sidewalksurgeons

[sidewalksurgeons]

Sprint 5

During the course of this sprint the efforts I made to aid in our poster campaign began by taking the time to reach out to various influential sources on Instagram, including Richmond's Instagram pages, as well as the major companies such as Bird and Lime. The goal was to build potential partnerships and leverage their extensive reach to enhance the visibility of our cause in turn of getting the word out and bring our issue to the forefront of public awareness. The screenshots are messages reaching out to these pages in hopes of getting a response. Unfortunately I didn't receive a response but we managed to get some things done closer to the university that helped with our cause.

In addition, recognizing the importance of engaging with our local community directly, I put together a survey to be administered during our in-person tabling sessions at the VCU library. This survey not only serves as a valuable tool to gather additional insights on the issue but also acts as a catalyst for generating momentum in understanding how individuals within our community perceive and respond to the pressing matter at hand. The link for our survey is listed here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeKOTBWXaRBgRfLg2kkR2tZFbS9qRRVFIJxJeuCLDtqgc-u4w/viewform

Understanding the significance of creating a welcoming and inviting environment during our tabling sessions, a checklist was made to help with bringing a motive to come over to our table and be engaging and inviting. This checklist included things such as securing a suitable table, a tablecloth, and a bowl of candy. The use of all these things together will hopefully create an engaging atmosphere, making our survey initiative even more appealing to passersby. We got some good data but could've been more had we chose a better day. We also decided to have more posters printed to put up working alongside VCU police so I was responsible for submitting a request to have the posters printed as well picking them up from Richmond Printing to distribute to my team members to place around campus. Overall I was very pleased with how things turned out and managed to accomplish a great deal during our final sprint I feel our team did well in making sidewalks safer for all commuters in the VCU area.

[sidewalksurgeons]

Sprint 4

Throughout this sprint I must say there were some challenges my team and I faced throughout this process, however we still managed to get some things done, just not in the timeframe we had hoped. Lillie and I were working in tandem to figure out where we would print from, what paper and working out the cost for our team members. I did some research on places that would probably work for us and called around, and the two best options were Zooom Printing, Wythken Printing and Richmond printing. Specifically when calling Zooom and Richmond printing, this is the information I got from them and forwarded it to my other team members to see what worked best.

Zooom Printing 

11 x 17 (no 12 x 18) 

10 Heavy Semi-Gloss Paper posters is $22 

Turn around time 3–5 days

Richmond Printing 

Card weight paper 12 x 18

$1 per poster (but minimum of $25) 

Turnaround time, Same day to next day

So after the research was made, Lillie went about putting in the order for our 10 posters and I would be responsible for picking it up because of my means of transportation. As time passed we received no answer to our inquiry and upon going to the place myself to see what was going on I discovered they “lost” / “misplaced” our inquiry and couldn't find it. Fortunately, I spoke to the gentleman at the desk, and he gave me his card, so he could personally fix this issue himself by giving us a next day printout. I returned the following day before they closed and managed to get the physical posters in hand to distribute to my team. 

[sidewalksurgeons]

Sprint 3

Moving into Sprint 3 we all moved forwards with our plans to advertise our issues through a campaign to get the word out about our issue and we broke the work up between the link-tree, the designs, and how to get them distributed. I took the liberty to go about the design process of our campaign and discover ways to gain audience attention through the means of posters, stickers as well as finding the means to distribute them. Throughout the sprint, I have listed within this post some sample posters along with mockups that would go towards our campaign to be posted around campus. The two posters developed feature one that has a somewhat sentimental approach to invoke a sense of emotion in the audience, as well as one that's more eye-catching and in your face through color and text. The stickers I designed were meant to be simple and align with the color palette Lillie put together for us to remain cohesive with all our designs. These stickers would be placed on scooters around campus per our meeting with Susan. In addition, I reached out to a printing company Keith Fabry and got some samples to figure out finishes as weather can be a concern for posters that may be placed outside given rain. Options such as Polypropylene Mylar paper was ideal but expensive, so other options and locations will be considered to move forward with. I also took a field trip to Uptown Color and met with Penny Magno, she claimed that given we were VCU students we could receive a discount on Adhesive Vinyl Posters that would help us in mounting these posters to various surfaces. Placing these posters required a meeting with faculty in regard to placing these posters and the means of approval to do so. Outside the designing stages, one of our teammates was in charge of creating a link tree to list further information regarding our assignment and I decided to make a landing page about our project to give the public information to be directed to in order to shine light on the issue, as well as take some informational stress off of the posters. The landing page is a work in progress and a thought that could be included in our final link tree set up. One thing that I plan on doing in the next sprint would be to finalize a place and material to have printed and to be tracking data well before the ending of the next sprint. Meeting with my team members and printing several posters and some stickers will be key to success in the next sprint. One thing I learned was that I will have to budget my own personal spending for the sake of the assignment in order to have the funds to contribute to my team. Furthermore, the material of the poster was something I felt was important but definitely avoidable as far as weather is concerned and this attention to detail will certainly contribute to how effective our campaign will be.

[sidewalksurgeons]

Sprint 2

Throughout the course of sprint 2 we were faced with numerous dilemmas that proved to be rather difficult for the continuation of this project. Starting out we decided to visit the cathedral in efforts to interview the bishop, and ask a few questions about the sidewalks condition; but, given the construction at the time we failed in meeting with him since the cathedral was closed. Getting the sidewalk repaired within a semester seemed to be impossible due to the conversations our group had with different factually and staff such as the campus coordinator , the director of admin, and the director or staff operations. It was mentioned that due to the many stipulations in place to begin such a process it would be best to shift gears an consider moving in a different direction. 

So, that’s what we did, we took on the idea of doing a campaign that brings awareness to the issue by placing posters throughout campus for the duration of the semester in efforts for students to reach out and put in request for the sidewalks repair. There are many plans in place our group has considered such as the locations of the posters ,our means of printing and much more. Moving forward we plan to put this shift into action and double down on making a campaign that will encourage students to aid in this cause. 

[sidewalksurgeons]

Sprint 1

Throughout the course of our teams endeavors in finding solutions to Cathedral Pl sidewalks, our findings did put us on track to narrowing in on finding proper outcomes to why this needs to be addressed and who it will benefit the most. We all found adequate information prior to the first sprint and I am happy with what my team has produced thus far, so much so that it pushes me to do some deeper digging in my own research. However, I managed to find some adequate findings while conducting my portion of the research. I managed to cross off all of my research goals throughout the first sprint through observations made on Cathedral PL. Number 1 on my research goals was if people even cared & if anyone has tried getting the sidewalks fixed? And my answer was yes there have been, Listed below is a link regarding these findings and the lawsuits of the people. 

Furthermore,  my second and third goals revolved around observation, so I took the liberty of going to Cathedral PL and observing the scene myself to understand more of what it looked like in action with people navigating the scene. I constructed a table to tally my findings along with the conditions of the observation.  The table is shown below.

Bikes

8

People walking in the street

4

Scooter

4

Cars

4

People walking on the sidewalk from Monroe Park

72

Skateboards 

2

Handicapped 

0

Rolled Ankles

3

Stray Dogs

1

I also noticed a few things throughout my findings that proved noteworthy that I took down and shared them with my group ranging from hazards and obstacles and tendencies of commuters on sidewalks.  In addition I walked the sidewalks myself and put myself in the commuters shoes and took additional notes on my own tendencies to see how Id personally navigate the sidewalk. This sprint was fun and I learned a lot about Richmond and its history, I also found interest in conducting research outside of just sitting at a computer and it was actually a good experience. Moving forward into the next sprint I’ll plan on doing more observations under different conditions as well as incorporating interviews into my body of finding with my team.