BRILLIANT

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INSIGHTS

Intelligence scoring was very high for the correlating

intelligence received but low and balanced for everything else

Occupations have a strong correlation to intelligence

FURTHER EXPLORATION

Does age play a role in what activities are engaging?

Do some doors have a bigger popularity over others that skews results?

If a person has an occupation that differs from their hobbies, how does their intelligence correlate?

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A huge thanks to everyone on this list! Because of all these people, our ambitious project was able to come to life. We are extremely grateful to have these generous people help and support us. Thank you

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Imagine RIT was a success! We had over 200 people come through and participate in our exhibit! We kept an active graph of all of our participants results, and wrote (to whom it applied to) their major or occupation on the back to see if there was any correlation.

We received so much positive feedback and people really enjoyed our activities within the cabinets. It was fun to see people’s reactions to hearing their intelligence! 

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Process Post #8

8:00am Friday May 5, 2017: We arrive at Studio One and get right to work. Friday was it, one day left until Imagine RIT, the big day. This is when everything came together. We painted the designs on the wall and doors, we put content into our cabinets, and even got our wall to stand! 

That day little after 12:00pm: Our group split, some continued working on the wall, and the rest on the mural. The mural was a huge composition, leading people to our wall of discovery, filled with icons, fun facts and instructions. The design was laser cut and each piece was then double sided sticky taped to the wall, using a projector as our guide. 

12:35am Saturday May 6, 2017: Time to leave. The last piece of the mural was taped up approximately 12 hours after the first. Our wall was standing, our doors were filled with cabinets and our cabinets were filled with content. Imagine RIT ready!

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Process Post #7

We started construction on April 22nd! This was something that all of us did not have much experience with, but we were ready to take on the challenge. This was the first time Abbey wielded a circular saw, and with the help of youtube, successfully cut the 2x4′s, along with the supervision and help of her human vice Lauren. Lauren was the all around “Handy Man” of the group during this whole construction process.The next step was constructing the cabinets, which took a lot of duct tape and hot glue. 

With the cabinets made, we were able to plan out their positioning on the wall in order to build the frame. The frame was put together based on Lauren’s sketch up model and with the help of some friends in engineering. It pays to go to a tech school. Once the frame was built we were able to get started on the facade with the help of an wonderful Industrial Design student and their resources.

We took over Studio One for the entirety of the week leading up to Imagine RIT, where we painted, sawed and power drilled our facade together. Friday, May 5th before imagine we were able to move our walls to our exhibit room!

This whole construction process wouldn’t of been possible if it weren’t for the School of Design grant we received and the generous donations of time, money and equipment of family and friends. 

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Process Post #6

Last Thursday, we conducted user testing on a small scale model of our wall. It went swimmingly! We received such wonderful feedback, and people can’t wait to see the real deal on May 6th at Imagine RIT. Through our user testing we discovered the most effective way to have our participants keep track of their favorite doors they opened! On a scale of mild to spicy, everyone enjoyed their experience! 

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Process Post #5

The entire class woke up early to chat with our design pen pals in Qatar. Because of the time difference, we met up at the library at 6AM, which is 1PM in Qatar. Our pen pals are students at VCUQ in Qatar studying graphic design; our professor and their professor are friends, and set up this relationship so we can establish a more cultured view on design.

It was so exciting to put a face to these wonderful designers we’ve been corresponding with on Google + for the last several weeks. Although we’d prefer not to wake up at 5AM, we really hope we get to chat with them again face-to-face!

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Process Post #4

Now that we’ve completed our initial planning for the exhibit, it’s time to test out the space we’ll be using for Imagine RIT. We hung up newsprint on our main wall to plan out the visuals and how they’ll rest in the physical space. This process was tremendously helpful, because while we hate to admit it, we hardly have the necessary expertise in exhibition design. Seeing our sketches to scale put a lot into perspective.

We learned how large our typeface selection must be in addition to deciding crucial placement of information on the wall. Following that process, we worked to develop how we wanted the structure of our interactive wall to function. This will inevitably be the trickiest part of the process because this wall will not only include information and trivia, but hands on components as well. The structure must be sturdy, while still visually successful. Our recent iterations are utilizing a zig zag technique to add stability while maintaining visual interest.

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Process Post #3

We submitted our grant proposal over spring break and talked to Amy and Karl from Goodreads.com to learn about what engages people to discover new things.

We have also finished our logo and initial branding, ideation for the panels, floor plan, and room layout. We have started developing content for the panels and information within the room and figuring out the total experience.

Update: Good news, our grant proposal has earned our team 250 dollars for the construction of the exhibition. This award will go a long way to the success of our project and we are very grateful to the RIT School of Design for providing this opportunity.

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Process Post #2

Once we decided that our Imagine RIT Exhibit would shift from focusing on libraries to the discovery process, we then had to tackle planning everything we would need to design and construct to the last detail. Easy right?

After further research we pushed to examine different types of learning styles. We found that the libraries we visited not only had books, but other assets such as audio books or puzzles. This variance of assets showed that librarians understood that their patrons learned differently. While an individual prefers logical, mathematical schools of thought, others could be inclined toward a more physical, artistic style. This does not mean that one individual is smarter than the other.. Everyone learned differently. This is an aspect of the human discovery process we needed to tap into.  

We broke our ideation down to nine core learning styles/intelligences.

Naturalist: Sensitivity to other features of the natural world

Musical: The capacity to discern pitch, rhythm, timbre and tone

Linguistic: The ability to think in words and to use language to express and appreciate complex meanings

Existential: The capacity to tackle deep questions about human existence

Interpersonal: The ability to understand and interact effectively with others

Intrapersonal: The capacity to understand oneself and one’s thoughts and feelings, and to use such knowledge in planning and directing one’s life Logical: The ability to calculate, quantify, consider propositions and hypotheses, and carry out complete mathematical operations

Bodily-Kinesthetic: The capacity to manipulate objects and use a variety of physical skills

Spatial: The ability to think in three dimensions

Following that, we used a generous amount of sticky notes to generate activities our audience could experience during the exhibition. For instance, a puzzle or maze would be perfectly suited for someone with a preference toward spatial intelligence.

Ultimately, we needed to remove Musical, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal and Existential from our list. This decision was made not because we thought these examples any less important than the other intelligences, but with our limited resources, we found they would not be suitable for a low budget and low tech exhibition.

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Process Post #1

During our initial exploration we maintained a heavy focus on the public library system. We found through our own experiences and observations, libraries are continually under utilized and lose out to online resources. We placed a heavy focus on interior spaces, card catalog systems and awareness movements. After visiting a number of libraries in the Rochester area, we found that the strength in libraries comes not from the facilities or the technology, but the people.

We spoke with a number of clerks and trained librarians, and they expressed this need not only to foster their small communities, but the discovery process itself. We live in such a digital age, libraries are not only losing patrons visiting the physical space, as we originally observed, but the discovery process itself.

We neglected to consider the act of discovery is libraries. Maybe because we too have fallen victim to the habit of using a keyword search rather than taking the time to learn something we never knew, something we would have never considered typing into a search bar. People don’t know what they don’t know, after all. Our project began to evolve from the study of libraries to the learning process itself.

So, the “Brilliant: Learning and Discovery Center” was born.