Week 1

I was very nervous starting this course, because of it being 4 units. I think addressing student concerns and aspirations in the first session was helpful in relieving some of the stress I was feeling, and it was also encouraging to learn that most other students had similar worries to me. As a table we created a few lists based on what we knew about the course, what we were looking forward to, and what we were worried about.

I was a bit surprised that we were starting assessment so early, but the ideation exercise in session 2 helped me start thinking of some possible ideas to present in Week 2. Mashing together unlikely scenarios using the prompt cards was sometimes quite difficult, and we often found that it wasn't possible to address all four cards in a single idea. But it was a good challenge to try and think of something that could address all the prompts, and working in a group helped make us more comfortable to share our silly and sometimes impossible ideas.

Week 2

Most of my preparation for this week was focused on forming my presentation. I started by looking up recent news articles, and quickly decided that I was most interested in creating something that addressed environmental concerns and climate change. The main inspiration article I settled on was about a certain species of sea turtle being sighted in Tasmania, which was unusually far from the equator for them, and indicated that ocean temperatures were rising.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-28/sea-turtle-spotted-in-bicheno-waters-a-rare-sight/12009714

I then researched other effects of rising ocean temperatures, and used this as the basis for my concept.

I enjoyed the wide range of concepts presented in sessions this week. My particular favourite was the 'Punching Bag Fountain', because it was such an interesting way of interacting with the fountain, and I liked that there were many different levels and hooks for interaction, from the punching bag itself, to the ability to control the flow of the fountains, and even further to using the fountain splashes to create music. I feel these multiple access points would be very appealing to users of many different demographics.

Grouping themes was surprisingly difficult, and I'm not sure I really challenged myself very much with this. But I did find many similar themes among the concepts, such as music, exercise and personal fitness, mental and emotional health, and creativity.

Themes Day 1

Themes Day 2

Now that the themes have been finalised, I expect this next week will involve narrowing down my preferred themes and forming groups for the main project. This is something I'm a bit worried about, as forming groups for assessment is always risky. I mostly hope that I get a group who are all willing to put in the work necessary for this course. However, I know that my previous group experiences in other DECO courses have helped me learn how to negotiate and deal with group conflicts, so I'm feeling reasonably prepared for this next team experience.