To me, "progressive" means forward movement in the direction of positive change. I choose the topic "Women Empowerment" because, being a young woman I not only see the effects of society's impact on women daily, I have been victim of this. Now, I am stronger but I do not wish other young women to go through the same.
Project Process: Stanford Design Thinking
Empathize & Define
The Progressive Challenge was a way to get students into our communities to find a specific issue and get to the root of it. My group chose young women and social media addiction. We found that the root cause was a lack of self worth. We decided to make a mural and appreciation board at our school to help combat this problem in out community.
Immersion Experence
For our immersion experience we tried to simulate a social media addiction. We posted, commented and refreshed our feeds every thirty minutes for two days, from when we woke up to the time we went to bed.
Human Centered Problem: Young people’s self confidence is affecting the way they behave towards others.
Stages 1 & 2 Presentation
Ideate:
Planning Our Prototype
Our prototype Ideas:
Create stickers/ merch to promote self worth with a fun, catchy saying.
Mural promoting self worth, we could encourage people to take pictures with it.
An appreciation board for the school.
Prototype:
Our inspiration for our mural:
The plan for our mural:
Test: Progressive Day
Progressive day was a day in which we went out into our communities to put our prototype to use and get feedback, or target our root cause. My group and I painted our mural and made our appreciation board.
Artist Statement
Social Media has taken over the way a lot of teens think about themselves. Many of those teens decide what their self-worth is based on how many likes, followers, and comments they receive. To help the teens in our community raise their self esteem, we decided to paint a mural by the breezeway with a picture of RuPaul saying one of his most popular quotes, “If you don't love yourself, how in the hell are you going to love somebody else?”. The cork board in front of Brett's office is an appreciation wall, up the stairs to the 10th grade commons, on the first landing, the definition of Self-worth is painted on the wall and then along the walls up to the 10th grade commons, a trail of flowers leading up to the RuPaul mural. Those three walls we are painting are dedicated to help those who need that extra positivity in their lives. To help make someone's day, anyone can leave them a little appreciation on the appreciation wall and at every community meetings, we will chose some at random on the wall and read them aloud.
Exhibition:
Progressive day was a bit of a blur, I remember painting and talking to students as they passed, asking what they thought and If they could relate to the quotes. What really made progressive day special was the appreciation board. I was surprised by the number of students who wanted to appreciate one another, even after progressive day, the board continued to fill up.
Self Reflection:
The most challenging part of the Progressive Challenge was the ideate and prototype stages. My group had trouble coming up with a prototype that fit our project and goal we decided our target audience would be teenagers, and our fellow school mates would appreciate the most. The work I valued most was the Stanford Design Process, it was something I had never heard of before, and it took a lot of stress out of the project and helped us focus on each step. I learned that I can't rush through things, to get to the end goal. I found the topic of progression very interesting thought this project, there where so many beautiful outcomes from a number of my classmate's projects. Hundreds of people where touched during the progression of this project, and not just those from our school. I realized that even things that I think are small, can affect people significantly. Nichole, one of my classmates also shares my love for RuPaul, she talked to me privately about how much the mural touched her. The fact that such an influential LQBTQ+ activist who has inspired her for years, is now a permanent addition to our school, blew her away. She took photos with the mural and posted them on her social medias. I hope that more students will continue to be touched by this and will be motivated to be progressive in their own communities. The only changes I would make, would be to add more color and to make post-its and pens more available for students to use the appreciation board.