Cross-disciplinary exchange

Week One

My group has decided to meet after class every friday. We have 4 VCD students, a fashion and an industrial. We briefly discussed what our discipline assignments were, industrial are focusing on food and furniture and fashion on philosophy - the body and garments. It will be interesting to see how their assignments progress. Even within the VCD students we all seem to have chosen a different aspect of stress in the city. 



Week Two

We met up at the museum cafe and discussed what we have been up to this week. The group provided me with insights into their own commutes, proving all of my observations to be correct. Also Jose discussed, in Chile people bring their guitars on the bus and play music to help cultivate a more relaxed atmosphere - this links back to prior thoughts on using music to break the awkward silence like they do in elevators and bathrooms at fancy restaurants. I discussed my experience moving to a smaller house and having to decide what stuff was actually important, as Evie is focusing on moving to another country and having to decide what to take. I am beginning to understand more of what industrial designers do, with Jose's descriptions of an industrial designer actually designing the chocolate on the snickers bars so you know its a snickers by feel, and the modern serving coffee in a rounded glass was industrial designer making the people feel more warmth and cosiness from their coffee by the way they cup it in their hands. I was training to be a fashion designer in intermediate and college, but it is interesting to see what fashion designers do at a university level, with the freedom to explore more wearable art design than the functional bags, duvets, pillows, and garments we were allowed to design.



Week Three

I had to put in my apologies as I had an appointment to get to.

Week Four

It was only Me, Evie and Shaun. All VCD students. Me and Evie had already presented to the full lecture theatre and I had seen Shaun's presentation in class. We briefly discussed how we found the first part of the assignment and how we intended to proceed with the next part.







Week Five

It was really good seeing Rachel (Fashion) and Jose's (Industrial) work. Their projects are progressing at a much different pace to VCD. Rachel was showing us a tonne of drawings and her mood boards. She is exploring child-like cheery but affordable apparel for adults. I suggested one technique for creating an interesting pattern could be Marbling the dyes on water or shaving foam, or tie dying - although the tie dye look isnt what she is going for, she did have other looks created through play and art by children. 

Jose showed us a video his group had created about kitchen appliances coming to life and having feelings, then explained the concept is related to our relationship with food and the objects we use to make them. He said he will be focusing on the narrative and sentimentality of certain objects used around food. He is also creating something for children, but he is not quite sure which direction he is going in yet.

I shared my brief with the group and my ideas from our ideation sessions. The group was really impressed with the idea of an experience where you can gain empathy by being in the shoes of someone who requires the seat. Jose also picked up the other direction we could take from reading the brief which was more about getting people to socialise on the bus. He suggested facilitating a more social atmosphere, and we discussed some of the things i had found and thought of around that i.e Quiet car being a social car on the train or coffee club car, music being played. He seemed more interested in the psychology of why people don't want to socialise in this country and breaking down those barriers. They also really liked the idea of a pedal powered public transport.

Shaun was reluctant to share his ideas after mine, saying he felt his ideas were very literal or crazy, not innovative. He was encouraged and then shared they were looking at more of an event to get people active or a pop-up gym inside a shipping container, or even replacing all the bridges with monkey bars. Jose suggested perhaps scaring/surprising people into activity with a walkway where a cute animals on a sensor pop up and give you a fright.

Me and Jose ended up also discussing our Bevlab project for which we are in different groups and i shared with him a link to a packaging of the world site I found very inspiring. He told me about his concept of having collectible characters that come with backstories or children can write stories for. I told him about the Game of Awesome, a best award winning game which provides the child with some key details for which the child can base the story around. I suggested that maybe instead of little mystery toys it could be collectors cards with characters, locations, scenarios etc on them to facilitate a random story. these could be traded with friends or just combined with friends to write random stories.



Week Six

The group meeting was cancelled this week due to it being the last day of semester and hand-ins etc.


Week Seven

No Group meeting was arranged due to the scheduled one on Tuesday.


Week Eight

Rachel told us about how her project has changed. she has gone from doing pastels to vibrant bright colours in clashing combinations. She has restarted her project two weeks ago. It's not just graphic design that scrap their projects! Her project is wacky and fun, something our project needs to take a lead from.

Evie has also changed her focus to more child like and fun. Her target audience has changed from tertiary students to 10 year olds, in a class room playing a game about what to pack. I really like the tactile element she has with the velcro game. even the interactive website classroom game is cool. but perhaps the app is a bit redundant. Her best part of the idea is making the packing for camp fun.

I showed the group some of our earlier stuff and they agreed that the guilt tripping and Trojan horsing isn't going to work. however, they all giggled when I showed them more my recent red posters. "snapper cards suck" seemed evoke this reaction for the bluntness. they did seem to preferred the more positive messages though, particularly "Let's be fare acknowledging the unsung heroes of public transport" and "you don't need super powers to be a super hero."

They also really responded well to our colour scheme and logo, and the idea of using a decal. They liked the idea of the elderly gold card being embedded with the snapper chip, and suggested that we use some kind of interaction between the people, rather than another interact with a machine, to gain the reward. I told them about my earlier idea of using the gold card snapper to activate the reward in the app, and that was exactly what they were talking about. 

Shaun was in the same position as me and Kristen after the class this morning. His groups idea had been knocked down and they had only begun to begin rebuilding it. The colour scheme and the logo they have developed is great. The idea of the podiums with an interactive touch screen displaying events was well received. it was also suggested that the screens be able to have events added to them.

Jose is working on a lunch box type thing which has inserts to cut children fruit into shapes. this also attaches to the school bag. I asked how much pressure would it take to cut the fruit. he said it requires an adult to pre-cut the fruit into segments for the children to be able to press it. this encourages a shared experience between the child and the parent which is nice. I suggested using different materials and textures so that it is tactile and interesting for the child to touch, hold and use.


Week Nine

I had to stay and talk with Kristen for our project. There were no messages about if we were meeting or not so I assume everyone else was hard at work also.


Week Ten


Assuming everyone is too busy again as there are no messages about the meeting. Again had to discuss strategy for moving forward.


Week Eleven - Tuesday

We met up briefly but Jose couldn't make it so I just asked for the groups opinion on the headline and tag line. 

They loved the idea of using the bat signal as a metaphor for our app, as it relates to the theme and it instantly explains the take notice function of the app.
The clear favourite message from asking people in class as well as my group was 

Even a Hero needs prompting sometimes.
let the supersnap app be your bat signal

they also really liked the rhyming snap and app.
They did think the copy I wrote needed some shortening. main points tag on and take notice the rest can be discovered later.


Week Eleven - Friday


Had heaps to get on with again. We had a messenger discussion on how things are going for us. We seemed to pretty much all be in the same boat. Rachel had 4 of 6 garments to finish. Evie and shaun both had dossiers and presentations to do. I showed them the bus and they really liked it. 


Week Twelve 

I showed Evie the flyer when we were waiting at the printed and she thought it was shaping up quite nicely, but it did need a few things fixed up like the text length. she really liked the dye cut bubble idea.