Project 2 Robbie Del Presto, Dafne D’Olimpio, Nimi Shoyinka, Ocean Zhang

Goals and Main Ideas The main idea for this project was to give students a chance to express their emotions through art during a stressful period. We wanted 10-20 people to interact within an hour. We also wanted people to have creative outlet to express themselves. We wanted students to feel a sense of community, in sharing their emotions on paper. Students can see how others are feeling, and know they’re not alone. We wanted to increase our knowledge in interactive design, and create a meaningful experience without explicit instructions.

Planning According to our observation, the path between Krentzman quad and Richards Hall had the most traffic. We originally planned to set up there. Our original idea was a jar on a table with different colored beads and each color correlated with an emotion. We wanted students to express their emotions by putting different beads into the jar.

First Iteration Set Up In our 1st interaction, we placed a piece of gridded paper horizontally on the picnic table besides Dunkin Donuts and Krentzman. We placed some emojis and pencils in different colors. Each color corresponds to an emotion. We want people to fill in the grids with the color matching their current emotions.

Results Few people noticed our iteration and no one interacted. We tried to let Dafne’s friends draw on the board to capture people’s attention but that didn’t work. They also commented: “Honestly your board looked like someone’s art project so we didn’t really want to touch it.”

Planning Based on the feedback we received in class, multiple factors were changed to ensure the project was successful. The main things we changed were location, demographic, and overall setup. These improvements will be expanded upon later. We had two of our group members set up the project, and the other two observed. When the project was set up, the two members interacted with it to encourage others to do the same, and then left the location for the other two to continue observing.

Results These videos show that this iteration was a success. The two observing group members were sat a table in the Starbucks, and would record when they saw someone walking up or interacting with the project. Overall, we observed that about 55 people looked, 15 people went up and admired the project, and 10 people directly interacted with the project. While we reached the lower side of our goal, we still consider this iteration a success, especially when compared to the first.

Second Iteration Set Up Our goals for this project were the same, get students to feel a sense of community and have a creative outlet during a stressful period. This time, the project was set up on an easel, instead of flat on a table, and had the markers in cups with the emojis taped onto them, which helped students to understand more directly what the main idea was.

Conclusions Our second iteration was much more successful than the first. We had a better location, more people interact with it, and an overall better experience. However, there are things we would improve if we had more time. For example, it seems some students were confused about the emojis, and that they were supposed to use the color to describe their feelings. One student said, “I chose purple because I like purple, I didn't really notice the emojis.” If we had another week for this project, we would offer students a blank canvas, with the creative freedom to draw whatever they wanted. This would give students a way to express themselves creatively during an academically charged period, and potentially help them to relieve stress.

Emojis and Color We identified 4 big issues with the first iteration emojis. 1. Not diverse enough colors 2. Colors were not vibrant 3. Diversity in options 4. Size

Location Krentzman Quad - 39°F W and windy - Chaotic After Hours/Starbucks - Indoor space - Calm and quiet

Set Up - Table - Stairs were busy causing a backup of people trying to get to class - Easel - The students were guided to take a specific path in line which was not very busy

Action Funnel The 5 preconditions for conscious action include: CUE Signs (external vs internal) that capture our attention External; white drawing pad with pops of color (emojis) REACTION A decision that initiates an action (habitual, verdict, past experiences) Passersby could choose to look at the drawing pad or not EVALUATION Deliberating between the pros and cons of said action to ultimately make a choice Passersby may think, “Do I have the time? Is this important? Will it benefit me?” ABILITY Are participants able to complete said action with what’s available to them? Tools available included drawing pad, markers, pens, sketch TIMING When will the action to be completed? (external vs internal emergency, specificity, consistency) Are passersby in a hurry? Running late? In between locations?