For the last milestone, I have finished the sketches and the order of the objects. I have decided to use broken mirrors inside the little room where the screens are placed and the video is shown. The mirrors will create a reflection through each other as well as the videos reflection, which will look like Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity rooms.
The left up sketch is showing the exhibition space that we created. The up right one is the video room, there will only be ropes coming out of the screens and broken mirrors all over the walls.
The sketches below shows how I am going to use the walls, I will use pins, working and broken lamps in variations. I will use different photographs and liquids which are connected to each other. I will use the poems that I wrote, broken clocks, balloons and scissors, a different sculpture with painted worlds.
These objects will represent my stages in depression such as feeling of darkness, escaping from reality, loss of time and space, being fragile/sensitive and so on.
I have been working on the 3D objects, the online exhibition with a friend of mine who is currently studying at interior architecture. My plan is to complete all the objects and the placement so that the exhibition will be ready to be displayed.
For the documentation part, I have started working on the poster design which we will use to inform people about our online exhibition.
12- Are People of Minority Groups Living in Worse Conditions?
Specifically, the minority groups which I am talking about in the title are people of color and of low socioeconomic status. It is observed that often times that people of these minority groups are living in environments which are either dangerous or have potential hazards. There are two major examples which immediately come to mind when thinking of environmental racism, hurricane Katrina and the Flint, Michigan, water crisis. In both of these situations the people who are being negatively affected are largely, but not exclusively, black Americans and people of low socioeconomic status. Obviously, individuals who are wealthy are going to be living in environments with nicer and more luxurious conditions. However, is it fair to let people who are less wealthy to live in conditions that are deemed unsafe just because they have little money or are a certain race? The immediate answer should be no, but it is a reality that does exist and according to Introduction to sociology, “…African American children are five times more likely to have lead poisoning (the leading environmental health threat for children) than their Caucasian counterparts” (Griffiths et al.). This is due to locations in unwealthy environments often times having playgrounds which have lead paint in them. Also, there is a highly disproportionate number of African American to white American individuals who are living in these unfit environments in the United States. I think that this is definitely a type of racism that is not as heavily addressed as it should be and that in the future the government and states should take a better initiative at creating and keeping safe and healthy environments for people of all backgrounds and economic status.
Social movements are something which we have been seeing all throughout history and is often times a powerful method for enticing some sort of wanted change by a large group of people. By definition, a social movement is typically thought of as a large organized groups of people who are working or fighting towards accomplishing a common goal. Today, there are two major social movements which are happening in the United States, the Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements are some of the most prominent and are both fighting for a social goal. The first, Me Too, is a women’s movement which ultimately aims to end sexual violence and sexual assault of women, as well as provide support for victims. The movement has blown up and gone viral within the past few years thanks to social media. It is now a widely discussed and known topic and has even prompted a plethora of women, including celebrities, to come forward as having been victims of assault. This movement has led to many assailants being called out and put the hot seat to face the consequences of their actions. I think as this movement continues to grow, we are going to see victims of sexual assault in the US being taken more seriously as well as offenders being more greatly punished. With that being said, the other major social movement happening right now is the Black Lives Matter movement which aims to end violence and racism which is often held towards black individuals by the United States criminal justice system. Much like the Me Too movement, gained a massive following and backing due to it going viral on social media. Much of its focus is to end the onslaught of police brutality we are seeing towards black individuals and how people of color are often times treated unfairly in the criminal justice system. With this movement, I feel as though it is inevitable that police brutality will begin to be taken more seriously as well changes being made to the police force and criminal justice systems. Both the Me Too and BLM movements began as small national movements which have now spanned into global movements which are gaining power and influence.
As a design decision, we parallel prototyped and made as many features for the app as we could possibly come up with. Then we left it to our testers to try a few at a time in a in-between studies approach, and show us which communication mediums were most poignant for them. As a result, we made the following design changes and implementation decisions:
Features we REMOVED for the moment include:
Relationship health bar: made users feel guilty, hard to quantify a relationship. made users feel like health app
In phone calling: this was silly to implement it ourselves when existing apps are easier; we also realized that users simply didn't want to call/message from within our app because it gave a different, more whimsical feel. A Facetime feature would have detracted from the whimsicality
Current activity: we made it more vague, since exact details made users feel uneasy, as if they were stalking the other person
Features we KEPT/ADDED due to user demand/insights:
Mini Game - We want to allow multiple players to simultaneously control the game, like the Pokemon Twitch tournament! The rationale behind this originates from Burke's Growing Closer on Facebook: Changes in Tie Strength Through Site Use. This was a study that found people who played casual multiplayer games, like Words with Friends, were more likely to feel closer to their friends than those who didn't. We want to use real time gaming as a communication medium, or communication spark, to get people to grow closer together.
This gaming feature also enhances the tamagotchi feel of the app and keep the app light-hearted and fun. We also found in testing that users wanted more ways to interact with their avatars so we used their avatars inside the game.
Multiple Avatars - Users routinely mentioned loved ones that the app reminded them of during testing, so we realized that our simple interface lends itself to multiple pocket pals! Within a simple swipe, users can check up on the status/mood and interact with many loved ones. This realization will also keep them engaged with the app for longer periods of time! The wireframe in Figure 1 entails how users may create/manage multiple avatars:
Figure 1: Users may create and manage multiple avatars
Figure 2: User may toggle between various loved ones easily
As the above wireframes demonstrate, users has access to the other party's:
Time - Time is something that everyone keeps track of and it is an integral part of understanding a loved one’s context. We wanted to make sure time was always displayed so users would no longer have to mentally calculate time differences.
Weather - Knowing your loved one’s weather helps to bridge the distance by giving you an understanding of their environment. We found that users had often already programed their loved one’s location into their local weather app so we wanted to make sure to include this feature in our app as well.
Mood - This is a key component of our app that allows users to update their avatar with their mood. In testing, we found that this was a fun way to personalize their avatar but also a quick way to convey emotion.
Users also wanted simple ways to create and update their own avatars:
Figure 3: A simple onboarding process
Figure 4: a simple status update process
As seen in Figure 5 below, user can also toggle the following:
Call Availability - A problem most users ran into in long-distance relationships is finding time to talk. Often times, calls have to be scheduled, especially in international situations. This feature allows users to quickly see when their loved ones are available for a call so it reduces the barrier in communicating and always users to stay better connected.
Work Status - In testing, we found that tracking a loved one’s exact location was a little “creepy” so we are testing out this “at work” status instead. We still wanted to somehow include location in our app since we believe it is important to understanding a person’s setting. Our compromise is allowing users the ability to say whether or not they are at work and having this setting visually displayed on their avatar.
Figure 5: User may quickly choose their current availability, mood, etc.
Figure 6: This is then instantly reflected in the other party's views
Implementation progress thus far
(all images below are screenshots of a fully functioning iOS app)
Users can update his/her own mood, call availability, work status. The time and weather updates are automated by location!
As seen above, user also toggled the following:
The Mini-Game -We also implemented and customized two games.
Both games are accessible via a game menu
Users can now use their avatars to play FlappyBirds, for example (see below). This further personifies our avatar analogy.
Think how much more challenging this game becomes once two people can make the avatar crash!
We also integrated the popular game 2048. This will be turn based and offer users a more intellectual environment to collaborate.
More character management, e.g. animation, outfits, avatar customization to look closer to user's intended.
Character interaction, e.g. kisses, hugs request/reciprocation
Server side and backend implementation
Realtime weather updates
Double playing mode for game, where two people can control the same game, like in pokemon twitch
Food delivery feature, that integrates or routes to Seamless.com
