#major studio 2

[yizzy-parsonsmfadt-blog]

Final Project: User Testing

The goal of testing this prototype was to see if the user can understand what this project is trying to say, which is how technology development changes our behavior and interaction with people. And to give them a sense of awareness about how this changing habit of using technology to build up relationship affects us through the lifetime. 

The user testing includes 4 records from the date of April 8 to April - 11, 2016. Two participants are students from Parsons the school of Design, and three are my friends and roommates. The ages of participants are about 24-27 years old and the time length of the testing was about 10 minutes for each. Audiences are allowed to use this interface to explore and understand the major idea of the project.

Participants

The target users of the project are people who born and raised from 1970s-1990s that could somehow engage with technology or have experience of using internetwork. The users should have been through the time when the Internet was invented and developed so that they will have somehow understood the differences among the different ways of connection through technology.

Questions I asked the users:

Just looking at it, what kind of information do you want to get from it?

Who do you think the project is designed for? Why?

How would you describe the project in one word?

What do you like best about this project?

What do you find most frustrating about?

If you could change one thing about this project, what would it be, and why?

Some suggestion about this project?

Method

Audiences were told to use an interface that created with Adobe Experience Design CC. The prototype is made into 25 pages with sliders and buttons as parameters.The main content in the interface is the section of 35 photographs I choose that may show the changes through the testing processes. 

People in the photos I chose represent particular groups of my relationship in my life that means a lot to me. Each photo contains a pie chart that shows a ratio of people using technology/media to contact each other, and the ratio may change through time.

Findings and Recommendations

There were two of the audiences suggested that I could add categories about groups of relationships. For example, dividing relationships into the family, friends and colleagues, which will make more sense of my data and clearer to the users. They also had the problem understanding the order of the photos. The photos I put together were not making much sense to them because it didn't appear or hide in the right sequences through the timeline. And the users were expecting to have a more concise information from those people in the photos. 

Some of the Audiences misunderstood the idea of the project. As this data visualization is to present a scale of changing habits of connection between people by using my own experiences as a basic content, but they thought it was for everyone could export their own profile from facebook into the project so they can see their own data visualization. 

However, One of my Participants thinks she has a very similar experience like me because the data is just the same as her life years. And she feels like her life has been somehow controlled by the technology and it is terrible. This kind of reaction is one of the reasons of my initial idea of making this project.

Discussion

Based on the user tests for my prototype, I realized that I should revise the way of presenting the data, such as to make the photo more connected and put it in a more reasonable order.

If this project could give the user a sense of reflection by showing them the result of changing points about how people connect, it could be the best thing that I like this project to be.

Link to Usability Report

[aloncastro]

MS2 Final - Madeleine

technical progress!

[yizzy-parsonsmfadt-blog]

MS2: SP1: Researching

Issue concern: Child Poverty

Current Situation: The industry is indeed competitive, and large. 9 million children receive support through sponsorship programs each year, with one recent study putting the international financial flows to sponsored children at more than 3 billion dollars annually. Compassion International, which asks for 38 dollars a month for each sponsorship, has about a million and a half sponsored children, and had an annual budget in the 2014 fiscal year of seven hundred and ten million dollars; its biggest competitor, World Vision International, is much larger, with nearly three and a half million sponsored children (at thirty-five dollars each per month) and an annual budget of almost three billion dollars. (retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-compassion-experience)

Problem: There are lots of organization that works to help to solve children poverty. Since we now live in a fast-paced world, all the information exchanges and communications are on the internet, instead of paper post mail that needed to wait for weeks to get to the delivery places... 

They have different online platforms, styles, provide various services for donors. However, information and the interface displays are scattered, too many words and paragraphs,  not user-friendly So I want to create a platform (can be a Mobile app, web app ) that provides transparency and clear user interface. The user (sponsor, donor) can easily receive the information, and the organization can upload and provide services directly and quickly.

-----------------------------

Sponsor: Sponsor is someone who has made the decision to personally invest in the life of a child in need. Take Compassion Internation for example, as a Compassion sponsor, you enable your sponsored child to participate in a church-based program that offers life-changing benefits including help with education, health, care social skills development, Christian training, and more than this, you can help your sponsored child develop a sense of confidence and self-worth with the love you express through letters and prayers. 

As a Compassion sponsor, you are assured that there is a real connection between you and the specific child you support. The child you sponsor will know your name, write to you and benefit directly from your monthly sponsorship. 

Your relationship with your sponsored child makes you a very important person who has a significant role in his or her development. You stand alongside parents, pastors, teachers, family and friends who are taking an active role in encouraging and developing the child. 

In addition to letters from your sponsored child, Compassion will send you periodic updates about the child's progress and newsletters about situations in your child's country that affect child development and Compassion's program there. You'll have a better understanding of your sponsored child's culture and life. It's quite likely that your vision of God's kingdom will expand. You may even decide to visit your child on a Compassion Sponsor Tour. It's an unforgettable experience.

References: What's it like to be a sponsored child? -from BBC. What people say about being a sponsor? -from Children International What is the best way to give … a cow, cash or sponsorship? -from Humanosphere  Child Sponsorships: Are they effective aid? -from a personal blog

"We need to feel we are doing good in the world. That is a fundamental driver of human action. It is also part of our nature as humans to relate to personal stories and I believe it is both natural and responsible for wanting to know where and how our money is being used.” 

Experience: I met the girl I sponsor in Haiti" Will you come back?" Ynatus asked. "Or will we never hear from you again?" Good question. I signed up for this hoping it might improve the lot of someone like Natacha, but I didn't intend to get personally involved. Apparently, I am quite typical: only 10% of all those who sign up to sponsor children with ActionAid ever get round to writing to them, let alone meeting them. 

Now I have met them, I will stay in touch. I think often of them on their mountainside, and am far from convinced that my little contribution will change a thing. But I can see now that writing letters and sending photographs could, in a small way, be worth something for Natacha. 

Concerns of Sponsor a kid:  My Experience Sponsoring a ChildI’m not sure if I’ll ever sponsor a child again, but I may end up changing my mind down the road. That being said, if you are considering sponsoring a child, I definitely recommend shying away from the mega-organizations like World Vision, Plan or Christian’s Children Fund. Remember, the bigger the organization, the more of your money is going towards their advertising campaigns and staff salaries, instead of the child, you thought you were helping. 

skeptics: using charity to sell Christianity. — turn people off. http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/child-sponsorship-skeptichttp://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-compassion-experience

[aloncastro]

Wandering Root Farm Visit

Ethnographic analysis for Food, Research & Design and Major Studio 2

On Friday March 18th I departed NYC headed north towards Wiscasset, Maine to visit a farmer and good old friend Hannah.  She is the owner of the Wandering Root Farm, which works in 1 acre as a resident farm at the Morris Farm. The farm is a diversified vegetable and free range livestock business that sustainably grows organic food for the local community of Wiscasset and neighboring communities. 

My visit was caused by the first conversation Hannah and I had two weeks earlier as I was starting to research more about the food chains involving small local farms as part of a possible thesis project called Pacha which is a food web catalog designed to preserve farmers’ rights, ‘indigenous knowledge’ and protect their biodiversity. But also looks to empower farmers through education by creating small social communities and networks, which let farmers share their knowledge of foods, farming techniques or personal stories working their land. 

Conversations about her experience as a young farmer, owning a business, survival, communities, finances and more led me to intrigue myself more about her work as single farmer handling livestock and vegetables through rough weather conditions and being the new kid on the block. 

And after a 6 hour drive I arrived at the Morris Farm nearly at midnight and got to see some of the infrastructure of the farm itself including the main barn, learning center and Hannah’s house within the property. The next morning we had to wake up early to feed the pigs, let chickens out and buy hardware to do maintenance or fix things around the farm, like in the hoop house, where we had to set up mouse traps. The wether conditions invite animals to warmer areas like hoop houses where there is food and water and we had to fix that issue. Below, a picture of Hannah working on the soil before planting. 

I helped Hannah feeding pigs, chickens, bring chickens back to the farm (free range), planting, transplanting, cleaning eggs, carry dirt, water, set up traps, etc. And what I learned from the experience were the struggles of farming, the stories behind each duty, behind each chicken, each pig, each vegetable seed. I learned about her doing all of the work by herself. Very admirable work. 

Struggles that I experienced were related to her being so new to farming even though she has been doing it for a few years already, but this coming season she will be working on 4 different Farmer’s Markets and her numbers of produce kept changing all the time. She did not know what to expect from what people would buy the most, or if what she was planting was going to be enough to supply for all 4 markets. 

The best part of the visit was to eat everything the farmed produced. Like the wild organic blueberries, duck, eggs, kale, spinach, etc. I also learned how hard the lifestyle is. To me, hard work means long hours of mentally exhausting logic and programmatic work and trying to do some physical exercises at a gym to have a balanced health. But farming is all at once and the job requires an overall knowledge of analysis, economics, design, environmental studies, and other social sciences that consumers do not think represent the job of a farmer. 

Hannah cannot leave the farm for long hours because she has to take care of everything, she has to pick heavy bags of dirt, carry gallons of water at a time, carry chickens, pet pigs, be on her knees, walk on tough ground, sleep little, be under the sun, try to stay warm in the winter without any house heat. 

Farming is not just physically tiring, it is mentally and emotionally tiring since the attachment to the animals and plants are very important. It is like the weather, which could be perfect one day or terrible cold or humid or hot another day.

A the end of my trip and after having conversations for 3 days while also helping Hanna with her daily duties, I realized that my possible thesis, PACHA, would really help someone like her to find resources within the social network, submitting particular kind of vegetables she produces onto the catalog or share her day to say struggles and stories behind farmers. And that farmers like her are growing all over the United States and the world. 

I learned about farmers like Hannah that want to create connections with their local communities. Farmers that are looking to protect the products they grow and their rights. Farmers that are in need to learn techniques. Farmers to connect to other farmers around the world. Farmers that want to learn and share. 

Hannah is part of MOFGA (Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association) and that is how she learns and/or shares knowledge. She attends and talks at conferences and takes business courses for farmers. Those are the ways she can better herself, better her business and better her products. But most of her techniques learned were as an assistant farmer or a farmer fellow through experiential learning and observation in years past.

What if I could connect Hannah’s experience as a farmer with a farmer in the highlands of Peru. What if there are many similar struggles with different solutions? How come Hannah’s farming is more advanced with one of a farmer in Nepal? Or what if Hannah wants to experiment with a new variety of potato? What if a farmer in the amazon wants to learn how Hannah plants kohlrabi, or both Hannah and a farmer in Chile want to log the foods they grow so big corporations don’t take credit for what these small farmers grow?

I think I am in the right path. But there is still much more to research. Contacting farmers or farm owners in other countries as well as other communities within the United States is a must, but also the consumer. The young mid 20s male or female who wants to learn about what they eat, the story behind what they eat and the story behind the farmer producing their food.

For more information on what the Hannah does at The Wandering Root Farm please go here: https://www.facebook.com/wanderingrootfarm

[aloncastro]

Major Studio 2 Final - Madeleine

On this post I am proposing the realization of a my final project for Major Studio 2 in partnership with Jaime Tanner, a Parsons M.S in Data Visualization student. This proposal goes through the conceptualization process starting with a mind map and ending with a design process plan.

Jaime and I have very similar interests related to preserving foods, seeds, farming and more. And we both found out that her thesis project and my Major Studio short project 2 are similar in topic. From there we decided to figure out our relationships with food either cooking, growing or buying food and then how we perceive food in general. And we discovered that the 5 senses have so much to do, but what impacted us the most was smell and how it let us remember certain social events of our lives and mostly childhood. Then we both talked identity and heritage as part of our lives since she is a first generation american because her parents are Irish immigrants, and on the other side, I am a Peruvian immigrant probably going through similar cultural problems as her parents once had. Then, another key point was trying to tell our stories in relation to food to remember her childhood, my childhood and both of our lives as adults living in New York City.

Soon after, we figured wanted to figure out the technical skills we want to explore to tell stories related to the smell of food and what experiences can be created with that. And we decided to list a domain map with 4 major categories: Internet of Things, Food, Memories, Culture with 4 sub categories that fit in between two categories like: Physical Computing, Olfaction, Stories (Storytelling) and Identity. The project is planned to evoke memories of food without having food at that particular time and place.

This is what we are curiously studying for this project:

Below are the questions that triggered the purpose of the project.

Our Project’s name is Madeleine, which is inspired by Proust and his writing related to consciousness and memories specifically in “In Search Of Lost Time” where his narrator described the taste of a madeleine, the very simple french cake. The Madeleine project is a Digital Olfaction Memorial Device that visually tells a personal story of food memory. 

Below are precedents that helped  finalize the concept of Madeleine by showcasing similar technical implementations we would like to use, visual representations and purpose of the project.

UV_TASTE is wearable device that takes UV light and translates it into a taste on the tongue of the user.

Selfridges created the Fragrance Lab to offer personalized path to a fragrance that represents a person’s character.

The Museum Of Food And Drink has a section for an olfactory system that is meant to help understand the thin space between recognizing natural and synthetic flavors.

Down below is the design process Jaime and I will be taking. We will start with defining and audience and how they would experience and why would they even participate with Madeleine. Then iterating between the technical implementation and how that would change the role and the role of the project would change the implementation. Once happy with both look and feel should be easier to achieve.

[aloncastro]

MS2 - Short Project 2 Process

I will be explaining the process of my short project assignment that ended up as a first iteration for a long term project that could possibly be fully finished as my thesis project throughout my second year as a Design & Technology student.

How did I start the Short Project 2?

The first concept for this short project started with the question: How might I inform the western world about unknown foods in third world countries through farmers’ perspectives? By building a web catalog where farmers from remote underdeveloped areas can log fruits, vegetables, grains, etc that are indigenous to their communities through a texting or IoT device that would connect to a server to store all data.

The image below shows a first question after developing a mind map related to farming, foods, culture preservation, conservation, etc. 

Project Development

Following the development of that concept, I came up with certain goals that I still maintain, although these were related to the social value of my project and how it would certain foods would be logged into the web catalog. As of this point of my project, the goal was to share valuable information for scientific and academic purposes that could also work to help promote commerce since we {humans} are always looking for new and relevant foods that grow in very sustainable environments, but what if a new variety of herb could help cure a disease? The web catalog was meant to contribute to farmers’ work and to our knowledge which will let us preserve our diverse foods.

Then, as an example of how to introduce a “unknown” food to the knowledge of people in the United States, I proposed the a native coastal and andean fruit called Lúcuma which is indigenous to the Andean valleys of Ecuador, Peru and Chile and is farmed in the southern Peruvian desert in an ideal climate with well drained soil and temperature between 14°C and 27°C. For this fruit I also showed some facts about how in the late 1990s it was only grown for domestic consumption, but by the year 2012 around 250 metric tons of pulp were exported from Peru. Here I wanted to show the type of information that would also be considered adding it to the farmers input. Below, an image of the lúcuma fruit.

I was inspired by organizations that look to preserve foods for our future as well as researchers and gastronomy related studies. These were the Svalvard Global Seed Vault, the International Potato Center, and Mater Initiative by Central Restaurant in Lima-Peru.

Since the aim of this first version of the project was related to the connection between farmers in very poor countries and the scientific community in the United States through a web catalog as well as a physical device with some connectivity my to-do list was related to how the farmer would feel and react towards a certain device, if they would know how to use it, there would have to be certain education about it, what would be the role of the audience (people who would like to learn about foods) through the site.

After proposing this project for a Food, Research and Design course and after the major studio presentation I realized I still had multiple questions unanswered, but basically try to figure out the audience of my project, if unknown foods was really a definite goal and if that would significantly change the way we perceive foods in the US, but mostly I did not know the opinion of a farmer, both from Peru and from the US. Also, another big issue I encountered with this first part of my project was that It seemed too big to accomplish, so it was very easy to have a solution for that. I decided to take small steps with it and make it in a smaller scale. One was to take out the internet of things device from it and improve the usability of the site.

The following are questions and answers that were important to the improvement and final version of my project.

Hannah at Wander Root is a 3/4 of an acre farm in Wiscasset, Maine offering certified organic mixed vegetables, pigs, farm fresh eggs, chicken for meat and turkey. Questions for a farmer:

1. What do you grow?

Only vegetables: beans, bush beans, dry beans, chard, beets, carrots, cilantro, dill, cabbage, celery, broccoli, cucumber, eggplant, kale, kohlrabi, corn, onion, peppers, zucchini, medicinal herbs, rosemary, chives, lavender, basil, holy basil...

2. What are the rare or not well known varieties of something you grow?

Kohlrabi... doesn’t have anything else because it is a very young farm where she prefers to grow and sell high quality products. 

3. Do you offer prepared foods?

Yes. Salads available starting this season (May to October). Her season is considered to be the same as Farmer’s Markets seasons.

4. How do you learn about new farming tips or general studies? How about learning usage of seeds, herbs, techniques, etc? Are there any new ways to better take of the farming process?

Through MOFGA (Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association) offering workshops. She’s taking business courses for farmers. Also most of her techniques learned were as an assistant farmer or a farmer fellow through experiential learning and observation.

5. How do you currently share what you learn with a farming community locally and globally?

More with a local community than with other farmers since she likes to offer workshops and assistance to customers visiting her farm or at her booth in a local farmer’s market.

6. Do you share or tell stories about farming? About things you grow that have a particular story behind them? If so, how do you share that? or in what ways?

Hannah farms everything alone and she is the only decision maker. She described a story about a 1.5 year old beef cow and how when it died for many unknown reasons and it impacted a whole lot on her life and she questioned about keeping on farming, almost quit!

7. Explain the project...

Yes, could make it easier and accessible when farmers would plan before the season starts. Would like to see a farmer to farmer community but making a more accessible and new way to share information to the local community will always be the most important.

Concept Development for Final Version of Short Project 2

I started researching a bit on names that identify my work and identify the research that I have been doing related to the project. I found the Quechua word Pacha. Quechua is a non written language spoken by indigenous communities in the Andes. And Pacha means earth, soil, nature... For example Pachamama means Mother Earth, or Goddess earth.

Once I came up with a new name for my project, I decided to change the way things would be logged in by dropping off the idea of translating all data for the use of the scientific community. I decided to describe Pacha as a Farmer Driven Food Catalog.

Moreover, I decided not to use the word unknown because anything or everything could be unknown to different people. So the project shifted to be opened to all farming communities, food producers, chefs, scientists, the world using the internet, and in general everyone involved in food supply chains.

The concept question for this new version of my project was the following: How might small local farmers share their food knowledge to the rest of us? By creating a web catalog designed to preserve farmers’ rights, ‘indigenous knowledge’ and protect their biodiversity. This catalog looks to empower farmers through education by creating small social communities and networks, which let farmers share their knowledge of foods, farming techniques or personal stories working their land.

After, I decided to come up with a sketch prototype to figure out user experience through layout for my site. and I got the following result:

I noticed that the way I designed that site was not preferable to communicate certain things and missed out to show a a proper flow of food information.

Then I decided to fix things and design a more final version of the site:

After this prototype i got some good answers by a couple of users saying that it seemed fresh, sharp and aesthetically pleasing. That the idea seems well formed and how great it would be connecting people through a site like this.   Something that I forgot to put into the site again was the farmer submission menu button and landing page so I got questions like: Who fills the content of each item like kohlrabi or celery? Do people fill out and post? do they send their information to you and you add it? is there a place for people to add photo of what they are doing? maybe add photo library?

I knew that I forgot about some things but didn’t think users would ask me things related to issues I did not want to think about. Something that made me feel happy about the results of this was that people seemed to like the stories section and the farmer’s hub (farmer to farmer social network) that would basically be like a reddit or stackoverflow sort of communication. 

Then, after receiving some input related to the ux/ui of the site, I finished the project with the following version:

I am very excited about this project and will at least consider to use it as my thesis project next year. There are a lot of things to keep thinking about and if it will be possible to connect farmers that don’t have internet as a means of communication. Would it be possible to create an IoT device from a non-smart cell phone as the control to input foods by farmers in underdeveloped countries? 

Other things to consider to further explain my project after research would be  to think about how else to create a voice for farming communities. Understand market and commerce aspects. Consider politics in towns and farming communities. Research intellectual property and rights (including the “indigineous knowledge”). Consider fake users submitting as if they were farmers. Explore more ux/ui add ons for searches, narrow things down, etc.