retreat to the fort

How Might We Use Technology to Make Taylors Daily Activities Richer and More Meaningful Without Making Her a Slave to Technology?

Retreat to The Fort...

Curtis BardKelli BaumanJacquelyn HalpernMatt Market

Adding Meaning to Lives 3

Herron School of Art and DesignVisual Communication Design Service Design Class Fall 2011

My name is Kelli Bauman and Im twenty-five years old. I have lived in Indianapolis, Indiana my entire life (aside from a recent month-long stint in Seoul, South Korea). I consider myself to be an innovator, introvert, photographer, note taker, empathetic (maybe Im an extrovert?), a doodler, and world changer. Im focused on sustainability, passionate about igniting social change and inspiring global civic engagement. I want to change the world and I know I will.

I live in a tiny house built in 1891 in the suburbs with my husband, two dogs, and cat. I work really hard. I spend every free minute I have on school work, but I also have a part time job making signs at a natural grocery store. I live my life a lot differntly than a lot of other midwesterners because I am pessimistic enough to see problems with the world but optimistic enough to see those problems as opportunities to improve.

Like other people in Indy, I often feel like there isnt a lot to do around here if you arent going out to eat or for drinks, or maybe an occasional movie or shopping trip. Since we live in a place where public transportation is practically non-existent, a lot of people around me put themselves in unsafe situations going out to drink. Part of my goal in doing this project was trying to help people like me have something that they would see as a meaningful use of their free time become a reality.

Who am I?:

4 The Fort Adding Meaning to Lives 5

Introduction:Your phone is ringing off the hook, work is e-mailing to ask when that project will

be done, and you have been meaning to call your best friend back for weeks... Our

daily lives are often befuddled with repetitious daily routines and stress. They are

overshadowed by the technological obligation to be constantly available to our

friends, families, and co-workers via cell phones, Facebook, Twitter, and e-mails,

among other things.

Audience:Taylor, a college student in her early- to mid- twenties, spends the majority of her

day in class. She does the same thing everyday, and, aside from a dinner break,

her only respite from this routine comes from the periodic breaks she takes during

class, and while doing homework. Since these breaks are so short, she doesnt

have very much time for relaxing and she sees Facebook and Twitter as efficient

ways to kill time and keep in touch with the friends she rarely gets to see.

Proposal:When we were kids, we would gather all the pillows and blankets we could get our

hands on, drape sheets over pieces of furniture, and burrow in for a joyous and

relaxing alternate reality. A place like this is uparalleled in our adult lives. Imagine

if there were a place like this in your life, where you could feel that complete

relaxation again. Its dark, quiet, and comfortable, and its where you go to express

yourself without fear of being judged. Its the one place where you can truly escape

from the harsh reality of your daily life.

Team Tay-TayKelli BaumanJacquelyn HalpernMatt MarketCurtis Bard

How might we use technology to make Taylors day richer and more meaningful without making her a slave to technology?

Who are we?:We are a group of four students who live in Indianapolis, Indiana between the

ages of 22 and 25. We have all primarily grown up in the Midwest of the United

States, and all of us have been in school for the majority of our lives. Each of us

participates in a repititious daily routine much like Taylors, and so, all of us came

to hold a personal stake in this project.

How we worked:First, we defined the context of Taylors life. Then, we found patterns in her life by

interpreting and describing touch points, which led us to defining the problem. We

studied people like Taylor to find ideas and began prototyping.

Team Tay-Tay.

Matt Market, 22

Kelli Bauman, 25

Jackie Halpern, 23

Curtis Bard, 23

The Creative Process involves four working phases:

generating, conceptualizing, optimizing, and

implementing. In the Generating phase, you find the

problem and facts about the problem, and define

the problem. In the Conceptualizing phase, you find

ideas and then evaluate and select those ideas. In the

Optimizing and Implementing phases, you plan, sell

your idea, and then produce that idea.


Taylors Monday

Anatomy of a Visual Experience

Pattern Finding

StorytellingWhen we started this process, we each had done our own personas of ourselves.

We had thought intently about each aspect of ourselves as individuals, and then

we converged and had a discussion together as a group of four. We all decided

which aspects of our personas were really important to us, and compared them,

seeing where there were parallels. From there, we made the persona of Taylor,

a college-aged, single girl who studies a lot, likes dogs, cooks, and is concerned

with her physical fitness. We then determined all of the activities Taylor would do in

a day, based off what each of us does during a school day.

Taylors MondayTaylors day was a Monday and was comprised of activities such as waking up,

going to school, working out, coming home to study, and drinking tea before bed.

These activities are parallels from our own personal days as individuals. These are

things that most of us did almost every school day, or Monday.

Anatomy of a Visual ExperienceAfter determining Taylors day, we worked individually on each event that we split

up at the end of class on Monday. For example, one of the events was eating

dinner. We figured out all of the touch points and steps in each activity. We then

converged and shared all of our twenty-two steps, and had a class discussion. We

realized then that each touch point is determined by your perspective, and that

each person would perceive them differently.

After our class discussion, we worked in our small group to come up with

descriptions of each action, and we then interpreted those descriptions, and finally

categorized them into groups.

What is a Touch Point?the point of contact, especially when items, products, or services come into

contact with a user.

We interpreted that Taylor needs time to process information. She is also bored, wants to get out of the same spaces shes always in, and has a lot of repetition in her daily routine. We deducted that Taylor does not want to feel watched, and that she is conscious of how she acts within her surroundings. By the end of the day, Taylor is out of energy, and just wants to relax. She needs a designated space to process information, be stimulated, and have a total system of cozy.


Convergence is when two separate things come together to make one whole thing.

Convergence experiences can occur between two people, two objects, or a person and an object.

A convergence experience can involve more than two people or objects, as well.

Our personal convergence experiences helped lead us to our How Might We... statement.

Convergence:

1. the act of converging and especially moving toward union or uniformity; especially: coordinated movement of the two eyes so that the image of a single point is formed on corresponding retinal areas.

2. the state or property of being convergent.

3. independent development of similar characters (as of bodily structure of unrelated organisms or cultural traits) often associated with similarity of habits or environment.

4. the merging of distinct technologies, industries, or devices into a unified whole


Audience Definition:Our target audience is a college student, Taylor, who tends to have a daily routine

that leaves her bored. These students wake up, go to school where they spend

the day, work out on the way home, and then eat dinner while doing homework

and watching television, only to go to bed and wake up and do it all again. This

student might have a part time job, but has limited spending money, and little time

for entertainment.

The Problem:Taylor lives a busy life full of a routine that leaves her bored. She has little time

for entertainment. Any activities she takes on must have little to no impact on the

environment, must be convenient for her, must be fun, and must improve her life in

some way. With the little time she does have for entertainment and social activities,

she would like to spend it in a meaningful way.

The Criteria:In coming up with our goal for Taylor, we decided that we needed to consider

environment, convience for the user, fun and meaning for us, and improving lives.

We ran each of our potential how might we statements through a criteria grid,

which helped us choose our final direction.

Design Brief

Pattern Finding


Our criteria grid for finalizing our How Might We statement.


How might we use technology to make Taylors daily activit ies richer and more meaningful without making her a slave to technology?


The Box Fort

In this phase of the project, we took all of the things we had done and put our

learning to action. We planned and began interacting with our audience to find out

what exactly held meaning for them. In our prototyping phase, we found that while

many people in our audience let social networking largely impact their lives, it is

not necessarily meaningful to them. When left to their own devices, our audience

gave us the insight that they were so busy they end up spending a lot of their

precious free time not knowing what to do with themselves. Because of not being

used to having idle time, our audience was seeing free time as time to kill.

Methods + Tools UsedWe held brainstorming sessions with sophomores and juniors in the Visual

Communication Design program. We also gave take-away journals to three of

our friends that allowed them to record their meaningful activities and started a

Facebook group called System Preferences for Life. We constructed a large and

obtrusive box fort in the hallway of our school that invited passersby in to write on

the walls and seek refuge from their daily lives.

Idea Finding

Our Facebook group prompted followers to answer questions about what

they found meaningful.

Carry this with you wherever you go. Anytime something good, cool, happy,

or meaningful happens to you, document that by describing on one page and

drawing a picture on the next...

The box fort afforded anyone who entered a feeling of ownership since they

were discovering something unknown. Once inside, people felt comfortable

to freely express themselves in a private environment.


The box fort we made was so successful and got such a great reaction from our target audience that we decided to implement our prototype into our solution. We saw the box fort as a place to retreat from stress. During its two week installation, we encountered people eating lunch in the fort alone, friends giggling, and found that people had even brought their children to Herron, specifically to see the fort. The box fort even inspired another group of students to make their own replication. To best suit our audiences needs, we envision three variations on what The Fort could become.

ImagineImagine there is a program on your computer, tablet, phone, television, etc. that

would periodically throughout the day ask you if you would like to Retreat to The

Fort? If you accept, the program would save your place in all documents, files,

websites or books, and go into a super efficient, battery saving closed mode.

You would then be unreachable by your peers.

Picture an escape from reality that is quiet, dark, and relaxing. You can be alone.

You can take your friend. You could even have a serendipitous meeting with

someone you werent expecting to meet. All you have to take is yourself to The

Fort and put your devices on their closed settings.

The Fort can be anywhere along ones daily path: in the office, in the classroom, in

a hallway, in the mall, at the gym, etc. While your device is in the closed mode,

you can Retreat to The Fort for a truly relaxing experience, without the obligation

to answer emails, check Facebook or Twitter, work on homework, or answer calls

from work.


The Permanent FortThe Fort as a permanent structure could be implemented in a home, school, or

workplace. We envisioned the permanent fort in Taylors bedroom. This relaxing

place would be separate from the rest of Taylors things, so she could go inside

and read a book or just sit without distractions.

The Digital FortThe digital fort will use the technology of augmented reality by use of augmented

reality glasses. This would allow Taylor to view her ideal world hands free. The

service of the digital fort would allow Taylor to digitally create a fort, or her own

perception of an escape. She could create her own fort scenerios that would

meet her needs for a relaxing and escaping environment. This would allow her to

escape while staying at her desk at work, at the library, on their couch, at a party,

outside, etc.

How It WorksOnce the user selects their desired and previously created fort they put on the

augmented reality glasses. Through these glasses the users perception of their

current environment quickly changes. Instead of being stuck in a cubicle at their

desk, they are instantly surrounded with a digital fort that only they can see. This

allows the user to work at their desk but have the sensation of being in a different

environment, which nobody else can notice.

While inside the digital fort, the application for their device will prompt them to

periodically take breaks. This way, the user can continue working but take that

much needed break from technology to refresh their brain, allowing them to

concentrate and work more efficiently.


The Portable FortThe Fort as a portable structure would allow Taylor to carry the solace of The Fort

with her wherever she goes. Ideally this would primarily be used in a school or

workplace setting. It could be concealed within a backpack that, with the pull of a

string, would transform into a comfortable and relaxing place to retreat.

Interior of the box fort

To view the full video, visit this address: http://vimeo.com/33681281

retreat to the fort

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