tokin methodology 12-12-10

8/8/2019 TOkin Methodology 12-12-10

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Tricia Okin

Revised Methodology12.12.10

Thesis Studio & Writing, Fall 2010 / Anezka Sebek & Barbara Morris

ABSTRACT:This document serves to once again analyze and document the methodology of researching my thesisproject. It also includes descriptions of the explorations and a review of what new insight was gleaned

from each experience.

1.0 THESIS CONCEPT:

1.1 Design Problem:Self-employed entrepreneurs, specifically designers, tend to treat their clients betterthan themselves. As a group, they dont make enough time for themselves to improve skills, network,and create the art they wanted to create. We all make excuses and put our clients ahead ourselves,mostly because theres a deadline involved and another person to whom we have to answer.

1.2 Solution: Solo+Tribe is an online community for solo creative entrepreneurs to find small andpersonal motivating groups to spark much needed offline interaction for a better work-life balance. Onthe site, people will be able to select small groups according to the personal goals they are trying toaccomplish and then create local gatherings to accomplish them. Personal or business and goals usersdecide to tackle can range from exercising 5 hours a week to attending at least one art event per week tosharpen skills and keep up with trends.

The overall purpose is to find like-minded professionals in your local area with complementary talentsand goals to help one another reduce working in the independent contractor vacuum via healthyinteraction.

1.2 Core Questions:

What is life balance for a solo design entrepreneur?

Life Balance is a shortening for work-life balance, where people attempt to maintain the individualsneeds of health, security, career accomplishment in line with personal recreation, family and spiritualdevelopment. My question asks, what does this mean for an individual who makes his or her own hoursoutside of a corporate structure?

Where does the concept of life balance fit into the realm of digital labour practices?

Digital labour refers the new information-based economy in the post-manufacturing and post-industrialages. There have been several cases and examples of corporations shifting treatment of digital workersto that seen in labour abuses in the 1920s manufacturing sectors, thus creating a digital sweatshops.

Even when the maltreatment is not that extreme, employers are now expecting even more of workerstime during the day while they are at the office (increasing the workday from 9am 5pm to 9am 6pm),

to issuing smart phones so employees can constantly check in to work during their free time.

What are the mental or real hindrances to people creating a good life balance for themselves?

Personally, I can identify my own hindrances: lack of self-confidence; anxiety; taking on too much at atime; not being able to say no; and procrastination. In addition to those above, more reasons that mayapply for other people may be: location; familial obligations; health issues; or even drug or alcohol abuse.


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What techniques would help solo designers get over the mental hump to start doing what they love again

or try out new ventures?

Does this include using actual pen and paper as opposed to even more digital tools that require staring atscreen? I have seen a marked increase in the amounts of sketching I now do compared to even six

months ago simply because my anxiety reduces once I step away from the computer.

1.3 Main Argument:

The abuse of digital labourers is now becoming similar to the treatment of manual labourers at the turn ofthe 19

thand 20

thcenturies. Later in this paper, I will refer to landmark case of Jamie Kirshenbaum vs.

Electronic Arts, Inc.,where EA Games was sued for large abuses from approximately one-third of itsemployees. For now, Ill briefly review labour history.

The main reason why Americans, particularly the Baby Boomers, pursued higher education was toescape the long arduous hours of factory work. Current employers and clients are increasingly askingpeople within the digital labour and information markets to work 8 12 hour days with little or no extra

compensation other than a promise of loyalty from the company. However, loyalty from employers andmanagers in business worsened precipitously within the last 20 years in the United States. Now were at apoint in the economy where corporations have depressed wages[

1] for the last 10 20 years, depending

on the sector.

I am actively arguing for people to regain control of their time and to put themselves first. In addition tohaving more control, actively balancing oneself with different activities usually results in a more dynamicpersonality that will attract others and keep the loop of learning and sharing new experiences going.

1.4 Why This Thesis Matters:

A wave of a new class of creative entrepreneurs was created within the last 10 years, specifically due tothe recent recessions following September 11, 2001 and, more recently 2008 2010. During bothrecessions, employers drastically slashed workforces and pay to levels not seen since the recession inthe 1980s. The post-September 11

threcession coincided with the dot.com bust and left a lot of innovative

tech people out of work with a great deal of time on their hands to begin new chapters in their lives alongwith striking out on their own to form new businesses and inventions.

Now America has one of the largest percentages of self-employed workers in its history. While contractingthese self-employed workers allows corporations to accomplish tasks without having to pay for benefits,they continue to attempt to drive the costs down by taking advantage of the large supply of freelancersand the lack of confidence or job security of their in-house staff. Potential clients are now asking for moreand are willing to pay less, thus devaluing the work and the people who do the work.

From what I have seen and experienced anecdotally, these digital workers overworked themselves tryingto deliver or over-deliver and now theyre realizing its time to scale back as that method is unsustainable.Clients would present them with nearly impossible deadlines but not nearly enough budget to cover theexpenses of doing this type of excessive creative crunch time work.

1Greenblatt, Aaron, Wages Likely To Stay Sluggish For Years to Come. In National Public Radio (NPR Online), February 24,

2010. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124003086


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It is now commonly accepted that the more hours people work in a day or week, productivity actuallybegins to fall off, reaching the point of diminishing returns. Evan Robinson, a game designer and writer,decided to study this more in-depth back in 2005 in response to the 2004 EA Games class action lawsuit.In that case, EA Games was constantly operating on a crunch time schedule with every project andmaking 85-hour weeks mandatory with no overtime. Their excuse for no overtime was a deliberatemisinterpretation of the U.S. labor law stating that people classified as salaried workers are exempt from

overtime, even though salaried worker has several subclasses that allow overtime to be paid. From thesuit [

2] [

3],

In the complaint, Kirshenbaum alleged that EA had "improperly classified

some of its employees, including 'animators,' 'modelers,' 'texture artists,''lighters,' 'background effects artists,' and 'environmental artists' as

exempt from overtime, and therefore failed to pay those employeesovertime compensation."

The lawsuit was eventually settled for $15.6 million and EA paid another $14.9 million in a separate suitbrought by software engineers.

In an attempt to wrap his head around the situation, Robinson dissected the issue finding that productivityis hard to quantify for knowledge workers[

4], but still concluded that for overuse of crunch time schedules,

It comes down to productivity. Workers can maintain productivity more orless indefinitely at 40 hours per five-day workweek. When working longer

hours, productivity begins to decline. Somewhere between four days andtwo months, the gains from additional hours of work are negated by the

decline in hourly productivity. In extreme cases (within a day or two, assoon as workers stop getting at least 7-8 hours of sleep per night), thedegradation can be abrupt.

[] The ability to do complex mental tasks degradesfasterthan physicalperformance does. Among knowledge workers, the productivity loss due

to excessive hours may begin sooner and be greater than it is amongsoldiers, because our work is more affected by mental fatigue.

1.5 Measuring Success for This Project:

I want these users to feel like they are part of a community but more importantly that their l ife goals arenot insurmountable and can align with their business goals. I want people to be able to not feel guilty forhaving proper life balance. Ultimately, my goal is to introduce this platform at the 2011 CreativeFreelancers Conference to its 150 attendants and to have them be meaningful active users who truly findit helpful in their design practices.

Measuring numeric success for this project would ultimately entail adoption by an active set of users andgrow about 100% per month during a year. In the case of metrics this would first be the original 15 20people in the early user group and have it grow slowly to about 50 70 active users during the Springsemester. The next stage for growing the user base besides word of mouth would be to incorporate it into

2Feldman, Curt, EA Settles Labor-Dispute Lawsuit. In Gamespot, October 5, 2005. http://www.gamespot.com/news/6135106.html3View the original lawsuit document at: Electronic Arts Overtime Litigation. http://www.eaovertimecase.com/

4Robinson, Evan, Why Crunch Mode Doesn't Work: 6 Lessons. In International Game Developers Association (Online), 2005.

http://archives.igda.org/articles/erobinson_crunch.php


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the marketing of the Creative Freelancer Conference scheduled for late June 2011. The next technicalmove after getting feedback from conference attendees would be to implement mobile functionality as itwas already requested last year when I first told them about the project idea. Afterward, I plan to submit itto Tina Roth Eisenbergs Swiss Miss blog for another push to publicize early in the summer season whenpeople are reevaluating their vacation and business time.

1.6 Project Medium and Is This the Best Design & Technology Solution?

Solo+Tribewill be an online community that I am hesitant to call social network due to the negativeconnotations of social networking and general buzzword overload. It is in essence what onlinecommunities were before social networking overtook the sphere. A place to meet people and hang outbut it is not specifically about building up as many contacts as possible. If a user decides to solely have 8contacts that will only further the users meeting of goals, that amount is completely fine. The purpose ofthe site is to get things done offline and not to rack up more digital waste or reasons to stay in front of acomputer.

Doing this project online allows people to track their interactions seamlessly while putting their goals andaccomplishments out into the ether to spur accountability. Building the project off the open source

BuddyPress platform from WordPress will help me quickly build the standard online communityinteractions that web users are now accustomed to seeing.

At the beginning of the semester, I was intent on building the site using a Drupal platform because Iwanted to get it right in one shot for large scalability. Learning Drupal has a large learning curve andthough I would have help, it would have taken me several months to cobble together what I needed for anonline social network via various Drupal modules. On the insistence of Professor Sebek and that ofclassmates, Caroline Romedenne and Ashley Ahn Williams, I tried the BuddyPress module forWordPress. Just the installation of the plug-in alone has cut my development time in half and will allow forrapid iteration when it comes time to implement other site functionalities.

2.0 IMPETUS

2.1 Motivation & Prior Experiences

The motivation and impetus behind this project developed within my first few months of being a solocreative entrepreneur myself. In February 2009, I quit a soul crushing job as a designer at a mobilesoftware company where I felt my skills were stagnating. Upon leaving I had several clients lined upincluding a startup client that gave several red flags straight out of the gate. What ensued in the followingmonths was a lot of 4am deadlines, working on the weekends, bad blood, lack of confidence to stand upto the client and generally not setting appropriate boundaries from the start.

In the midst of this bad experience, I happened to attend the Creative Freelancer Conference in June2009 where I felt like reached the freelance designer Promised Land. There were about 300 people in the

slog I was in and trying to get their business practices shored up. By the end of the two day conference, Idecided to dedicate my thesis to helping the design community in some way. With that in mind, I returnedto the 2010 conference with a new video camera in hand to do interviews and was able to secure hostinga workshop on when to start collaborating with others to increase productivity, free time and money[

5].

Both exercises were received extremely well within the conference community and served as two of myprototypes for this semesters work.

5Okin, Tricia, Creative Freelancer Conference Breakfast Roundtable Growing Your Team, When is the Time? In Papercutny

Blog, June 2010. http://papercutny.com/blog/2010/06/09/video-creative-freelancer-conference-breakfast-roundtable-growing-your-team-when-is-the-time/


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2.2 Personal Relevance

I am ultimately passionate about this project because I fully admit to having a habit of not finishing what Istart. Through introspection the last couple of years, it has become clear to me that to succeed, I must

push myself harder to finish and accomplish goals, but to do them well instead of half-heartedly. One ofthe primary ways in which my career will advance is by me having the self-confidence to break out of oldhabits and to get things done.

Again, at the conference, it was rather apparent that other people had a similar issue of not havingenough confidence with clients, not balancing their time well or not finishing what they started. I want tohelp other people feel less stressed and feel that its okay to reach out more often for help but to similarlyto take time for themselves.

2.3 Inspiration

When I attended my first Creative Freelancer Conference in 2009, I realized I was not alone in this

thinking. Plus, I saw this as a way to have a career-changing project that will be useful to the communityat large. My goal is to again do something well and not in a mediocre fashion so it benefits everyone. Thisentails fully learning the iterative process of doing design well instead of being an automaton like I was inmy previous job.

2.4 Contribution to the Field

My goal is to give this demographic a more tangible outlet for working with others to get their personalgoals accomplished. The bottom line for this project is that I want people to take the following when usingthe site:

Be Inspired to take action.Have Resources & other people to support you.Have the Tools to help you take action.Just Freaking Do It.Feel Better and move on with your life.

In all, I see it as a kind of self-help program but in a more palatable package for creative people past the1980s 1990s self help age.

2.5 Design Questions

Will watching others take the journey before them (via featured online stories) help inspire them to action?

How can I make a compelling enough user experience and interface to hold my audience

s interest? Idont want this experience to replace any other online design experience, but to see it as a creativebusiness decision.

People have requested mobile access for this application before. On the whole, how can I make thisexperience so seamless and fun across all media or scenarios that people do not have to think to use itin their daily lives?

3.0 METHODOLOGY


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3.1 SUMMER PROJECT: Designer Interviews At The Creative Freelancer Conference

I undertook this experiment for two reasons. Firstly, my main target audience consists of solodesigners/creative professionals who attend the Creative Freelancer Conference and are looking at waysto push their push businesses in a more positive direction. Directly interviewing them would giveimmediate insight into my core demographic and to understand how they currently operate and what they

need.

Secondly, I used video interviewing as a way to get over my fear of talking to people and to play aroundwith the process of rapidly editing video. A month earlier, I bought a Flip Video Camera on a lark to startexploring the medium again with a small portable device.

The methodology for conducting the interviews was to initially give a brief overview of my idea, couching itin the context of the Creative Freelancer attendees. Afterward, I then asked each person what lifebalance means to her and to explain what current steps shes taking to achieve it. The line of questioningfollowed a pointed method of asking about what they perceived as fact and then asking them topersonally reflect on those choices. Some of the questions follow:

What does life balance currently mean to you?

What routines do you have set up?

What ruins your life balance?

What do you wish you were doing or do you feel is missing in your life that would make you feel better inthe long run?

What steps do you think you would be able to take to improve your life?

Do you feel having someone to whom you have to answer will make you more apt to accomplish thesegoals?

Would you feel the site and the community would helpful in you achieving the goals?

Common responses to these questions were lack of setting boundaries, making balance for a time and itbecomes eroded when a client crunch comes around and doing what they love but its only as a way ofrepair after the crunch time.

Figure 1: Interview with Jennifer Cole at CreativeFreelancer Conference in Denver, CO on 06.05.10;viewable at http://vimeo.com/13199255

Figure 2: Interview with Beth Goldfarb & GenevieveMargherio at the Creative Freelancer Conference inDenver, CO on 06.05.10; viewable athttp://vimeo.com/user3321626


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On the process side of the experiment, I soon learned that rapidly editing video and uploading it was notas rapid as is often portrayed in slick media ads. Moving the video from the camera, editing it in iMovie 8with its difficult interface proved frustrating, slow and discouraging. After that, the process of uploading thevideo to Vimeo.com was incredibly long, taking about 4 hours for each 600 MB video to upload, even on a

fast connection left alone overnight. From that experience, Ive resolved to buy Final Cut Pro for an easier

editing interface and to use a media compressor or an even higher T1 or T3 connection to upload video.

3.2 SUMMERPROJECT: Interview with Samantha Bennett of The Organized Artist Company

Back in early July, I conducted two phone interviews with Samantha Bennett of The Organized ArtistCompany, one 20 minutes long and a follow up one hour long conversation. Sam was a speaker atthe Creative Freelancer Conference I attended in June and where the designers in the previous section.Sams main focus as to help creative professionals understand whats important to them, finish theprojects their working on, help them learn to say no and hold them accountable.

My reasons for interviewing Sam were to get her insight on what

psychologically makes people even seek out accountability partnersand to find out what types of techniques she used with her own clients.I came prepared to Sams interview with a load of questions tounderstand her process, a few of which I outlined below.

Click the link below to listen and follow along with my notes below also.My questions/parts are in bold and my notes on Sams answers are innormal text.

Samantha Bennett Interview 07-08-10 Life Balance

Last time, we talked about people starting to beright with themselves before externally organizing their surroundings. Can you

talk more about ways people can approach coming to grips with what needs tobe fixed on the inside or becoming more self aware of their patterns to help themunderstand what needs to change externally?

Look at what youre tolerating instead of being happy with. When the pain becomesintolerable, thats what motivates people to change in dramatic ways. If you can move that

process up a bit to more immediate action, all the better.

Can you give an example of how youve directly helped a client figure out a toughsituation with regards to life balance?

Procrastination means your project is too big. It doesnt mean youre lazy, there are just toomany mental components to it.

How much do you think interacting with others online & offline plays a role inmaking our selves feel correct? You know, being another persons cheerleadercan sometimes help motivate you to get your own game started also.Were the median of the 5 people we spend the most time with. Their income, weight,aspirations, motivation, etc. Were tribal & social animals. Take stock of the people around youand start evaluating where we aspire to be.


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First thing is to hang with people you vibe with. And, Sams also a big fan of formalizing theagreement in writing when youre going to start asking accountability.

The Five Languages of Love (a book) we all like to give & receive love in different ways. Icould give this as a test on the site so people can pair up with people who are symbiotic, ex: a

praise giver or time; it can help people figure out their reward system.

What action steps would you give people to start working on now? Why?1. Create a list of 15 minute tasks related to your project daydreaming, research, doodling,contacting people, etc. Spend 15 minutes a day on that project every day before you even checkyour email or turn on your computer.

The pain of not moving forward on stuff can be very debilitating. And the 15 minutes canalleviate it so much

2. Do research instead of what youre wringing your hands about

3. Figure out what is urgent or important. Building the business is important but not

necessarily urgent.

4. Do. And Ask.

The most important values, conceptually, that I took away from this set of interviews was the idea ofbecoming aware of whats uncomfortable in ones life, to evaluate from time to time and dont be afraid tosay no. Also, the tactic of having an outlined reward vs. penalty system with tangible consequences builtinto a written contract can be a great motivator for a lot of people.

Technically, Sam introduced me to FreeConferenceCalling.com, a web service that lets users holdconferences calls and record them easily from their own phones. Ill continue to use this service for therest of my interviews along with SnapzProX, an application that allows you to record Skype video calls as

well. The latter will facilitate making personal video stories for the site content that much easier.

3.3 SUMMER PROJECT: Points for Designers to Move Forward

Underneath Anezkas mandate, I read and re-read the summary of The7 Habits of Highly Effective Peopleby Stephen Covey and thencreated a similar list for designers dealing with overwhelm and generaldisdain for their current situation. Im sure some of these seem familiaras they fall along the veins of numerous self-help theories. Illeventually reduce these to a more manageable lesser number andincorporate them as tenets and main content of the site. I also did this

as an exercise to help myself distill what I have learned over the pastyear of mentoring through various people and programs.

What Sucks About Your Current Life? What Would YouRather Be Doing?Too many obligations or are you complicating things? What hurtsthe most right now? What makes you just generally uncomfortable?What are the benefits of each of those? Eliminate the activities or aspects that hurt the most or areuncomfortable that give you little in return.


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Decide Who You Want to Be Now & in the FutureFigure out who or what you want to be or do in the next 5 10 years. You could return to a past lovedprofession or an activity, a career, whatever youve always wanted to try. Personally, I would love to be paidto travel and design. The next step is to try to map out how to get there.

Map Out How to Become the Future YouThis doesnt have to be super detailed and it can even be a 1, 2.5 or 5 year timeline of how to achieve the

new you. What habits do you have to lose in order to do this? What habits do you have to acquire?

Ask Yourself What is Stopping You / Ask Why You Are Youre Stopping YourselfThe first sentence is reactive thinking while the second sentence isproactive thinking. Well, what is it?

Make Yourself a PriorityNo one else will do it for you. For a lot of clients, its business and never personal. If need be, think ofyourself as a business and needing to care for it unless it will go under soon.

Make or Do Something That Will Help You Feel at PeaceIt doesnt have to be huge and seminal like a landscape painting. Just starting a sketch of a landscapepainting can help ease the way into working on it gradually. Making or doing can even be organizingfolders, because every little bit helps.

Compete With Your Future Self (And Others) / Find Competition

Competition spurs people to actuallydo something especially when we know another person will best us.What would you cool future self do in the particular situation you have? Does that future self have moreconfidence?

Tell Others What Youre Doing to Have AccountabilityWe get client work finished because theres another person waiting at the end for it (hopefully with a largecheck) and our reputations are on the line. We have to answer to that person and give reasons why a taskwas not accomplished. Imagine having to tell your design accountability partner why you didnt finishdesigning your portfolio site. Yeah, not pretty, but its a good motivator.

Keep a RecordIts a lot easier to understand progress if you see what youve done. Nobody can remember all he or she hasdone over 3 months without some visual reminder. I myself follow Ilise Benuns / MarketingMentors Marketing Plan Calendar and its good to look back and see what you have accomplished and stillwhat needs doing.

Give as Much as You ReceiveEveryone needs help. 10 15 minutes here or there can suck up ones time, but allocating for giving usuallybrings the same in return.

Collaborate to Accomplish Goals or Finish a ProjectYou dont have to take it all yourself and there are most likely people who have more expertise in aparticular area of your project than you do. Its okay to get help.

I felt mentally lighter after writing these. This is mostly because it made me reflect back on myexperiences in the past year and its good to realize that Ive actually absorbed what was presented tome. Putting all of the above tenets into play takes time and repeated practice to become routine but its awork in progress. My thesis itself is an exercise or experiment in trying to make the above tenets my

personal design practice.

For my process in this project, I deliberately gave myself a short limit of 30 minutes to write all of thepoints by hand and away from a computer, phone or any other electronic distraction. After writing, I againgave myself another short limit of 20 minutes to have it as a fully published blog post to just get it done.The purpose of it was to do a rapid iteration and not to dwell on an object too long or to make it tooprecious to destroy. This method wholeheartedly worked so well that I have started imposing time limitson other experiments just to see what creativity spurts out in the given time.


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3.4 Summer Projects Conclusion:

Through doing the above short projects, I was able to start answering some of my design questions,namely those about what life balance means to a solo designer and what techniques they may utilize toachieve it. My next steps are to expand out to a larger user group of 10 designers including 7 women and3 men, interview them via Skype video and start determining how I can address their needs best. One of

the recurring thoughts or problems entering my thought process is how to make people actually want toparticipate or to make it fun without so much seriousness as a self-help program.

Because of this, Im exploring using video to tell user stories and a simple game or point system calledLife Balance Bingo on the site where users can collect visual indicators of what they accomplished,similar to FourSquare badges. For my prototypes in the next week, Ill be making wireframes of whatusers will encounter at the site and a rough paper version of Life Balance Bingo.

3.5 FALL 2010 METHODOLOGY:

3.6 Paper and Digital Wireframing

I have a tendency to keep a lot of information in my head to a point of anxiety. Basic drawing or paperwireframing tends to lower the confusion level and helps me work out the first layer of kinks in a project. Istarted drawing the interfaces out on paper and making annotations on the side to remind myself of whatcontent or features belonged on each page and how they should be connected across the site. The firstset of sketches was also an attempt to illustrate the user flow and experience of how a typical user wouldencounter the site: via word of mouth, a conference or a featured post on a well-established design site.

At first they start as sketches while I m on the train, but once in front of a computer, I check competitorsites or usability design references to ensure I have a checklist of necessary functionalities. Because mydrawings are usually not to scale, the digital version of wireframing is a way to get it into a real physicalweb space of a 978px wide grid space and start arranging elements as neeeded.

For my initial stint at digital wireframing I used an application called Mockflow { http://mockflow.com/} tocreate templates and work out concepts. The first pass at wireframing showed that my systems weremuch too cluttered and did not pass some of the basic heuristic principles of usability design. From there,I decided to go back to the drawing board of mindmapping (to be covered later) to determine whatfunctionality and features were truly necessary for a user to use the Solo+Tribe site efficiently.

Below are the pages in the following order: Home(how the user arrives to the site), Find a Group orPerson, and Featured Member.


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Below are the pages in the following order: Home, Featured Member/Soloist, and Member Profile

3.7 Logo Design & Colour Scales

The first iteration of the logo design featured a lot of slashesas dividing lines and a bit of figure ground elements. Thegraphical slash played a large role in design sketchesbecause it implies a natural division of several parts to makea whole. This evidenced by the classic mathematical symbolsfor percentage ( % ) and division ( ).

After- was looking for a clean thin typeface that was

specifically not Helvetica- preferred a typeface with different weight fonts such as

bold and styles like italic or oblique. This would havebeen easier to implement instead of creating a falseimpression with artificial bolding or italicizing withinthe web browser.

- Searching for a typeface that hopefully was supportedby TypeKit, FontSquirrel or any of the other web typerendering engines.

- Eventually settled on Raleway which has no otherfonts but felt the cleanest to me out of all my intialmockups

- For colour palette, I selected palette #2 because at thea solid grounding colour of dark blue, and two highlight colours of medium pink and light blue. Thenext version of the palette you will see in the first design iteration has a modified blue and pink to


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make them brighter against the white compositional background. In the second iteration of thedesign, I incorporated more bright colours but muted the harshness of the stark white.

3.8 Renaming/Rebranding the Site

My thesis project was originally called Balanced Design; I first thought of it last August at the 2009Creative Freelancer Conference because from a conference attendance survey, most participants wereseeking balance between client work and their personal lives.

In early September during a weekly Skype video conference, Professor Sebek pointed out she thoughtthe name, Balanced Designwas too sterile and lacked a real call to action. We bandied back and forthdifferent synonyms for group using ThinkMaps Visual Thesaurus tool { http://www.visualthesaurus.com/}.

In this exercise, we refocused the naming/branding on concept of group dynamic instead of just individualgoal of life balance. Although it did lead to much better name, I think this is where a conceptualdisconnect of life balance and solo+tribe began to emerge. I have to now pay special attention to thisnomenclature disconnect to help better explain the concept.


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3.9 Revised Logo

After selecting a new name, I went back to the drawing board to rethink the logo and typography. Myideas kept bouncing between the one plus the many. When actually designed digitally, the new ideastook on a hackneyed feeling. The circular dot group idea looked too similar to generic mid-2000s techcompany web site logos. The people icons were also too reminiscent of MySpace, especially when pairedwith the blue colour palette. My final logo choice was a simple typographic wordmark with a + sign toindicate a connection between the individual and the group.


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3.10 Defining the User Group

For the most part, the core of my user testing groupof 28 is predominantly aged 28 40 years old, white,self-employed and have been running their

businesses for at least 6 years. Most participantsreside on the East and West coasts in majortechnological and urban centers such as New YorkCity, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

There are a few outliers along the major categories:there are four (4) participants above the age of 40years old; four (4) are non-white; six (6) live in theMid-west, Southwest and the Southern U.S.

When I initially contacted the group via email inOctober, there was an active response of 10participants. My feeling is that I would need to be

able to show an actual visual design or working prototype in order to garner more active participation.

In addition to this self-selected group of users, several critics and classmates have strongly suggestedusing my classmates and schoolmates as a focus group of participants. It has been said the projectspeaks to this demographic of stressed thesis students much the same as design business owners in theamount of information and concepts they have to juggle. Based on this feedback, during the winter break,I will release a beta version to both my core user group of designers and to my classmates within mythesis class.

3.11 Game: Life Balance Bingo

In early September, I struggled with materializing the concept of

what life balance really is. At the time, I was trying to juggle threeclient projects and a horde of school projects and reading. I had a

constant sensation that something was off but it was hard to

pinpoint how I should start adjusting. That uneasiness and stress letme to start playing with images and put down on physical paper

some of the main aspects of life that I felt could be improved. This

led me to create a game entitled, Life Balance Bingo.

The idea is based off the Mexican card game called La Lotera which

is kind of like a pictorial bingo. Whenever a player gets four imagesin a row, he or she wins. Another model for Life Balance Bingo is the

geo-location game, FourSquare { http://www.foursquare.com } in

thats similar to the badge system used. FourSquare users check into different places or businesses and depending on how each

location is tagged in the database, the user will earn a badge usually

with a funny written and pictorial description. For instance, if userschecks into three locations with photobooths, they earn the

Photogenic badge (at right, first row).

Life Balance Bingo is meant to mimic the kinds of activities thatpeople can achieve and track while using Solo+Tribe, hence

FourSquare being a reference. The board is currently broken into 15


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categories of activities (seen right) that touch most aspects

of our lives. To speak frankly, these are issues that keep us

up at night worrying if were doing them properly or not.There is not necessarily an objective to get a specific

amount on the board accomplished well and then you win.The point is to look at each of the categories, mark an X

through each one that youre not performing well (at least50%) then sit back and evaluate.

I first tested the game as a paper version during one of ourin-class open user testing days. The reaction and feedbackwas stellar. The effect of having several Xs on a sheet infront of them, made most participants realize their lives werecompletely out of balance. One of my classmate participantsin particular had X marks on 14 out of the 15 boxes on hersheet and was a brutal reminder to start the pendulumswinging back the other way.

The overall goal of the game when used on the site is

pinpoint two or three major goal areas a user can focus onwhile acknowledging what he or she does well.

Doing so will help people choose complementary partnerswith complementary skills who will propel them forward whileworking within small groups. From there, I developed a roughonline jQuery prototype of Life Balance Bingo{http://papercutny.com/parsons/thesis/bingo/demo.php}that I intended to integrate into the site.

3.12 Mindmapping with Popplet

After struggling with the interface and doing wireframes, I decided to go back to the drawing board to fleshout main goals of the user interactions on the site. The current interface I had mapped out was much toocluttered with too many actions for the user to take.

Popplet { http://popplet.com/} is an online Flash mindmapping application currently in beta testing. I wasable to procure a beta invite by asking on Twitter and following up via email. Waiting on the invite delayed


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my mindmapping exercise for a bit, but it was wholeheartedly worth it. Popplet is similar to doing a papermind map, simply because of how the application moves in space smoothly like a live interaction. Thisallowed me to spatially organize my thoughts without overtaking my living room floor with paper thatseasily confused or trampled by cats.

I originally started my new Popplet on my own, but at weekly Skype video session with Professor Sebek,

we narrowed down more goals of the project and the site by me adding her to my Popplet mindmap. Wethen defined the different reasons for user interaction and movements and what kind of content eachsection would access. By doing this incredibly useful exercise, trimmed my main site menu down fromnine links to six. The current version of my Popplet mindmap is located here:http://popplet.com/app/#/7739.

3.12 User Interface Design

The first iteration of Solo+Tribesinterface design was based on therevised Popplet mindmap with amore streamlined menu and washeavily decluttered. During anotherSkype video session with Professor

Sebek, we revised and streamlinedthe interface even more.

The home page of Solo+Tribefeatures a top-level navigation withimmediate access to goals, groups,members as well as tools andarticles such as Life Balance Bingo.To the right of the top navigation isthe Search function present for


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those users who prefer to discover via search instead of clicking around a site. Below the navigation is abrief blurb detailing what the project is about and expressly telling the viewer that its a thesis work inprogress where feedback is appreciated to help the grow the community.

After the header section comes the main content area with an image carousel that rotates slides through5 different rotating promotional spots used as entry points into the site:

oA quick description of the siteoGoogle map showing where members areoA featured member storyoLife Balance Bingo icon to push people to play the online version of the game and discover goalsoFeatured project or group

To the right of the main content area isan obvious Sign Up area that willalways be visible in that area toanyone not logged in. Further downthe page are three columns displayingthe latest activity from Members,

Groups and the General ActivityStream.

With all that said, the aesthetic designof site was still painfully sterile. This Iknew immediately and consequentlyreceived feedback from classmatesstating, it was too clean or evenantiseptic. Another classmate of minein particular, Caroline Rommedenne,gave the advice to try making thedesign warmer and more emotive insome way.

When taking another turn at thedesign, I drew on my background as aphotographer to remind myself of what types of imagery would make me feel happy upon viewing a site.To me, the answer was expansive photographic backgrounds mixed with solid blocks of colour to catchthe eye.

Below is Solo+Tribes revised home page design reflecting those aesthetic values. Ive incorporated abackground photographic image selected from user photographs of their projects. The main backgroundcolour is now a warm and inviting cream that light enough to not overpower the rest of the colours ordesign. As it stands, I can do much more to push this design version even more, to keep the subpages asaesthetically pleasing as the home page. Also, the next major revision of the design will incorporate

featured areas on the right sidebar to highlight other content around the site and later down the road forad serving space.


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BuddyPress Platform & Building

As previously stated, Im prototyping Solo+Tribe

using BuddyPress, a flavour of the WordPress opensource CMS (content management system)platform. BuddyPress allows site builders to create asocial network right out of the box with importantfeatures such as groups, private messages, statusupdates, posting documents and photos and more.

Over the winter break, I will be building out the corefunctionality of the site with the goal to have itfunctional for user group testing by January 15,2011. After introducing it to my user groups, I willrevise applications and aesthetic design as needed.

Below left is an example of what the basic install of BuddyPress on a site looks like. To the right is thebeginning of the Solo+Tribe customization and build out.

Final Presentation Evaluation and Next Steps

The overall feedback from both my critics and classmates was to start building Solo+Tribe immediately.That only through making, building and letting people experiment with it will I really begin to see userinteraction patterns to better inform design and development.

As for funding, according to accepted venture capital proceedings, it is expected to personally meet myfirst 10,000 users in order get any sort of funding or to be at a stage worthy of launching. This was adramatic wake up call to be more ambitious with my project and to plan for large expansion quickly but notto necessarily worry too much.

Another design/production milestone for winter break requested by the critics is to distill the 11 goals fordesigners down to four major goals/actionable steps that will propel users to dive in immediately and startusing the site. Then, my next task is to create four crude applications to match those goals by January


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15th, 2011. For instance, Life Balance Bingocould match the first goal of Make Yourself a Priority to help

understand where people can or should focus their energy.Both Professor Sebek and my classmates frequently requested I create a visual method for people toobviously share skills and collaborate on projects together besides the goal setting and achievement. Thepoint of this feature is have make Solo+Tribe not just a site meet accountability partners but also a designbusiness networking and collaboration site similar to Behance.net

In all, my goals over the winter break are to have a built working prototype and four crude applications byJanuary 15

th, 2011. My other main goal is get a better handle on the business plan writing process for the

final thesis paper by setting up meetings with SCORE and other small business community groups to helpfund and guide the project.

tokin methodology 12-12-10

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