Wednesday, March 10, 2010

dp::mid semester summation


At the beginning of this project, I originally was looking into how we could encourage creativity among high school students. But once I began interviewing and taking surveys of my demographic, I soon realized that the research question needed to be severely refined. Of the eventual forty-five students I spoke and/or surveyed, a startling amount of them had a similar dependancy on brand names.

When asked to define themselves, or what they saw as "identity," a large percentage of the students often brought up name brand items and clothing. But when asked why, they couldn't give any definitive answers.
It was at this point that I began to realize that we cannot encourage creativity unless we first understand what stymies it. And thus I began to do research about brand literacy, or the understanding of how messages are analyzed, evaluated and created. As a designer, I've worked in projects where the objective was to create a brand as well, ones where I've had to carefully consider the kinds of qualities and information I was sending to the audience.



I ran into no shortage of dead ends through different prototypes and experiments, but each iteration left me with different things I would need to consider later on. For a while I focused on the idea of a quiz/game where one could input information about themselves, and it would generate an infographic of sorts for them to keep. But while this idea could possibly motivate students to try it, it lacked dimension and an incentive for longer-term involvement.





For the past few days, I've been building a web-based community that I've dubbed, Untagged. (I'm still open for better names) Untagged seeks to educate its users about the variety of messages that brand names seek to convey to consumers.
One of the two main features is the "tagging" system. Basically,  you are presented with a brand name and/or logo, and can tag it with words and adjectives of how you perceive the brand. I'll be continuing with this direction in the coming weeks - but I'm very optimistic about the possibilities that Untagged could have.

1 comment:

jamie said...

Perhaps you've come full circle more so than veered into a new direction...

By offering the members of your community the tools to make their own brand and apply that to clothes and virtual/physical environments you are in fact, "encourage creativity among high school students."