Reflection on the Final Crit

As a group, we were quite impressed and inspired by all of the work presented during the final crit last Friday. Here are a couple of topics that our group had the chance to reflect on:

• The Aces used a bunch of objects to create an immersive experience and to tell a story during their presentation. Another group also leveraged cultural probes to help people shape their individual experience. Use of objects made us think about the main object we picked in our solution. We decided to embody moods and colours in a tree. But what if it was something else? What if it was another object? How would this influence the interactions?
  

• Before the crit, we had discussions on how individuals might react negatively to the Mood Tree and find it intrusive and isolating. The way The Aces used a diary to capture the reaction and feelings of individuals in the Social Credit System made us go back to these initial conversations and inspired us.
  

• Many groups throughout the project decided to focus on the vision rather than the solution. We as well after the mid-term crit let lose of the nitty gritty on how the mood tree really works. It prevented us from thinking about screens and functionality and helped us reflect on about how can we make it more interactive and engaging.
  

• We also really liked the way a group explored the relationship between the environment and individual. They really wanted to make the environment responsive to the individual (rather than just a one-to-one relationship). This is something we hoped to capture in our solution as well. By being in an environment where the mood tree is, the tree is being responsive to the individual rather than asking the individual to participate.
  

• Finally, the "Share Your Secret" solution is trying to make individuals share their secrets with strangers before they can talk about them with their loved ones. This made us go back to the fact that we usually feel more comfortable opening up to strangers than to our closest ones. This is something we discussed numerous times. Maybe our mood tree can also start conversations among strangers about their feelings at site?

Overall, it was lovely to hear all of this incredible work by our classmates and to exchange ideas with each other at the end. It inspired us and stimulated further creative thinking.