designmethheads-blog

[designmethheads-blog]

week 14

This week we focused our energy on gathering additional and more relevant b-footage as well as refining the videos rhythm and pacing. We also finished gathering our process work and made a great deal of progress on inputting information into the process book. We also spent time revising & finalizing the video (even further) and creating a draft of our poster for the end of semester show.

– Kate, Alex & Ben’s collective perspective

[designmethheads-blog]

week 13

Today we had a round-robin critique during which we received ample feedback on the video. The consensus was that there was a lot of information in the video (still) and that it could be shortened; further feedback revealed that some of our peers (and professor) felt that the video tempo was not consistent with the story we were trying to tell, but that the story was all there. For instance, there were too many instances of b-footage integrated into the video– some that didn’t fit the video profile and some that were simply misplaced. There were also mentions of awkward cuts in places that we were aware of and are looking to revise.

– Kate, Alex & Ben’s collective perspective

[designmethheads-blog]

week 12

This week we didn't have class on Monday, but we continued to refine the video and narrowed down over an hours worth of footage to less than 5 minutes (a big win for us, as there was a lot of viable information). We also began to construct our processbook via shifting through our process work and creating a proposed layout (via the predetermined blurb guidelines).

– Kate, Alex & Ben’s collective perspective

[designmethheads-blog]

week 11

Before the interview

We had a planned interview Crystal this past weekend (Sunday, November 4th), but she was unfortunately Crystal sick, rendering her unable to make it to the interview that day. However, as we were not made aware that she was sick until we showed up for the interview, we took the opportunity to obtain footage of both the interior and exterior of the facility. We were able to reschedule the interview the following day (today, Monday, November 5th).

After the interview

Today in class we left early to meet with Crystal for the interview. Once we were there, we started to setup the equipment and bring Crystal up to date on the entirety of our project in its current state, as well as what we hope to accomplish. We were also able to interview Ashley, another employee at the Mecum House , which turned into a great experience as she was able to provide a different perspective as a case manager.

November 7th Concept & Ideation Report

Today we reported on (a) the current state of the project and (b) the goal state of the project. Before presenting, we worked on refining our messaging, who our target audience(s) is and what impact we aim to have (through this project) on our overall topic of Childhood Poverty in Cincinnati.

(the presentation where we went first and Sean gave us feedback – it was about 40 minutes)

– Kate, Alex & Ben’s collective perspective

[designmethheads-blog]

week 10

We continued to work on refining the ‘script’ and video outline, as well as reaching out to Crystal to set up the interview. We then worked on a separate storyboard detailing a lengthier list of potential assets to be used as a supporting animation; we took this and began to construct a Mecum House intro/outro animation and a lower-third title lockup.

– Kate, Alex & Ben’s collective perspective

[designmethheads-blog]

week 09

This week we started to work on a potential set of animation styles that aligned with our agenda of promoting the Mecum House; we also looked into, specifically what our intended goal/messaging for the video would be. Furthermore, we began to develop our gantt chart which we will use as a guide moving forward to ensure that we are on track to reach our end goal by semester’s end. We also started to develop a more indepth outline with key talking points that we want to make sure Crystal addresses during the on-camera interview, once we schedule a time and date to do so.

(We also had our first peer review - draft of progress) we had the animation styles, icon set, lighthouse logo development, framing options and 3 revised/potential scripts/outlines.

– Kate, Alex & Ben’s collective perspective

[designmethheads-blog]

week 08

After presenting our ideas to the class and regrouping, we decided that we were going to refocus our efforts on public awareness. As a general idea, self-actualization is a huge factor for the kids that come through house. However, the real reasons that they never reach their full potentials are because the house has a lack of funding to pursue self-actualization; this is why we have decided to promote the house and bring the community into the picture with a ‘call to action’ to donate time, resources and connections not just their money.

Going forward we decided that we want to create a video/animation with a supporting call to action application that allows those who are interested to get involved. In order to do this we are developing potential stories that best showcase who the Mecum House is and the great work they do. We plan on talking with Crystal and the Mecum House again in order to get feedback on what story we should tell, what resources will be available to us in our process and if they have any feedback on our proposed direction.

– Kate, Alex & Ben’s collective perspective

[designmethheads-blog]

week 07

For our presentation we presented on the topic of Self Actualization and the work the Mecum house is doing to help children reach their full potential. When creating the presentation we felt it was best to mention who we talked to in the past and how our focus has shifted. Another major aspect of our presentation was explaining what self actualization was and what the challenges are the prevent many children in poverty from reaching this.

The feedback we received during our presentation was very informative. Our peers made excellent points regarding the “bigger issue” behind self-actualization and how, without awareness of the house, the resources the house needs to fuel their kids self-actualization are not attainable. This led to further feedback on how creating a ‘toolkit’ of sorts for the Mecum House to use to promote themselves and their services would benefit this cause and create an awareness campaign. Other feedback included the idea that the Mecum House is part of the larger umbrella that is the Lighthouse Co. and the potential behind that information.

Our presentation yielded helpful feedback. While our focus was centered around “Self-Actualization”, bigger questions were: how do we get here? One major pain point of the Mecum House is that it is such a small subset of Lighthouse. Their voice is not heard like other segments of Lighthouse. We decided that we need to tell the story of the Mecum House in order to gain involvement and potentially help these children reach some form of actualization.

– Kate, Alex & Ben’s collective perspective

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week 06

Walking into the Mecum House was not what I expected. There were two sets of doors for security, and our IDs were scanned. When we first walked in, I expected to see happy kids running around. Instead, some were sitting on chairs watching TV while others were sitting in the courtyard. I smiled at some of the kids, but was met with continuous blank stares. I realized that these kids are acting tough, and build up walls to any strangers who enter their realm. Crystal, the senior youth worker, shed much light on these kids’ situations. Our interview was very productive, and she provided enlightening insights from her 15 years of working there. Crystal has so much faith in the children, but she feels she does not have the adequate tools to help all of them. She believes every child is creative and has a passion, it just may not be unleashed or discovered yet. Our time at the Mecum House helped us to decide what we want to work on and what impact we want to make.

– Kate’s perspective

Our interview with Crystal at the Mecum house was very insightful and helpful for us going forward with this project. She mentioned many problem areas children are facing today and some of the causes for their problems, and how each child’s situation is unique and requires individual attention. Going into the interview we were leaning towards developing a solution that would help social workers. However, during the interview crystal highlighted and emphasized the need for children to have constructive outlets and their struggle to help make this a reality due to lack of resources and financial support. From this we decided it would be best for us to spread awareness of the great work they are doing at the Mecum house to the public in order to help not only spread awareness of this program, but to ideally bring in donors/mentors that can help their cause.

– Ben’s perspective

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week 05

This past Thursday we met with two social workers (Regan and Tracy) from Children’s Hospital. They are ER social workers who deal with trauma patients (who are generally kids) and their parents. They discussed with us the shortcomings of their job and their reach, what could be improved upon and what we, as designers could do for them and the people that they serve. Some key takeaways from their comments were that parents do not actively seek out help, so their intervention in the ER is the only time that they see or have contact with these children; but that they also cannot do the work for them, they have to want to help themselves, their family and their children. They also talked a bit about their living situations (the horrors) and how it affects their will to get up in the morning and do anything at all. They mentioned that child safety is a huge issue, but that the only way to directly affect the child is through the parent; however, contradictory to this, they mentioned that the present generation is not going to change their ways and that we should aim to affect the ‘new generation,’ and aid in their development. 

The key word takeaways that I noticed were: safety, accessibility, stigma and crisis; taking these words I think that we can identify a general problem area and, furthermore, a potential solution. Overall, I really think that they really spoke to the issues that we brought to them and it was a mutually beneficial communication. We definitely have a lot to think about for future solutions (idealized as they may be).

– Alex’s perspective

We met with Regan and Tracy (the social workers from Children’s Hospital) at Woodburn Brewery. The interview went well, although we were slightly overwhelmed by the amount of information and ideas they had to share on the horrible cycle of poverty. There were many comments along the lines of “we need this, but oh you can’t do that, etc.” It was just a reminder of how giant and wicked this problem is. 

We learned a lot about what goes on in the emergency room when dealing with social workers, and what steps they take with the parents/guardians to move forward– whether effective or not. This gave us ideas on how we can make that single interaction the most effective.

After the interview Regan mentioned that she wished we had sent her the questions earlier. This was a big learning, because it was harder to get direct answers when we interviewed on the spot. Going forward we should draft questions for our particular interviewee and send them prior to meeting to allow time to focus and digest.

– Kate’s perspective

Our meeting with Regan and Tracy this past thursday was very beneficial for us going forward. They gave us a lot of insights as to the day-to-day issues that they are witnessing. As well as many potential areas where we could intervene with a communication design solution that is aimed to help a mother or child impacted by poverty. These solutions ranged from giving them access to vital information to a full service that is aimed to help them navigate the world they live in. Going forward we are planning on doing more primary research to gather valuable insights that will help us to narrow down our problem area. We have a couple potential solutions/paths we can take, but more information/research will be valuable going forward.

– Ben’s perspective

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week 04

Today we put our thinking caps on and decided to shift from gathering secondary research to gathering primary research. While we’ve found countless informative articles surrounding child poverty, we weren’t gaining insights first hand. Ben and I thought about some personal contacts that we have to potentially reach out to. He remembered and reached out to his sister in-law who is an art therapist. I reached out to a lady I used to babysit for who is a social worker at Cincinnati Children’s. She said “The majority of my patients struggle in the cyclone of poverty and it’s impossible to overcome for many reasons”. We scheduled an interview with her (Regan) and a co-worker (Tracy) on Thursday, September 20 at Woodburn Brewery. Their choice of location. Tracy specializes in the child abuse clinic which will be a new and different perspective. I hope that these interviews yield some enlightenment on the health and safety of children. Hopefully we will identify some relevant and consistent pain points that can inspire us to move forward in a specific direction.

– Kate’s perspective

This past class we decided to go back to the drawing board and focus on Mental Health. We started by doing more secondary research while also reaching out to primary sources that had experience with mental health and child poverty. During class I reached out to my Sister-in-law, Faith, who is a Case Manager/Art Therapist who works a lot with families and children who are experiencing homelessness. During my phone interview with Faith (9/17/18) I received some interesting insights as to some of the major issues around mental health and those who are suffering from impoverished conditions. I also was referred to one of Faiths friends who lives in Cincinnati and works with unaccompanied children, and I plan to reach out to her in the near future. We also planned to meet with two of Kate's friends who are in the Medical field.

– Ben’s perspective

This week has been about retracing our initial research steps and returning to the drawing board. Last week we came to the realization that there are numerous organizations at the aid of impoverished communities, but that they do not know about these programs or do not know how to utilize them. However, upon reexamination, we decided that, while this is a feasible and necessary problem area (organization), it is not something that we are passionate about and, therefore, cannot fully invest ourselves in. This led us to track back to our problem area of health and, more specifically, mental health. We wanted to do something that allows us to directly connect with the children that we have been tasked with helping. In accordance with this, we took an overview of our contacts to this community and reached out to (as of now) three individuals to interview who are knowledgeable on the subject and have worked with these communities in the past (or are still working with them to-date). We are hopeful that these directed conversations will lead us to a specific issue within the area of mental health that we can tackle as a collaborative.  

– Alex’s perspective

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week 03

After presenting our three, broad problem areas to the class, we decided to dive deeper into Crime and, more specifically, the issue of safety. After completing a stakeholder map (one of many) as well as working on a few FrameIt Challenges, we came to the conclusion that our topic was still much too broad to focus in on and that we needed to either (a) narrow our problem area down or (b) re-evaluate our focus altogether. As a group, we decided that our best solution was to go back through our preliminary research and collect new sources. Upon doing this, we discovered a new (but yet not so new) problem area; an area in which a communication design solution could play a major role and have an impact on a large number of people. This new problem area is Organization. How did we come to this? Upon re-examination of our research and heading off a new search, we found that there are many organizations already in Cincinnati that are addressing the issue of poverty and, more specifically, childhood poverty. However, many of these individuals who are affected by poverty and/or live below the poverty line are unaware of such organizations that are in place to help them because of the lesser problem of survival fatigue. In the very near future, we plan to complete further research into each of the organizations already in place within the city of Cincinnati, as well as break down what it is exactly that each of them does. We also hope to get a better understanding of survival fatigue and how it affects those who are living in poverty. It is our belief that, upon conducting this research, we will be able to come up with a solid system of organization for these programs and, in turn, better provide them to the community they aim to serve. 

– Kate, Alex, and Ben’s collective perspective

[designmethheads-blog]

week 02

Given the prompt of child poverty in Cincinnati, we started our research by each collecting several interesting sources relevant to the project. Once we had greater understanding of the issue(s), we started finding and uncovering connections. These helped us discover and better understand the underlying problems that contribute to the pain and unfortunate circumstances of the children. In order to make connections within our research, we created a tree diagram with verbal word associations that helped clarify the issue and how it affects children.

After creating the tree diagram we discovered and focused on three main problem areas: Crime, Education, and Healthcare. We wanted to tackle the overarching issue of how poverty affects these children from each topic standpoint, and focus on how they are feeling/impacted; specifically over any financial situation that put them where they are. 

Overall, this preliminary research has helped us to gain a better understanding of the problems and challenges too many children are facing. We have come to the realization that many of these issues are interconnected and influence each other and look forward to understanding how our work can make a difference.

– Kate, Alex, and Ben’s collective perspective