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How my topic came to be:
When I first started this blog, I had a completely different approach in mind for how to educate children about sustainability in the aspects of circularity, upcycling, and learning to make prudent decisions in our consumerism behavior. First and foremost, I would like to point out that such issues should be addressed earlier in education. Should we, for example, be taught in primary school about the history of our favorite chocolate packaging? Or what ingredients are in it? Or, more specifically, where did the raw materials come from? I hope my point is visible where I’m trying to indicate, but my problem is determining the best platform for educating or finding the spot to integrate such vital matters (sustainability influenced consuming habits) into easy topics that influences children via simple media such as cartoons, tv advertisements, music commercials.

Initially, I believed that the education system needed to update and do a better job of implementing new approaches. And I admit it is a concept that appears to be challenging to tackle. However, after researching how and when children become consumers, I discovered that many companies in the entertainment and social media markets target children to gain long-term loyalty. Being mindful of this very fact, I want to present my re-designing systems for schools with entertainment and media support.

Introduction

Are design managers about to crack the code on how to solve global warming? Not yet, but there is a place to start: the children’s entertainment industry is the perfect occasion to commence a vast project’s initial steps. Social media and Netflix TV shows have a more significant influence on the current generation than any formal curriculum of primary school. Although it may appear that children have no idea what they want, but they (around the age of two years) begin to develop preferences such as likes/dislikes, positive and negative reasonings, and other decision influencing feelings. Furthermore, they can begin to identify what they want to eat, wear, watch, or play at that age. As proved through existing literature such as scientific research, articles, and even the statements of a noble public figure, children are future generations, and it is essential to receive a good education.

Ideally, no company would market unnecessary items to children. Since it is not an ideal state, design management can potentially influence the next generation to make more prudent decisions. Furthermore, understanding children’s marketing formula is critical because if companies can have a long-term influence on children, why should not new eco-friendly chocolate or a show implement an affirmative message? The show must not be focusing solely on the environment. However, the show’s characters should assume a green lifestyle and demonstrate how it is possible to make prudent decisions while remaining „cool“.

Why does the entertainment business prioritize children?

The entertainment industry is a sweet spot ready to be exploited by business entities. Therefore the executives employed in entertainment services understand that today’s children have easy access to money for satisfying their needs. Those executives in entertainment enterprises regard the children as a prospective customer segment. In other words, children transcended into a vital target group over time that will yield them returns in the future.

This shift began in the 1970s and 1980s when families‘ socioeconomic status started gradually improving. Henceforth, the children started conveniently placing their opinion in regular household purchases like snacks, sweets, and everyday meals. When they further grow into adulthood, they start sufficing their personal preferences into their parents‘ decisions about the restaurant to dine in, the destination of vacation, the choice of car’s model to purchase, and the show the family watch together.

The influence of children’s choices begins when they are born as they are the ones that the parents want to satisfy by watching the cartoons they want or playing cheesy children’s music while driving to make the child stop crying. Therefore, companies want to rope children’s attention in because they keep the business in a flowing state and give rise to the quotient of loyalty at a very tender age.

Questions like „What is your favorite candy?, how long have you been eating this candy?“. When reminiscing with a friend about old times, one can recall the shows they watched and the juice they drank. It is mind-boggling to consider the impact of such superficial items that can influence people’s consumption behavior. Especially now, it is seamless to influence these marketing companies‘ buying behavior with tempting marketing strategies. Marketing activities such as music videos where the singer is holding a specific brand of headphone or toy, this is where the singer is involved in promoting the headphone or toy brand and children would incline to purchase that pair of headphone or toy.

Simply over YouTube, the child sees an advertisement for Coca-Cola while a video streams. He/she will push the parents to buy one for the kids. The lesson out of mentioned examples: if the combination of entertainment and advertising can influence a child’s choice, the design managers engaged in social design projects can utilize this opportunity and use the entertainment media to teach concepts like sustainability and circularity.

Design Managers as the hero?

If Lucerne School of Art and Design can educate their students about sustainability and around systemic design. Design Management graduates can disseminate the knowledge to companies to design greener solutions for the economy’s well-bound growth. Indeed, the Design Management curriculum has a holistic intention of teaching the future generation of design managers about eco-friendly and reduced carbon footprints initiatives. Of course, it is not just about recycling paper, glass, metal, and various material, which tolls the environment’s high cost. It is about changing minds and working to improve the world through creative thinking and devising strategies, and, most importantly, learning to ask striking-at-right-point questions. As a result, design managers possess the necessary knowledge and intellect to develop and communicating holistic design solutions for society’s goodness.

Suppose the schools begin teaching children in a child-friendly manner what Lucerne School of Art and Design teaches to Design Management students yet in a child friendly (via fun and in a simple language). In that case, children will become intelligent consumers. As a product, such a generation of children will be different from the ones in the past.

Consequently, the entertainment industry should also change what they present to children in the entertainment industry. Today’s top cartoons–are all about adventures, such as Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, Peppa Pig, Shimmer and Shine, Beat Bugs, et cetera. So if the storyline can be tweaked to demonstrate kids about crafting things with natural material, they could learn something rather beneficial and productive.

When educational content intertwines with cartoons, it can cause curiosity in children. Children between the ages of 2 to 5 cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality, yet they can focus their attention on animals and fictional characters. With this insight, a cartoon series can have content that combines fictional characters with real-life scenarios as its storyline. For instance, in the cartoon series: Dora the Explorer–Dora asks the audience questions and makes them think about which path to take between the two. This way, the child intuitively learns the basic procedural steps of T-shirt production.

To conclude, design managers are taught how to communicate with companies coherently, offer ideas, study the prevailing design challenges and conceptualize solutions for those challenges followingly. Design Managers can venture into any field of work by rendering these skills and a new perspective in the social projects related to children’s development and advise upon the shift in changing scenarios for the next generation. As a result, children will have plentiful access to knowledgeful entertainment media and grow into better human beings.

By: Zirzareth Molina

 

Sources:

Cherry, Kendra. “What Is Self-Awareness?” Verywell Mind, Verywellmind, 17 Jan. 2014, www.verywellmind.com/what-is-self-awareness-2795023.

“State School System.” SWI Swissinfo.ch, 19 Feb. 2019, www.swissinfo.ch/eng/state-school-system/29286538. Accessed 9 Apr. 2021.

Valente, Danielle, and Oliver Stand. “Best Cartoons for Kids to Watch Now.” Time out New York Kids, 8 May 2020, www.timeout.com/new-york-kids/movies/best-cartoons-for-kids-to-watch-now.

Valkenburg, Patti M, and Joanne Cantor. “The Development of a Child into a Consumer.” ResearchGate, Elsevier, Jan. 2002, www.researchgate.net/publication/222553251_The_Development_of_a_Child_into_a_Consumer.

“Why Choose Us?” ISZN, www.iszn.ch/why-choose-us/#upcycling. Accessed 9 Apr. 2021.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A trend analysis about user experience

 

It is easy to surmise that Apple has not presented significant upgrades in physical terms across all of its product line in the past few years except tweaking the bezels from rounds to sharp edges and vice-versa. Alternatively, maybe adding Rose Gold to more device options and increasing more screen area in given sizes for iPhones, Macs and Watches. Is that all? Not to mention, the FaceID unlock function is not doing well in the Pandemic with faces covered with masks.

Therefore, it simpler to critique that Apple is excessively encashing upon the market for virtually nil new offerings. In other words, for an average household to spend money upon purchasing a new mobile or computer device, Apple is overpriced. To furnish a solution to that, it seems like Apple has designed a range of devices in their product line from the budget colorful options till the bright metal finish „PRO named“ expensive ones for acquiring maximum market share. Not an impressive case made. Right?

Wrong! Apple is named adjacent to the word „easy“ in the realm of consumer technology. Thus, its product line contested and declared undisputed as the easiest and smooth-to-use in the famous competition with Android and Windows devices. Presently, Apple is committed to intensifying its salient feature of an effortless user experience. It is plausible by updating and establishing a seamless nexus among the operating software across the different platforms (product line) —which is meager because such variety of upgrade is approaching in subtle ways that consumer tends to neglect.

Thus, this academic blog elucidates one of Apple’s design principles via assessing the latest technological trend at Apple’s and concludes a consumer-paying-approximately- $ 1,000 (approx. Price of an iPhone) worth more than just purchasing a device; they consume the seamless services designed through Apple’s ecosystem.

The logic for enhancing the user experience is vested into the prevailing technological scenario. Gone are the days when it would take three-five years for updating and upgrading a mobile device or computer hardware, the operating system they run over, and the applications across these devices. In today’s world, the frequency of change in terms of Information Technology is swift. The change factor catalyses electronic device innovation (for every different need), referred to with the prefix: smart as in smartphone, smartwatch, smart speaker, Smart printer, Smart television, et cetera. These specified devices fundamentally compute and share information and media with wireless connectivity such as WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network), Bluetooth and NFC (Near Field Connection).

In this matter, Apple proactively adapts to the change. Apple has created a virtuous ecosystem of their devices that has remained underappreciated, but it is one of the futuristic ascents in the whole consumer-technology history. From economic perspectives, iPhones encompass most of the revenue generation for the whole company, which exhibited declining trends in past years. On the contrary, Apple Services manifested rising trends that demonstrate the company is transitioning from a Product-centric to a rather Product-Service bundling company.

A digital ecosystem defines as the inter-connected group of devices aided by software functionalities, enabling the user to operate a task on one device and resume it on their second and finish as if they wish on the third device.

It all commenced with iCloud (the cloud storage and computing service by Apple). To explain, let us consider a typical Apple user who owns an iPhone and a MacBook. She can begin working upon a document on her MacBook in Pages (iWork Office application suite for document creation and editing). Twenty minutes later, she needs to leave the house, so she shuts the computer down and continues working on the document over her iPhone while commuting. It is possible because the user can store his data on one Apple device and can access it on another device via iCloud. From this basic cloud-sharing to the latest advancements like spontaneous connection-switching for AirPods between iPhone and MacBook. Furthermore, if a call rings on the iPhone while the AirPods connected to MacBook, the user can hassle-free choose to accept that call with the AirPods.

But why the ecosystem? It purely sounds like a marketing strategy that persuades people only to buy and keep buying Apple products. Nevertheless, this is the spot where the design fundamentals/guidelines come into play. From the book „Steve Jobs“ by Walter Isaacson, Apple’s principal intention is to provide a user-friendly and intuitive experience to the consumer with Apple devices. At most, the design guideline: Direct Manipulation is at its peak in Apple’s current innovations.

When people directly manipulate onscreen objects rather than using separate controls to handle them, they are more engaged with the task. Hence, users eagerly perceive the results of their actions.

Direct Manipulation operates on a higher stratum where Apple’s virtual ecosystem links the two or more devices and empowers the user to control their operation competently and engage with it.

Remarkably, the Health app’s performance combined with the Apple Watch and AirPods has the best-in-industry results. Health App provides a comprehensive understanding of user’s health. Analytics concerning Heart rate measurement: irregular heart rhythms, minutes exercised, the movement made: burned calories, standing hours, audio exposure scales, sleep cycles, menstruation cycles and accidental falls. The Apple Watch, combined with the iPhone, creates Health Records and presents them to the user to visualise a more holistic view of their well-being and allow the user to utilise it for their benefit.

Let us consider one of the many peculiarities of Apple’s Health App, „the Audio exposure level“, and the connected Apple devices and to track the environmental and headphone sound exposure. The user can connect AirPods, EarPods, and other compatible headphones to his/her iPhone. The headphone audio levels are automatically forwarded to Health App. Subsequently, the Health App will allow the user to mark an audio exposure limit; beyond that Decibel (dB), the phone will send the notification to reduce the volume above that limit and, if permitted, will automatically turn the volume down upto the limit. It also displays the exposure history mapped on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. The exposure history acquaints the user to behave mindfully about their listening habits in terms of sound volume.

Additionally, it provides a brief narrative describing the possibility of health complications arising from high volume exposures. The choice to limit the exposure-decibels also informs the user of example sound levels provided by the World Health Organisation; namely, the library is 40-49 dB, a conversation is 60-69 dB, a noisy restaurant is 80-89 dB, a rock concert is 110-119 dB, et cetera. In this case, Apple also utilises the Apple Watch (from Series 4 onwards, released in 2018) for the Noise app. Thus, the Noise app runs an all-time detection for environmental noise levels and notifies the user–beyond the optimum noise levels–to take the situation’s reigns into hands.

To conclude, these examples have advocated Apple as the user’s brand choice for consumer electronic products, computer software, and online services. Apple concentrates on designing and enhancing the user experience in a wholesome manner and embedding integrity across all of its product offerings via improving the software capabilities. There exists enough literature on the current era to rather present with sustaining innovations than disruptive innovation. Apple thoroughly apprehends this and exploits the occasion’s full advantage by turning the only product business into a product-service bundle business with constant improvements, which drives its business towards sustaining innovations.

The design management lesson churned out from this trend analysis is to understand that the prospective consumer desires an engaging and intuitive experience from the technological products that coherently communicate with the user. This communication must form a cyclic exchange motion instead of the linear experience (user initiates input, process, output). Allowing the products to exploit their components to create an interactive user experience heightens the likelihood of being chosen by the consumers than the existing competitors in the market.

 

By: Yash Chauhan

 

 

References:

Apple Inc. (2020a). Healthcare – Apple Watch. Apple.Com. https://www.apple.com/healthcare/apple-watch/

Apple Inc. (2020b, June 22). Apple reimagines the iPhone experience with iOS 14. Apple Newsroom, Apple.Com. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apple-reimagines-the-iphone-experience-with-ios-14/

Apple Inc. (2021, March 2). Apple Hearing Study shares new insights on hearing health. Apple Newsroom, Apple.Com. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/03/apple-hearing-study-shares-new-insights-on-hearing-health/

Harvard Business Review. (2015, December). What Is Disruptive Innovation? https://hbr.org/2015/12/what-is-disruptive-innovation

Isaacson, W. (2011). Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography (1st ed.). Simon & Schuster.

McElhearn, K. (2019, May 9). “It’s the ecosystem, stupid” * . The Mac Security Blog. https://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/its-the-ecosystem-stupid/

Nield, D. (2021, March 22). A beginner’s guide to Google Fit and Apple Health . Popular Science. https://www.popsci.com/beginners-guide-google-fit-apple-health/

The Covid-19 Pandemic is a social crisis on a massive scale which has affected lives in possibly every area. Subsequently, education is mounted in the epicentre of the society as it surges in the societal development. In this pandemic, the dynamics education sector has been experiencing are uniquely grave and delicate. To put it succinctly, the classroom learning experience which all are oriented with since aeons, has been eradicated and forced to move on with online-video calling based platforms to attend the lectures and comprehend. The studies that specially require practical efforts and involve intensive team work for a better learning experience are handicapped in this crisis. As a result, being mindful of that, many programming companies are trying to develop software packages, mobile applications, web-based applications, et cetera for aiding the education sector with positive hopes of providing the pupils with re-connection to their peers and allowing them to collaborate and share ideas and insights. From a far vantage point, the aforementioned is a typical scenario where the society has been experiencing difficulties in conducting themselves and moving forward. And there comes some entities putting efforts together to resolve such complications so that the society can re-establish the order as it would be in ideal occasions. Miro, the online visual collaboration platform for teamwork, happens to be a paragon of those entities. The famous feature of Miro is its virtual work-board that enables people to connect and work collaboratively with vesting all necessary writing and paper-work tools in it. The words such as collaboratively, virtual and connect are of huge importance in such scenario of pandemic where people are forced to maintain physical distance. It is a rigour of its kind to assume all the professional conducts of life in such distant fashion. With Miro, not only students but also other professionals can connect, communicate and present their ideas and insights borne in their heads clearly on the screen. Not to mention, the working style over Miro encourages paperless initiatives in terms of reducing usage of Post-it paper patches, tags and A3 chart sheets. These mentioned types of paper products are also resource intensive. Thus, it takes enormous amounts of deforestation and water consumption in the process of producing the paper products. Our current environment demands us to move in the contrary direction I.e. to increase the plant growth and wisely use the water. I personally realise the value the Miro has been providing in terms of team projects and collaborative working in virtual sense in the given pandemic. To conclude, Miro is an epitome of social design that regards the needs emerging out of these extraordinary times and helping society to re-establish their professional conduct in a way.

By: Yash Chauhan

My Personal Experience with Miro

Miro is an online collaborative tool that allows you to work simultaneously with your classmates, teachers, friends, or anyone really. Moreover, Miro has come in very handy during the pandemic especially for me. Before Covid-19 I never heard of such a tool, which is a shame because it such a useful platform, and today I can’t live without it. Furthermore, I used Miro not only for school projects but for my personal projects it helps me to organize myself in such an easy way. With Miro, I feel the freedom of space without having to shuffle through my notes looking for that one page, and another benefit of Miro is the easiness of sharing your work and receiving feedback just with a link. I believe Miro is a tool that applies social design because of the easiness of navigating through the platform. 

Miro & Social Design 

I have been taught about Social Design recently but from my understanding, Social Design consists of a design made specifically for a group of people that have a need for a problem that needs a solution. In which we can go in little depth about how miro applied social design into their platform. 

Last week our class was lucky to have an interview with Andrejy Balaz from Miro in where he took the time to answer some of our questions. From this interview, we learned that Miro does not stop their user research even with pandemic they have found ways to still learn about the depth of motivation of the people. I found it interesting that they do longer studies about their user because they want to always give quality to their experience. Moreover, Miro also asks for email feedback, or when you are using the board you get a pop-up feedback questionnaire to rate the experience, this shows me they are interested in what the people want and need. 

Andrejy Balaz also mentioned that they bring social design to work by applying transformational design, by having a background in politics, and by keeping themselves open and always free with support structures. Miro also allows anyone to use miro by having a free version, various communities, and by having a wishlist that allows the users to write what they wish to see in Miro in the future. 

By doing so, I believe that miro is very invested in giving its best to its users and always looking for improvements. Miro has created a platform that allows me to be creative and have successful collaborative projects and for this, I am very thankful for Miro and its 600 employees working every day for better features.

By: Zirzareth Molina

 

The rationale to attend this conference is based upon the article “Making a Policy is Actually an Act of Designing” by Sabine Junginger. The focal point of which states that every business is social because it concerns the needs of the customers/consumers/users. Henceforth there comes the necessity of laying the organization’s foundation with design to provide seamless user experiences for whatever reason they (users) are approaching the business/organization.

Subsequently, the title of this conference associates with the Design for the whole of a community. Therefore, it potentially seems like illustrating insights upon the subject matters of Social Design vested with complaisant methods and tactics to provenly influence the operations and processes of social organizations into creating a society that operates fluidly and where the public conduct their social affairs hassle-free.

Written by Yash Chauhan