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 …
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 …
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 »
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 …
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 …
The Samford Wellbeing Trail started off as an idea – how do we make it a reality? On face value it is a simple project involving designing, communicating and promoting an event. However, as a community project involving multiple stakeholders, there are a number of complex issues to be addressed before the visual communication design …
For our second design thinking project, I have chosen to work on an initiative aimed at improving health and wellbeing in our local community (Samford, an outer suburb of Brisbane). The wellbeing initiative is part of a series of community-driven initiatives focused around social, economic and environmental sustainability.
