about the project!
To be progressive, can mean a lot of things. To me, it means to make change wherever you see necessary. To do this, you must get in what they call a "Progressive" mindset, where you believe in freedom for everyone, opportunity for everyone, responsibility to make change, and cooperation with others. If you believe in all of those things, and have a cause that you want to help or change, you are ready to begin being Progressive!
My cause was to focus on how social media is impacting self esteem of young girls. I chose this because I felt it was an issue that I could speak a lot about, since I use social media all the time and am a young girl myself. I thought I would also be a good role model to speak about the issue, because although I use social media a lot, I try not to let it affect my self esteem, because I know I am beautiful in my own way.
My cause was to focus on how social media is impacting self esteem of young girls. I chose this because I felt it was an issue that I could speak a lot about, since I use social media all the time and am a young girl myself. I thought I would also be a good role model to speak about the issue, because although I use social media a lot, I try not to let it affect my self esteem, because I know I am beautiful in my own way.
Project Process!EMpathize: |
Immersive Experience: For my immersive experience, my partner and I turned ourselves into "Instagram models", where we had to take model pictures and post them on Instagram. We did this to understand the full production that models go through just to get a good picture. This was really hard for me and Marlene because we normally don't really care what goes on our Instagram feeds, we just upload whatever, so it was a real change for us.
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ideate:
Prototype:
After completing the empathize and ideate stages, I realized that there needed to be a more accurate representation of women in the media. The white, skinny, rich girls being shown in the popular magazines now were telling anyone who didn't look like them, that they weren't good enough. I wanted to change that and make a magazine that showed natural beauty that was attainable and that inspired girls to love themselves.
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test:
To test our prototype, we went to two different groups of girls that went to High Tech Middle schools, and gave them a short workshop about body image and taught them what we learned in our research. It was an amazing experience being able to work with these girls, because they were all so outgoing and really friendly. At the end of the workshop, we showed them our magazine and they gave us feedback on it. One common theme in the feedback was to make the magazine look more professional, which I would definitely do if I redid it. Specifically, I think the magazine would look more professional if it had more high quality pictures, and was printed on nice magazine paper instead of printer paper.
Exhibition:
A lot of work went into making our zine and giving the workshop, so Progressive Day and exhibition were actually the easy part. We got to talk to parents and students about our process and what we did. Many people loved our cause and said our magazine looks like a real magazine! It was a really rewarding moment seeing people appreciate our hard work.
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self reflection:
The most challenging part of the Progressive Challenge was pushing myself to connect with community members to share our prototype with them. To talk to the directors of the middle and elementary schools was very intimidating, because I was afraid of getting my work shot down by them because it wasn't good enough. It also didn't get any easier with the students. Getting the middle schoolers to come to the workshop was scary, and also giving the workshops was a little scary at first. I think talking to all of these people got easier along the way because I noticed that once they heard what the cause was for, many of them were more than willing to help out. It also helped that throughout the project, I kept learning more and more, and would be confident talking about the subject because I felt like an expert in it! Something that struck me about this project that I really liked was Joanne's passion behind it. The progressive project was much more to her than a one month project that we would never think about again, she really wanted us to get in the mindset of being progressive and continue it even after the project. Her attitude towards this project made it really easy as a student to be excited about our prototype, and not see it as "homework".
Through this project, the biggest thing I learned was that progressivism doesn't have to be this huge invention or change that you make in the world. I used to think the idea of progressivism was very far out, and that a person of my age would never be able to achieve it. But through the Progressive project, it has showed me that you can make small actions and changes and be a progressive person. And you can also break your progressive action down into small steps to make it less overwhelming and make it more realistic. The small steps we followed for our progressive project were inspired by the Stanford Design Process. Following this process allowed us to create deadlines that were easy to follow and maintain throughout our project. Small steps also allowed us to make prototypes that were very useful and impactful for our users. I do feel like my zine kind of impacted my users, but I'm really glad I decided to do the workshop with the middle schoolers, even if I was really nervous about it at first. If the girls had just read the words I wrote in the zine, I don't think it would have impacted them in the same way as speaking to them and getting to know them. I'm very proud of myself for doing something out of my comfort zone, because I got to influence these girls' thinking because of it.
Through this project, the biggest thing I learned was that progressivism doesn't have to be this huge invention or change that you make in the world. I used to think the idea of progressivism was very far out, and that a person of my age would never be able to achieve it. But through the Progressive project, it has showed me that you can make small actions and changes and be a progressive person. And you can also break your progressive action down into small steps to make it less overwhelming and make it more realistic. The small steps we followed for our progressive project were inspired by the Stanford Design Process. Following this process allowed us to create deadlines that were easy to follow and maintain throughout our project. Small steps also allowed us to make prototypes that were very useful and impactful for our users. I do feel like my zine kind of impacted my users, but I'm really glad I decided to do the workshop with the middle schoolers, even if I was really nervous about it at first. If the girls had just read the words I wrote in the zine, I don't think it would have impacted them in the same way as speaking to them and getting to know them. I'm very proud of myself for doing something out of my comfort zone, because I got to influence these girls' thinking because of it.