication within many interactions and is often defined along two dimensions, the appreciation of humour and the creation of humour."

"For the most part, therapeutic humour is any kind of positive interaction that will maintain, enhance, or improve physical and/or emotional well-being."

"He viewed humour as a tool to facilitate social relationships in that it allows for mutual feelings of pleasure while reducing anxiety."

"The stimulation of laughter has been associated with the relief of both tension and depressed feelings."

"In summary, humour, like any other communication tool, should be utilised to create a nonthreatening environment, facilitate communication..."

"More research is needed to determine when as well as how to best encourage the use of humour not only in the therapy setting but also in any realm of life where stress may become overwhelming or tensions are high."

http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=4e089736-9160-4d22-bbf5-dec622888250%40sessionmgr106&vid=0&hid=127

"Humour is a common element of human interaction."

"Despite the belief that business is serious, humour can lighten the mood within organisational environments and make work life more enjoyable."

"It seems reasonable to describe the current business environment as stressful."

"Humour is any communicative instance which is perceived as humorous and consists of nonverbal and verbal communications which produce a positive cognitive or affective response."

"Humour in communication creates an open atmosphere by awakening positive emotions..."

"There is strong evidence that humour reduces dysfunctional stress."

http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=604ed10a-b3f3-4236-acae-3645a529b174%40sessionmgr4009&vid=0&hid=4103

"Humour is a very complex phenomenon involving cognitive, emotional, physiological, and social aspects."

"Humour is playful."

https://books-google-co-nz.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/books?hl=en&lr=&id=azlL5W4EJrwC&oi=fnd&pg=PT315&dq=sharing+humour+reduce+stress&ots=OPI0kA38HV&sig=yMvJa98NjHSl1O1OOP6F8-IdK60#v=onepage&q=sharing%20humour%20reduce%20stress&f=false

"Empirical results showed that career/future concerns, that is how much concern and worry employees have about their job future and/or their career, and job demands, that is amount of workload and work pressure, had the strongest influence on worker stress."

http://ac.els-cdn.com.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/016981419190054P/1-s2.0-016981419190054P-main.pdf?_tid=c72ea1e4-5d11-11e6-ba19-00000aab0f01&acdnat=1470624341_74807c35cbce077f930ddab3e1655b96

http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/science/article/pii/S0306987709002898

Friday, 5 August 2016

W3S2 Class

We showed Donald our draft visual brief and asked him whether we were allowed to have three audience profiles. He went and debated with Tristam and they said we were able to have three as long as we reached only one provocation ('How might we...' question) that could address all three profiles. We really like having three profiles as it allows us to show the range within our 'business men and women' audience, and also how three different situations and insights could be solved/answered by one solution.

We had a large pool of 'How might we...' questions that we generated last night when we were drafting up our visual brief. This was helpful as we had heaps of ideas to synthesise today to produce a punchy 'How might we...' statement that could answer all of our profiles. Our final statement is also based of some of the insights we had on our observation trip to Lambton Quay.

At the end of class we laid our work out on the table and then had the opportunity to go around and look at everyone's work from all of the VCD Streams. It was great to be able to see what everyone else is up to and how everyone is responding to the three readings differently.