This blog tracks learning in my Master of Design degree at Griffith University 2018–19. Courses include design thinking, social innovation, experience design, dissertation writing and a major design research project. Latest posts appear first – please see the Courses index for specific topics and projects.
How can visual communication enhance road safety? What impact does personalised communication have on attitudes of different road users, and can it help cyclists and drivers understand each other’s perspective? These are the questions I tackled in my Master of Design research project, which combined academic research with the design of a practical response to …
My research started by identifying a human need – improving the safety of cyclists as vulnerable road users. Triggered by research that indicated some drivers see cyclists as less than human, I wanted to find ways to humanise cyclists and help all road users understand each other better. This translated into a research question: How …
This post is about the learning experiences I gained from using focus groups as a research method for my Master of Design research project. What is a focus group? A focus group, as the name suggests, is an event involving a group of people brought together to focus on a topic. It is form of …
The 3 Day Startup is a short entrepreneurship program designed to drive collaboration and creativity in cross-disciplinary teams. It is a hands-on learning experience where participants engage in an iterative process – generating and researching ideas, forming teams, talking to potential customers, engaging with mentors, developing prototypes and pitching business ideas. The event I attended …
This year I will be focusing on a research project, which includes a mixture of academic research and practice-based research. As a visual communication designer, l have chosen to look at how data visualisations can support positive social change. Why this topic? I have always loved information design – making complex information more simple and …
For me, the Wellbeing Trail was not just a design thinking project, it was a community initiative that deserved every chance to succeed. The organisers had put an incredible amount of effort in, as had the participating organisations and many volunteers. This post summarises the lead up to the event and how things went on …
The Friendly Data Monitor was now ready for action! I checked everything was working, and posed it for a photo shoot…
With the cabinet assembled and servo motors fitted, I could now wire up the breadboard to the motors and code the Microbit to make the dial pointers to move in response to real or simulated data.
The project was coming together now, with the cabinet assembled, wood stain applied, and the dial faces ready. However I wasn’t done with it yet. There were three more things to consider. Firstly, fitting all the electronic bits and pieces into the cabinet. Secondly, fitting the motors (driving the dial pointer needles) into the two …
To present my work on the Samford Wellbeing Trail project to my Masters class, I created a presentation to show the design thinking process and outcomes. The presentation explained the background and context, discussed issues, stakeholders and insights, and showed some of the work I had produced along the way.
The Wellbeing Trail will only be a success if people know about it and turn up on the day. Just as important is for people to follow through after the event by trying to improve or sustain their wellbeing in whatever way suits them. My role in this part of the project was to look …
The initial prototypes had now been done, and designs adjusted as needed, so it was time to get building! The first thing to build was the wooden cabinet. That was the central piece of the project, and I needed it built so I could mount the other parts onto or inside it to get the …
This stage was the time for trying out ideas, adapting them in response to feedback, implementing any that needed to happen first for practical reasons, and prioritising other ideas for subsequent implementation.
The project included a few aspects that could prove tricky – a curved wooden box, moving parts, electronics, and repurposed materials. All of these required some degree of prototyping. I started by prototyping the physical box – the cabinet my data monitor would sit in – and looked at laser cutting techniques for creating it.
After investigating the situation and immersing in the stakeholders’ environment, it was time to pull together some insights and generate ideas. The insights from the stakeholder research needed to be teased out out and used as a basis for ideation.
This ‘immersion’ stage is central to the Design Thinking process. It’s about understanding the people we are designing for, and getting to grips with the problem (or problems) to be addressed. As mentioned during the investigate phase, the Wellbeing Trail project includes various stakeholders, not just the end users of the design solution. I talked to …
Step 2: Immerse in the stakeholders’ environment Read More »
After deciding to design and build an analogue version of a digital data dashboard, I wrote a project brief and did some initial research into dashboards, materials and Steampunk imagery (as described in my previous post about getting started). Now all I had to do was figure out how to build it!
As is relatively common for a community project, I started working on the Wellbeing Trail idea well before it became a defined project. My client at Samford Commons explained the basic concept back in April this year, and at that stage was looking to get buy-in from potential sponsors or partners. As these partners ranged …
In our last couple of Experience Design classes we’ve looked at techniques for planning and visualising a user journey, and how to storyboard specific scenarios within that journey. We did this using low tech techniques (sketching, post-it notes, paper), to help focus on the process itself rather than the tools.
This practical project requires us to develop a physical product that uses some of the enhanced design tools and technologies we have learnt about. The first step is to write the brief – define the objectives, the detailed requirements and the process to follow, and do any necessary research. I decided to work on something …
