On April.27 – Our Big Day!

We finally finished our dome set up at noon, it was hard but fun to do teamwork! My favorite moment of Earth Day is the construction part, it was nice that Milo found a clipper so I can work fast. My least favorite part is the weather, the wind at Liberty State Park is extra cooler than Manhattan. I’m glad inside of the dome is warm, so we can better interact with visitors. At the end of the day, people were all ready to leave because the weather got cooler. However, we actually attracted more people by “yelling” in the end. During the show in the dome, I helped guide people into the dome and interact with kids. It was nice to see our Oceanic Odyssey project in public and see how strangers reacted after the experience. Most of the visitors were amazed by our idea of using different colors, and they also learned to not use plastic bags after seeing our underwater scenes.

On April.22, each team did a 5-minutes presentation showing where they are. After the critique on our instruction card, we need to add some slogans to it so visitors can easily get what kind of experience is in the dome. We also tested our video using the projector in the dome for the final round testing, the side voice has a bit echo but it’s ok, it might get better with the speaker on Earth Day. Before Earth Day, we need to have everything finalized, including finalize the video with water sound, finalize both poster and instruction guide stand. Then, we talked about Earth Day schedule and transportation, we need to be there around 9 a.m. and set up our dome and projector. This week will be very productive and we are getting ready for Earth Day!

On April.15, we visited LCCS for the last time. It was a busy day but we got what we need so far. We made a to-do list for LCCS students to create drawings/assets for Earth Day, we also documented each of their names for future credits. We did more research about the Hudson river ocean life, so they can draw specific species. After we collected over 10 drawings, I scanned them and polished them using photoshop. Also, the LCCS team wrote the script and facts and we have Ella’s voice recorded for a better experience on Earth Day. For next Monday, we need to finish editing all the new drawings we received (both blue and red world) and create a guide/instruction for visitors on Earth Day.

PlayTech was fun and visitors enjoyed our Oceanic Odyssey experience. Although I thought yesterday would be out of control because the number of people, it turned out great. LCCS students helped us guide visitors and offered glasses to them. While visitors were in the dome, they were a bit confused about where to look at in the beginning, we have to tell them “stand here and look at that direction”etc., it would be nice have some kind of instructions first or even verbal guide them before they enter the dome. Another thing I noticed was their reactions after wearing glasses, it was a bit hard for people to think and read at the same time surprisingly. When they read “cover your left eye”, they usually need a moment to think about which one is left and which one is right. So for Monday, we plan to have LCCS students help us narrate these stories and instructions for a better experience. Overall, It was a nice user testing yesterday.

We visited LCCS for finalizing/testing our project with LCCS students and collaborating with Ocean Odyssey team on April 1st. We first gathered together in a small classroom and presented our prototype videos, LCCS students love to interact with our prototype video using the red and blue lens. However, after the discussion, they provided a better and fun solution to discover the underwater scene instead of using glasses, which was to make ‘telescope’ prototypes. Ella is going to help us narrate turtle story, so we talked a bit about the script and we hope to have her voice record for next time. Also, most of them enjoy drawing ocean creatures, so we gave them some time to explore our shared Hudson creatures folder and did some drawings. At the end of the class, we Parsons teams started to organize assets we had from LCCS and we edited them for Unity program. Fuad made a quick Unity prototype which showed us ocean surroundings with LCCS students’ drawings in it.

We visited LCCS on Mar.11 for pitching our final ideas. During the class, we shared and ideated our hero’s journies and storyboards with each other. Finally, we got many great stories like Greener Grass, Trash Trivia, Polluters and Protectors, and the Ocean Odyssey, we Parsons students also presented our first draft prototypes to LCCS students, all of our projects provided immersive experience to the audience. Qiyao and I want to keep testing and exploring our idea during spring break, our final goal is to create this engaging underwater experience inside of the dome in order to bring up awareness of ocean plastic pollution.

We had our Zoom class on Monday, we shared our Earth day ideas with each other. After reading storyboards from LCCS students, I thought it would be nice to collaborate my ideas with them. My idea was inspired by a book called “Illuminature”, which explored the world’s most diverse environments and reveal their hidden secrets with the color lens. My idea for earth day: Students from LCCS and outside visitors (kids and parents), they can use our prepared color glasses to see different layers of views under the ocean, both beautiful ocean creatures and plastic garbage. I hope LCCS students can help us create drawings and we can use them and create optical illusion inside of the dome.

We did a lot in class today, we connected to LCCS via meeting OWL and Rumii. Each student from LCCS talked about their hero’s journeys and showed us storyboards that they created. Although it was a bit hard to understand them at the beginning, we will find “gems” through their stories later. We discussed “Thinking in Systems – The Basics” reading written by Donella Meadows, we learned that everything exists in systems and we need to further our understanding of the system. We started to identify each part of our storyboards and think about how do they affect each other. In the end, we presented our synthesized hero’s journey stories in groups.

On Feb.11, we went on a field trip and visited the Learning Community Charter School in New Jersey. I was excited about working with middle school students in the class, they are super smart and creative. We started with the “I wonder” questions, which they did for homework, then we narrowed them down to frame “how might we”questions. I also enjoyed the process of building quick prototypes with them, they surprised me with their talented ideas. They are so young and full of energy, I got many inspirations through their unique perspective. However, it was a bit hard for them to frame “HMW” questions at the beginning since they were not familiar with these design terms; they started brainstorming and throwing questions to each other, which is another excellent approach to frame questions.

The most memorable part of last class was the hero’s journey. It was challenging because that was my first time build a story in five minutes. I started noticing something similar in all these stories, heroes from every time period were taking more or less the same journey. I found this was a circular journey, it started with call to Adventure, Hero left home and meet challenges and end with The Return Home. I think this way of storytelling was engaging, it could be applied to any of our design thinking. As a graphic designer, this step could help me understand a user’s experience and provide a better solution. Another memorable moment was to generate How Might We questions. We did a lot of brainstorms in our studio and I found HMW is the best way to help us create ideas from insights quickly. Although we do this so often, we still need to keep practicing how to frame a good HMW question. We don’t want to ask a question that’s too broad or too narrow, a good HMW question allows the right amount of creative freedom.

-Olivia