Lesson 17

24.09.15

Think Place + Class Time

Class started with the Think Place team presenting us with food for thought on poverty. They offered us the insights and empathy they had discovered through their research. I personally found it shocking how tough some people have it here in New Zealand and the extent some people have to go just to get themselves and their family the basic necessities. When we split off into groups to discuss something in the food gathering process we would like to change we decided to focus on the struggle of communicating with WINZ as well as varying Food Banks. The time it takes to speak to these organisations individually seemed wasteful and mentally and physically taxing. Our idea is that these organisations need to have a shared database so that they could all access the information about when a person last received support whether it be a food grant or a food parcel. That way instead of going to each individual place to see if they are eligible for support, they can find all of this information at one place and then be directed to the organisation that can help them. We thought that if this information can also be accessed online by the individual in need they could go directly where the help is, without a middle-man involved.

From this exercise I learned how important it is to fully understand someones situation in order to be able to offer informed help that will definitely benefit someone. It also proved to me how important it is to gain insight completely removed from judgement. This is relevant to our project as I have found myself assuming things about our target audience when actually the best way to discover this information would have been by asking the target group directly or using pre-existing research that was created with students not just about students.

Design has a huge role in creating change for social good. The way we are taught to problem solve can be easily applied to real world problems to find creative and practical solutions. Empathy is the greatest tool we have learnt for designing real change for humans. It is only by putting yourself in the shoes of someone else that you can insightfully design something that the user will truly find useful.

During our studio class time, Emma and I created a detailed to do list in order to keep ourselves on track leading up to hand in. We also decided on the name and logo we were going to use. Emma had created some visualisations of how the stalls will look at the event which looked really fun and exciting. We also got some tutor feedback. We were told our visuals are looking great and we had a great idea and explanations for everything we just need to really focus on what the activities at the event are going to be. We also need to narrow down our big idea a little as it is very broad at the moment.

Between now and tomorrow we need to keep trucking on with our visuals and define our idea a little better as well as making some decisions on our event activities.