Walk In My Air Max For A Day

Prior to this class, we were asked to read a piece about experience-centered design as the focus of the class was about experience-centered design. In the passage we read I was introduced to Jayne Wallace (a jeweler and researcher) she has been concerned with development of digital jewelry, and how it can connect us to each other and ourselves. She focuses on people’s personal life and life experiences in order to gain inspiration for her jewelry. After reading this short passage about her work, I became extremely interested in her, so I found her website and explored it.(Wallace, 2020)

“Daguerre” is a fabulous piece of her work. it is a locket with a small camera in a leather case connected above it. It can only hold one image at a time, taken with its connected camera. A photograph can be taken by removing the cap on the lens of the camera for a few seconds, and the replacing it again, the image captured is then automatically displayed in the locket. Any number of photographs can be taken but the locket can only hold one photo at a time. I was particularly interested in the way this product connected a modern digital item with such an old-fashioned item. It creates a whole new experience but keeps the main concept of the locket, which is keeping someone close to you.

(Wallace, 2020)

This class was mainly psychology based; I have always had strong interest in psychology, so this was a very intriguing topic for me. We discussed different experiences, and how nobody can completely know exactly how someone else experiences their life, because there is so many contributing factors to someone’s life. Yes, we can have an idea and understand some parts, but we cannot fully comprehend it. I suppose the saying “you know my name, not my story” is quite accurate. We were exposed to different types of research methods to help understand what it's like to walk in someone else’s shoes such as emphatic research, which is engaging the design and the user as collaborators who together develop knowledge and understanding in order to generate appropriate solutions for real needs. The user is at the heart of human-centered designing. We also incorporated sensemaking and threads of experience into a task where we had to describe various common experiences and represent them visually. This proved quite an enjoyable experience, there were some brilliantly creative videos and other methods to convey the experience. I began to explore visual representations of different experiences online and found some quite moving and hilarious ideas. Here is someone’s visual representation of anxiety to them.

(This Is What Anxiety Looks Like, 2020)

We were also introduced to some psychology theories, we learned about how they affect systems in design. Group polarization, social loafing and informational conformity. I have often seen examples of these throughout my life. I believe these will theories will influence my designs in the future.

References:

Wallace, J., 2020.Reading By Starlight - Jayne Wallace's Portfolio. [online] Jayne Wallace's Portfolio. Available at: <https://www.jaynewallace.com/reading-by-starlight#> [Accessed 27 March 2020].

BuzzFeed. 2020.This Is What Anxiety Looks Like. [online] Available at: <https://www.buzzfeed.com/sydrobinson1/this-is-what-anxiety-looks-like> [Accessed 27 March 2020].