The Final Process
Peer is a youth service for teens to explore their identity through mentorship and shared experiences. Peer is the thesis of Amy Wu's two year journey at SVA MFA Interaction Design. This is the story.
VALUE Geared towards older teenagers (14 years old and up) who are simultaneously having to prepare for college and their future, as well as trying to figure out who they are and who they want to be. Peer is a youth service that connects teens to mentors and youth opportunities based on their interests. Unlike other youth services, teens enter into the Peer system through any of the three tracks: look, find, or do. Peer is a responsive website that can be used on any smartphone.
USER NEEDS & BENEFITS Today's teens have overpacked schedules. Much is asked of them from standardized testing, extracurricular activities and preparing for college. Depending on their socioeconomic standing, they might lack the resources to obtain an all around, fulfilling education. Many youth programs are trying to supplement for these gaps in the system, but there is a disconnect between the initiatives and teens. Some teens do not have the same kind of support at home as other teens, the latter might even have “helicopter” parent(s). There is a major tension between giving teens their independence versus adult supervision and involvement. Teens want to feel like they have a say over their lives, but when needed that there is a support system for them, waiting to lend a hand or ear. Young people are constantly being told what to do, who to be, and just want to be left alone. When they do need advice, they should feel comfortable enough to turn to somebody, whether that is a parent or a mentor. The word mentor comes with a heavy definition and we might not recognize that all of us can be a mentor to young people just by passing along experiences and listening. Peer hopes to redefine what a mentor means.
FEATURES Peer is comprised of three tracks: look, find, and do. In the look track, teens are connected to mentors through videos and social media. In the find track, teens can dive into a particular field of study to see different roadmaps on how to get there. And finally, in the do track, teens sign up for different youth opportunities, such as free workshops, community service, or internships within their community in order to explore their interests. Peer's mission is to give teens autonomy outside of their home and school life and help them develop a sense of self.
Initial Launch
Currently, the "do" section of Peer is only for New York City teens.
A Love Story. Not really.
(Pictured above: Initial reading material (October 2015))
At first I was interested in looking at love, more specifically the love for oneself. I wanted to learn more about how people build their self-worth, what they think about self-care. Who they are and how they got there. Or what I like to refer to as self-love and selfhood.
“Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person it is an attitude, an orientation of character, which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not towards one ‘object’ of love.” — Erich Fromm
Love is underrated.
A capitalistic society sees love as an object, where people within the culture exchange personality packages in hopes for a “fair” bargain, disguised as equality. This breeds the urge for always looking for what is better out there. And in an age of social media and quantifying everything, self-love is lost to the quantified self—further inducing the idea of “deserved” love, which is to be loved because of one’s merits.
I believe people think love and marriage absolves problems, but love is just love. Love is overrated in terms of finding “the one,” but what is heavily underrated and unnurtured is the love for ourselves and the platonic relationships we share with others (families, friends, neighbors, and strangers). This is the reason why we as today's society feel the most alone in these connected times.
Learning to love oneself empowers and enables us to bring this love to other interactions in our lives.
Some people might think I changed courses in my thesis, but I only see it as a narrowing down and focus to one particular age group (teenagers) and the realization that identity and self-love (self-worth) is intertwined. Here is a snippet of my thinkings on October 27, 2015 after talking to a few classmates:
My takeaway from yesterday’s brain dump is that I don’t have a concrete hypothesis and though I have been reading a lot around the topic of love, I still can’t explain what it is that I wish to solve. It’s hard for me to put into succinct words from what lens I am exploring love.
And that is a quick synopsis of how my thesis converged self-love with teens and identity. Right around that time, I stumbled upon this quote:
“Our young people are dealing with police brutality, massive unemployment and inferior schooling. I think they’re too unloved and too uncared for, and we want them to know there’s a wave of older people who deeply love and care for them and are willing to sacrifice for them. I grew up in the Glen Elder neighborhood of south Sacramento, and always felt I am who I am because somebody loved me.” — Cornell West
Preliminary Research
A first stab at talking about my thesis.
“Our appreciation of the self is part of all that we do. Thus, to say that the way we as humans come to know ourselves, to experience our bodies, and to place ourselves in relation to others in the world is essential in how we navigate and think of our time here.” — infed.org, non-profit organization, pedagogy for change
Design Brief: A First Stab
BACKGROUND Selfhood is defined as the state of having an individual identity. As young girls and boys practically grow up swiping and touching screens, where does the idea of selfhood lie in today’s connected world? With a focus on inner city adolescents, they in particular have multiple obstacles in front of them, while feeling spent at the lower half of Maslow’s hierarchy scale; there is no time or importance on self- esteem and self-actualization. Also with a lingering societal stigma attached to mental healthy and therapy, they are most at risk.
OBJECTIVE The goal is to empower inner city adolescents. Our business strategy is to become a trusted institution of resources and standard for research and data on the mental health of teens. Driven by establishing close relationships with public schools and partnerships with organizations like The New York Foundling and Covenant House, in order to work alongside educators, social workers, therapists, psychologists and counselors.
Disrupting the “self-help” market by reinventing what therapy can look like. To make a viable product geared towards disadvantaged kids, we are tasked with strategically positioning our product at the forefront of technology and the mental health industry, in order to be solely funded by grants, charities and angel investors.
TARGET AUDIENCE Low-income adolescents from the age of 12 to 16 from New York City public schools.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Secrets app ($1.4 million starting VC, $25 million anonymous investors)
Chicken soup for the soul (publishing industry)
PostSecret (publishing industry)
DOVE campaign and/or Lean In campaign
In 2000, self-help books in the US market were worth more than $600m. Today, the self-improvement industry represents a $10 billion per year industry in the U.S. alone. With a high repeat offender rate, the most likely purchaser of a self-help book being the same person who purchased one already in the last 18 months.
HUNT STATEMENT I am researching how teens see themselves and the technologies they currently use, so that I can design a relevant product or service/framework that speaks to the discovery and exploration of self-identity during this critical and vulnerable time in their lives.
THESIS FESTIVAL REPORTER Write a fictional two paragraphs reviewing your thesis as if you were a reporter in the audience during your final presentation at the end of next semester. Give it a headline and describe the key takeaways.
Graduate Student Uses Social Media to Promote Selfhood Amongst Teens [TechCrunch, May 14, 2015]
SVA MFA Interaction Design student Amy Wu presented Self-Love, a mobile-only social media platform that promotes the discussion of big questions like, Who are you? What do you stand for? hand in hand with topics like loving oneself and finding ones’ own voice. Wu takes the coming of age user group who are native social networkers to create a teen-centric framework for peers to talk openly and positively about a formative time in their life. Self-Love attempts to twist the stigma associated with most social media, (naming names) such as the anonymous app YikYak which educators, parents and governmental institutions say fosters cyber bullying or the grandfather of social networks, Facebook with the many articles and studies that state users feel depressed after seeing ones’ friends status updates and photos in headlines such as “How Facebook Makes Us Unhappy”.
Wu talked to teens about their lives and to those who supervise them. From a social worker, teachers, guidance counselors to parents and even acted as a fly on the wall in the hallways of a Brooklyn Junior High School and Manhattan High School to understand her core users. She has been out of high school for a decade now, so her memories of the teenage years are without a cellphone and only one shared PC at home. Today, 78% of teens have a cell phone and half of those teens have smartphones. These staggering numbers increase by 14% each year. With all this talk about relational aggression [see Mean Girls] amongst teenage girls and the overload of sexual memes amongst teenage boys, Wu and her thesis Self-Love carves out time for teens to take pause in the midst of their extracurricular activities to think and reflect and then to share amongst their peers because no one else on this planet feels more misunderstood than adolescents.
I was surprised at how much writing this helped me distill the bigger picture of my thesis. While I was prototyping, I constantly came back to this, comparing the current prototype to these personal overarching needs.
Field Research
Talking to teens, parents and adults who work with young people.
“Sometimes I do worry about the way society runs and operates, I find it in fact uncomfortable that once we receive our education and we try to figure out the world for ourselves for the next 40 years we basically work in a specific industry, settle down and have a family and work for the rest of our lives and when we reach 60 we just retire and I’m just thinking to myself sure that sounds greats, but are we really fulfilling our expectations of reality? Are we really pursuing who we are?” — Maim, 15
I interviewed six teenagers from the ages of 13 to 18, three males and three females from the east and west coast. I asked them questions ranging from what social media they use and if they use them solely on their phone or via computer to questions around who they turn to for advice and how they deal with mistakes, as well as if they thought their parents/adults understood them.
The questions centered around:
General (age, school, nationality, etc.)
Technology
Describe a typical day from morning to bedtime
Future plans
Support team
Identity
The entire interviewing script can be found here.
After conducting the phone interviews, I thought I would have an epiphany. Sadly, it doesn't work like that. The feelings and thoughts that I came away with were a mix of confusion and “openended-ness”. I doubt the questions I asked. I wasn't sure how I could help.
However, I did see some common concerns amongst the group, they are worried about their futures as much as me and my peers are. They are studying for the SATs (sometimes even on their own accord), have a ton of extracurricular activities—late into the evening, and have sport games and practices to attend on the weekends. Teens have packed schedules. They are worried about getting into college, if they should dorm, what major they should go into, if they can support themselves, and finding a partner in life.
There were two major assumptions that my research proved false:
Teens are just hormonal and just need to grow out of that phase doesn’t ring true in my research. They are smart and have a lot of things going for themselves. We tend to discredit them, pass them off as immature, but that isn’t what I found in talking to them, which is great, but not so great for me because I’m still unsure how to design for them. Or what I could possibly design to intervene. Basically I still don’t see the opportunity areas.
Teens do not trust or turn to their parents or older figures, but actually talking to these six teens their parents and older siblings guidance counselors and teachers are the first people they name when I asked them about role models and people they trust and who they go to advice for. Yes they don’t disclose certain issues with their parents, guardians, and people who supervise them, but when they are looking for a trustworthy figure, they still turn to their folks.
“Adults would give a child advice, that he or she believes is the best for the child when the child already understands the idea of the advice and is choosing to look for a different path to walk towards.” — Ray, 16
Some takeaways:
No one wants to be teated like child or told what to do just because “they said so”
It’s about knowing what is out there/offerings (ie: art programs, after-school activities)
How people learn is different
Teens feel empowered when they are put in positions where they are experts as something (ie: teaching younger kids, feeding the underserved, taking care of their pets)
Teens (and adults) know social media is addicting, but can’t help checking, so they know what is bad for them (ie: staying up until 1am on their phones until they get teary eyed)
Teens still look up to older figures as role models
Some teens have adult worries (growing up too fast)
Friends are super important to them because they get them and they chose them as friends (vs. family)
One defines themselves in relation to others.
And so, if the way to discovering yourself is based on how you differ or relate to others then it would make sense to get teens to meet as many people (peers and adults) as possible—from all types of backgrounds so they can see how others think and live in order to assess for themselves what values they’d like to adopt and how to carve out their own paths in relation to what has been modeled before them. Also by meeting others, they can find common ground through interests versus their immediate peers at school or neighborhood block.
Prototype #1: The Worry Box
Problem statement Sometimes problems seem bigger in one’s head than in reality. Sometimes when confronted with a worry, one feels like no one understands. Or perhaps the issue seems too much of a “first world problem” so they don’t talk about their feelings or emotions and keep it inside instead. This inhibits growth and is detrimental to ones mental health. When I talk about something, I notice it feels more grounded in reality, where I know the actions to take next to perhaps change the situation or at least I was comforted by one’s ear/shoulder.
Solution THE WORRY BOX An anonymous worry box coupled with slips of paper and pens situated at the entranceway of SVA MFA Interaction Design studio (right off the elevators), where students can write down one or more worries they are having and every week they are posted to The Worry Box website where their peers can give words of advice or encouragement. With the hopes of having shared worries (and dreams) and discovering a little bit about themselves.
Takeaway There are a lot of similar worries given the environment of a graduate program and they tend to be vague or high level so I’m not 100% sure how to give advice or respond in a helpful manner.
Prototype #2: Journaling
I asked two teenage boys (15, 17) and two teenage girls (13, 18) if they would be willing to participate in two different prototypes. For the boys, I wanted them to journal for a week in 750words (a private writing space, where you can get text analysis on how you are feeling) and we would debrief after that week. And I asked the girls if they would partake in making a video game on Twine (text-based video game platform). With respect to the video game, I wanted the teen girls to create a video game of their lives and maybe have their parents or parents in general to play the game to build empathy for teenagers. From my research, teens feel as if they are always being told what to do and they don’t have power over their own lives. Also they think parents and adults are too old to understand what they might be going through.
All to say, the best laid plans… The only prototype I was able to pull off was one 17-year-old teenage boy agreed to journal for a week. Though it turned into only 3 days of journaling.
Today I caught up with him over the phone to debrief. Here is what I learned:
It takes a lot of time to have to sit down at a laptop and write every day, “I felt like every day was too much.” He wrote about that day, “anything that irked or bothered me I would just write it down.” He wasn’t bothered by the 750/3 page minimum, “I didn’t really look at the count until I was done.” And when he did write (3 out 7 days), he felt better. “During school, I got my report card and I felt like I didn’t deserve the grade that I got. So I was angry at the teacher. This was before the journaling thing. So I was angry at the teacher. I would be pissed off and I was giving him attitude and I couldn’t get anything done. But then I started doing the journaling thing, so everything I felt I just wrote it down. So I was happier during class, I didn’t have attitude towards the teacher and it felt like therapy almost.” He finds it useful when something to bugging him to write it down to get it out of his system, but doesn’t see himself doing it everyday and not with a minimum of 750 words. He felt pressured to write grammatically correct sentences because of the red dotted underlined (auto-correct spelling) alert. He though the analysis was off since it didn’t give him the correct data on foul language used, when he knows he wrote curse words. A phone app would be more accessible vs. website, “I would have to sit down with my laptop and get ready.” Speech to text: “Because typing is a burden. If it was an microphone related thing that would be so much easier …because sometimes I couldn’t think of a word” This experiment/prototype reminded me so much of the tv show Felicity. She would send these journal entries to a long-distance friend via a recorder. And each episode would end with her reflecting about something going on in her life. It wasn’t only until the last episode of the show when “Sally” replied.
Prototype #3: Youth Program
Featured in DNAinfo: "Free Photo Workshop for Teens Helps Instill Queens Pride" A detailed flyer that was posted in store windows of our sponsors. A detailed flyer that was posted in store windows of our sponsors.
Flyers for the 1st installment of QNSKID, a series of free youth workshops in Queens. We kick off on Saturday, March 14th 2015!
Brought to you by @qnsmade and @queenscapes, we will explore different Queens landmarks throughout the afternoon to encourage Queens kids to discover and learn more about their hometown, as well as share some mobile street photography tips.
We are happy to announce that @beliefnyc and @astoriabookshop are both offering a 15% discount for their respective shops, while @queensfinestinc and @horusnewyork will be providing authentic Queens apparel to all the participants! We are proud to have such strong Queens staples on board as sponsors to show the Queens youth that you don’t have to leave the borough to become successful.
QNSKID participants MUST be between the ages of 13 to 19 years old. Please email [email protected] to sign up. A little tidbit about the name: A lot of Queens natives refer to themselves as “Queens kids” regardless of age. This workshop is specifically for Queens teens created by “Queens kids” just like them!
Backdrop The premise of these workshops came from my research on teens and how they build their self-identity and self-worth in this timely phase of their lives and how social media and today’s networked channels impact the formation.
When I was a teenager, what got me through junior high school and high school was art classes. I wasn’t good at math or science and I was an average student. I really struggled in my AP classes. I thought I should take AP classes because they would look good on my resume and would carry over for college credit. I took Chinese classes and SAT prep classes during my summer vacations.
I won a competition through ArtsConnection in junior high school. I remember I scaled up a drawing of a seated ballerina. I was really proud of it because it was pretty close to the original photograph. The prize was either a FIT art class or a Pearl Paint gift card. I took the latter and got a free Adobe Illustrator class out of it. I remember in the class we had to replicate a product in a magazine advertisement and I chose a perfume bottle.
Teens and social media has been a hot topic in the news. From the books I’ve read, I resonate with It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens versus The App Generation.
Where I stand in this debate: For the most part I think we should teens alone. Most teens have a good head on their shoulders and are thinking about and reflecting upon what is happening around them in real thoughtful ways.
My mom will tell me to do better in school, you have to study more, the idea of saying study more is not what I am looking for. She doesn’t have to tell me that. Adults will give advice that he or she believes is the best for the child when the child already understands the idea of the advice, but is choosing a different path to walk towards.
The way society runs and operates at times, it is unnatural and strange, especially when it comes to our education system. In school we are given immense pressure. I believe we are suppose to learn and educate ourselves about the world, but with all these tests and exams, which our teachers are trying to cram through us. Think about it like this, when you see a dog that can sit, roll over, do you call it well-trained or well-educated? And at times, I believe we are trained to do a specific task and we aren’t actually learning anything.
At the same token I worry about teenage girls. Relational aggression or mean girls syndrome is alive and well. Though cyber bullying is a buzzword and will now live in today’s society, I don’t think kids are being bullied more so because of technology, but it has been an enabler for bullying in a new territory. And given the medium, being removed from face to face interactions and ownership causes people to be meaner, adults are at fault too. I would say the sketch that Louis CK’s “On Driving” is the same for people behind a screen. When you are once removed and the interaction is asynchronous people might not think twice about what they say.
I also worry about teens who might not have a support system or identify with anyone at home or at school. As well as teens from immigrant families who have to grow up a bit faster than their peers and have to deal with things that average teens do not have to worry or think about (ie: green card, citizenship, etc). Underserved teens who feel like they were pitted in unfair conditions or feel helpless and those same teens who don’t know what type of resources they have access to within their community.
And so the birth of QNSKID.
A series of free youth workshops geared to empower teens in the Queens community.
Through my work at QNSMADE I’ve met a lot of awesome people who are doing amazing things. I’ve gotten the opportunity to talk to them and hence learn from them. I thought why not take these Queens artists and a group of teens in one room. Teens can meet other teens that they might not know within their circle of friends. And I want the person leading the “workshop” to have free range as to what they want to do and share with the group. My role is to support them, promote the workshop beforehand, take care of applications (parental consent forms), and supply any necessary materials for the workshop.
A lot of youth programs’s mission is to “empower” the youth and the way I think we can do that is to show them that there are so many possibilities out there. There isn’t a straight and narrow path in life, even if they want to be a doctor that road can be winding. I want to lead by example and so sharing having the “teachers” share their own stories and journey to where they are now in a informal and fun, but safe environment.
The first installment kicks off with Steve Vazquez of Queenscapes. He was the first person I reached out to with this idea. And he signed on immediately and brought on a slew of sponsors and eyeballs on the initiative. And for that I am forever grateful for our many collaborations.
The first workshop will help frame the next one and so on…
Prototype #4: Discovery App
https://vimeo.com/123159810
A different spin on the high school career assessment test. This app would informally “test” your interests and what teens care about, interspersed with images from different youth programs that are available for to gain experience. Tying together a practical resource (internship, community service hours to graduate, resume-builder and/or school credit) layered with having a safe place to try out different roles or “hats.” Each teen would have an avatar and collect hats as they finish different (physical) youth activities/programs (a good example of the various offerings would be New York Cares Volunteer Youth Program in the 5 boroughs). The images the teen users sees is feed into the system by other teens who have already gone through that particular activity (ie: soup kitchen, sound design, fashion intern, rebuilding The Rockaways).
So the teen user would swipe right (agree) or left (disagree) with the words, statements, and photographs (purposely left ambiguous to let the user interpret—would they see themselves doing that particular task, was it of interest or intrigue?).
Playtesting & the Pivot
Student from Q580 HS, 15: He wouldn’t need the app because he knows what he wants to do because of the classes he took on tech (HTML/CSS). His school will start asking him about college goals next year. He does community service at school. He is part of the Mouse Squad and he found out about this playtest day via Mouse Core, where they meet in Manhattan to build stuff. His school makes them do a “personal project” like a thesis and he created a game where you lost all your rabbits and you have to collect them back. He designed it in Unity. He likes the superpowers and super heroes slant.
Mother of two young boys: Recommended that I check out Games for Change conference at the end of this month.
Kyle Li, program director of BFA Design & Technology: It seems like when users pick “just not me” it’s the wrong answer because the interaction looks like it goes back versus “so me”. There seems like three phases of the same thing, there should be some aspect where you level up somehow. 36 pages/screens of text. If it is like Tinder, users are swiping left and right on images versus users are swiping a lot of text in my version. Game mechanics. Using the activities (Far Rockaway or the LA murals) within the app and pulling themes into the game like a water theme. Grab from all the apps that are out there and making it your own. You will end up with your system, like Instagram is about bleed photos and big type.
progress bar on the top
different kinds of interactions if you are going to “gamify” it
You want it to feel alive even when the user is not doing anything like real life
“kids like celebrations”
amplify the experience
Student from Baruch HS, 17:
She is going to MIT for college. She wants to be an engineer. She knew that through taking classes in school. She didn’t understand the app, suggested having an overview of the system before (onboarding).
MFA student from The New School: Recommended that I check out her classmates project “Purp”
Student from Frederick Douglass HS, 10th graders (sophomore): She takes two AP classes around business and entrepreneurial. For undergrad, she wants to go to UPENN and wants to try to double major in culinary school.
Student from elementary school, 11: She doesn’t have a phone, she doesn’t need one so some of the questions didn’t pertain to her. She wanted an option for “partly me” for the in between. Her explanation for the app: “It’s a like dating site to find friends”
BFA student from The New School: When he was younger, he wanted to be a marine biologist and he was from Nashville so he would have liked to know where he could do that in his town (”Where’s the water?”). Didn’t like the name, suggested calling it “grown ups”. He saw the most potential in connecting teens with real world things, like the example of the teens helping set up the multimedia lab at their local library because they are volunteering, but it is also beneficial to them to use in return. Making it more like building blocks, perhaps the phases you are growing within the system, building up to something (building a house metaphor). He knew some kids that went to college and still don’t know what they want to do and they are in debt.
The overall takeaway from today’s feedback is that it has to be more playful (different interactions—delightful moments) if you want it feel like a game. The youth who came to the playtest seemed like they really had a grasp on what they want to do, but always citied how they thought their peers didn’t know what they wanted to do and are confused as to where to start. They were really confident in knowing exactly what their interests were even if they couldn’t pinpoint a specific moment.
So perhaps teens already have an inkling into what they want to do, so what’s powerful about my app is not the “personality” discovery part, but the activities.
Final Design: Peer
https://vimeo.com/127405160
PEER is a service for teens to explore their identity by connecting them to mentors and youth programs in their community. PEER is a mobile-friendly website that works across any smartphone and computer.
Today's teens have overpacked schedules. Much is asked of them from standardized testing, extracurricular activities and preparing for college. Depending on their socioeconomic standing, they might lack the resources to obtain an all around, fulfilling education. Many youth programs are trying to supplement for these gaps in the system, but there is a disconnect between the initiatives and teens.
Some teens do not have the same kind of support at home as other teens, the latter might even have “helicopter” parents. There is a major tension between giving teens their independence versus adult supervision and involvement. Teens want to feel like they have a say over their lives, but when needed that there is a support system for them, waiting to lend a hand or ear.
Young people are constantly being told what to do, who to be, and just want to be left alone. When they do need advice, they should feel comfortable enough to turn to somebody, whether that is a parent or a “mentor”. The word mentor comes with a heavy definition and we might not recognize that all of us can be a mentor. In today’s YouTube generation, technology has shifted the idea of who a mentor can be. We can see ourselves in others, even if it’s across the globe.
Geared towards older teenagers (14+) who are simultaneously having to prepare for college and their future, as well as trying to figure out who they are and who they want to be. There are 3 ways teens can use PEER: LOOK, FIND, and DO.
Resources
“Young people can today, therefore, turn away from many good enterprises especially designed for them, because the forms and phrases in which they are presented seem highfaluting or irrelevant. At a time when many young people feel tempted to reject adult experience and authority it is plain that the Youth Service should not seem to offer something packaged—a “way of life”, a “set of values”, a “code”,“, as though these were things which came ready-made, upon the asking, without being tested in living experience… Young people themselves must in the last resort choose to allow adults to try and help. There can be no simple transmitting of a priori values, because to the expanding energies and enquiries of adolescence most values are not a priori.” — infed.org
It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens
The App Generation: How Today’s Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World
Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain
Identity in Adolescence: The Balance between Self and Other
Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls
Ophelia Speaks: Adolescent Girls Write About Their Search for Self
In my preliminary research, Tavi Gevinson and what she has done with Rookie Mag and who she is and the way she thinks has been a good reference point throughout my thesis.
https://www.ted.com/talks/tavi_gevinson_a_teen_just_trying_to_figure_it_out
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I would like to thank my parents and my sister for being my support system since I decided to quit my job and go back to school two years ago. The weekly Sunday night dinners helped keep me sane while I was in grad school... To my younger sister, Tiffany, for being my best friend and my better half. Love you, sis! And thank you to Tim for putting up with us.
Obviously, I couldn't have made this thesis or gotten through this program without my 21 classmates. I love you guys. I wasn't sure what to expect coming back, but each and every one of you has made this education more than a "graduate degree" but the most memorable two years of my life. I have learned so much from you all. You are the smartest people I have encountered in my journey and I feel so happy inside to know that I have you guys as lifelong friends now...
To Liz, Eric, Gary, Christina, Leland, and the rest of the IxD faculty. Yall rock man. Thank you for pushing us and believing in us. Without Entrepreneurial Design class, I'm not sure where my life would be right now.
To Nicole, my thesis advisor. You were the best advisor! You were the voice of reason. Thanks to Melody for her intuition that we would be a great match. I just enjoyed spending time with you. I think being around you just instantly made me more calm.
To my friends for understanding that I was going to be missing in action for two years, for good reason and being there now to pick up where we left off. Thanks for being there when I needed you and understanding when I couldn't make it out to hang. You know who you are.
PEER is definitely a labor of love. It feels like a project I have been working on for 29 years of my life. Thank you SVA IXD for giving my seed of an idea a place in the world.
Appendix
Why do I design?
Design is my way to tell my story and the stories of others. I design because I want to do good in the world and it is where I feel most comfortable having a voice in the conversation.
I design because I know how. Design is communication in the form of visuals and/or words. The representation of a message in its best possible format (or it is what designers strive for). An idea that has found its output. Design is an avenue where I can make myself heard. Convene a idea to one person or the masses.
I design because I see the power of design. When I was first introduced to graphic design I had on rose-colored glasses and believed that the design of a poster could change the world. I still very much believe in the power of design, but I know now that it's not how the poster looked that I was entranced by—it was the message. It was the way the idea was translated to the viewer.
I design because I love the process. I enjoy the thinking and the making. I like bouncing off ideas and feeling excited by all the creative energies in a room and this doesn't mean a room full of designers, but everyone who is passionate and invested in the trenches of an idea. I live for those moments. To be in the beginning of a journey. I love thinking big picture, but then hacking away at the pool of ideas and narrowing down to the minute details.
I design because I love people. Design is about people. I enjoy observing people. Seeing how one moves and what one has to say in the world. Everyone has a story to tell. I want to make things for people. I want to make things that people need and care about. I want to help others bring into life the things they want to see in the world.
I design because I have something to say. It is still challenging to communicate why design thinking is important because design seems frivolous to some—this only serves as a driving force for me to design.
Amy Wu | Class of 2015