Week 15

This week, Raechel and I tied up loose ends with finishing our part of the project. Every one else in the class was busy printing their materials out and finishing up their last few details as well. For the most part we have the collateral for the event on December 10th done. All we have to do is hope for a good turnout with the donations in the classrooms and during our event in which we will speak to people about Good'Ville and accept donations. Everyone did a great job collaborating, and I feel that this project will be a success. I am excited to sell those items at a cheaper price next semester with the Graphic and Interactive Design Club.

The article that I wrote has been published in the Snapper, and our class made the front page!

I also started on my Case study, and rendered it as a PDF, but after deliberation I decided to do it as a website by creating mockups and creating the interactions in a prototyping program that I prefer called InVision. I am not very print-oriented with design, and work better when designing for web or other interactive interfaces, especially in the User Experience side of it. I will post the finished product next week.

Week 14

This week, I printed out the infographic, and completed a list of all of the 100 and 200-level studio art courses, their room #, meeting times, and final times so that the installation group can know when they need to put the donation boxes in to the rooms during finals week. So far the project is going pretty good, and progress is being made across all groups. I have signed up to help run the event from 3-4 on December 10th.

Week 13

This week, we continued working hard to make this event a success. Every group is working hard on their part of the project, such as wayfinding, advertising, social media, and web. Raechel and I have been busy taking photos to capture the process. So far things are running pretty smoothly in order to get this event up and running. The web group has announced that they need each group's toolkit by Tuesday, November 25, so that they can put them into the website. We are also working on the infographic to put into the toolkit as well. The Exchange online newspaper here on campus has agreed to write an article about our class and event in order to get the word out better, and I am working on writing an article for the student-run newspaper called the Snapper, which is supposed to be published in the December 2nd article. I am confident that the word will definitely be successfully spread throughout campus to encourage them to donate, and look forward to a larger-scale event in the near future.

Week 12

Our finalized logo and event name!

This week in class, we established what groups we would each be in for the remainder of the project, and I was chosen to be on the PR team with Raechel. We are in charge of writing an article for the Snapper, creating an infographic to convince other organizations to partner with us by giving reasons why they should. We are also going to create a tool kit to explain the process of how to go about implementing this event from the Public Relations perspective.  In addition, we are taking photos of everyone working hard in order to show the process of the project.

The entire class decided that an event covering the entire campus would require more alotted time than what we have left in the semester. Therefore, we agreed to host an event in the art building, where people could donate their leftover, unwanted art supplies on December 10. Then during the Spring 2015 semester the Graphic and Interactive Design Club that I am a part of could host an event so that we can sell the donated art supplies for a cheaper price to other art students.

The goal is that one day, after we have worked out the "bugs" during our mini-event, we can implement a campus-wide version of Good'Ville.

Off Campus Event: Coffee and Critique

Today Jamie, Raechel, and I went to the AIGA Coffee and Critique at the Midtown Scholar library in Harrisburg. There was a good group of working professionals and other students like us, who showed their work and received comments suggestions on their work. It was overall a great experience and the president of Central PA AIGA, Tim McKenna made us feel very welcome. We might go back to the next one in December to actually show our work.

Week 11

This week in class we began ideation for our next project, which is supposed to reach outside of the campus community. We went through several ideas, such as a Campus Goodwill, reaching out to spread awareness about childhood obesity, more animals in a designated area on campus where students could visit every day, and spread awareness that design majors do more than what other majors may think. We all eventually decided upon the idea of a Campus Goodwill, where students can drop off their unwanted items at the end of the semester so that other students can buy them for a reduced price. I feel that this would be very beneficial to the campus community, because personally I find it difficult to afford all of the things that I need for living in a college dorm.

We then broke into groups and researched different aspects of the project, such as potential partners, physical space, budget, and general research on other places doing something similar to our idea. My group researched potential partners, which includes the Goodwill, a few different churches, and the Costume Shop on Campus. None of the churches got back to us, and the costume shop has limited space already, so we are stuck on that.

Next we came up with a more established plan which would be to have a one time event, and to donate the rest that isn't sold to potentially the Goodwill because we unfortunately decided that storage is not a good idea. We got separated into different groups, and this time my group is figuring out the space for the event.

Week 10

This week, we worked on finishing up our case study, and food container for the Campus Cupboard, which I will post photos of soon. We also finished the powerpoint presentation and got the Project Plan laminated. Everything looks great, and we are all looking forward to presenting our results, even though we didn't get the chance to donate any food.

Theory U Chapter 15-18 Reflection

Chapter 15: Grammar of the Social Field

Chapter 15 basically discussed the epistemological and ontological aspects of reality and our misunderstanding of the process of social reality creation. The 21 propositions of social field theory were also introduced. The first proposition, however resonates with the rest of the propositions, which is that social systems are enacted by their members in context. Basically, you enact the system in which you operate, whether its good or bad. I found desencing and absencing to create a better understanding of not being able to learn from the future. Desencing is intolerance and lack of empathy for other views, and absencing is the worldview in which the source of the problems is exterior, not interior.


Chapter 16: Individual Actions

What I found to be the most touching out of this chapter is the story of Hitler's secretary, who seemed to involuntarily get sucked into a dangerous situation. She seemed to lose connection with her authentic self, and participated in the practice of anti-emergence. She was also being self-diluding, which means that she lost her connection between her own image of the unfolding future and reality. The raging war and the ruling fist of Hitler made her look like she was a part of the violence being his secretary, when in reality she simply wanted a job.


Chapter 17: Conversational Actions

Chapter 17 discussed the generic field patterns in conversations, which are downloading, debate, dialogue, and presencing. These four fields differ in terms of the inner place in which conversation is formed, which can be because of what they want to hear, what they really think, seeing yourself as part of a larger whole, and speaking from what's moving through. These four categories, I feel are the main parts of conversations in terms of what you're thinking while talking to somebody. A lot of people, including myself, tend to not speak what they truly think in order to avoid confrontation and debate.


Chapter 18: Organizational Actions:

This chapter talks about how different businesses can be structured and organized. The two different bureaucracies discussed were machine and professional. A machine bureaucracy is organized around standardization of process, while a professional bureaucracy is organized around standardization of skills. From taking these meanings out of context, I feel that factories and more laborous jobs tend to follow the machine bureaucracy, while jobs that require more skills acquired from a four-year college education, such as computer science, education, and graphic and interactive design lean more toward a professional bureaucracy. I also found the differences between the shifts from centralized to decentralized, and decentralized to network structure interesting. The shift from centralized to decentralized basically moves from the center toward the customer, and from decentralized to network depends on the relationship of the coworkers and their coordination happens through mutual adjustments in networked relationships.

Week 9

This week I worked on the step-by-step project plan, which initially was created for just Millersville students to take on in the future if we didn't have the resources to do it. After discussing with my teammates, we decided to make it into a plan for other schools to do as well. I also made it a bit interactive, so that the people using it can write on the lines given, and can see our examples below each step.

Campus-oriented:

Oriented for Any School.

We also met up with Gerry Shehan, and discussed further about potential donations we could make, and he then referred us to the director of the Campus Grill on campus, who might have food that we could donate to the Campus Cupboard. I was not expecting it to be so difficult to donate wasted food after seeing all of the food being thrown out at my workplace, which couldn't be donated because of contamination reasons. My manager suggested the leftover cereal cups that the Anchor tries to get rid of, which has a longer shelf life and a bigger chance of being donated, versus the salads and sandwiches which only last for about a day.

Week 8

This week, we only met up on Thursday due to fall break, and we went to the Community Foundation in Lancaster, and talked to one of the employees there. I learned a lot about what the organization is about, and ways that I can give back to the community as well. I never knew they existed until they were mentioned in class a few weeks ago, but I feel that since I do now, I may connect with them if I ever decide to do my own community project, since I've really been wanting to start a campus Girl Scouts because I've been a member all throughout high school and some of elementary school. I could collaborate with them on projects that we could potentially do.

Our group also was inspired to keep trying with our project, even if it looks like it might not work out. We will learn from the mistakes and make a project plan to be used for other schools who want to donate food from their dining halls to needy organizations.

Week 7

This week, we mainly worked on our project. We got in contact with the Campus Cupboard, who is willing to pick up the food from the Anchor. The only setback is the fact that some of the foods, like salads and sandwiches, must be used within a limited period of time, so those foods must be given away as soon as possible. The Associate Director of Dining Services here at Millersville is completely happy to assist us with organizing the project. So far we are pretty well on track, but with fall break and a field trip to Community Foundations in Lancaster next week, our tentative end date for the project got pushed back by about two weeks. We are all excited to put this project to action and see less food wasted on campus.

Theory U Ch. 10-14 Reflection

Chapter 10: Sensing

Chapter ten discussed the next step of the "U," which is sensing, which is basically when the observer begins to see the system from a profoundly different view. This is a step farther than the previous step, which is seeing. I particularly enjoyed the story about Parsifal's Holy Grail. Parsifal's challenge was to act from authentic presence of his open heart versus what he was told, and what social norms expected him to do. I feel like this was a good example of sensing, and actually has that realization to change. Sharmer also discussed two different types of wholeness, as discussed in Henri Bortoft's The Wholeness of Nature." They are counterfeit whole, which is when the mind is moving away from the concrete part to get an overview, and authentic whole, which is based on when the mind operates by moving into the concrete parts in order to encounter the whole. Finally, the three principles of sensing discussed was diving into the sensory experience, redirecting your attention, and activating deeper capacities of cognition.

Chapter 11: Presencing

Presencing is the blending of sensing and presence, which means to connect with the source of the highest future possibility and bring it into the new. It is the movement in which we approach our self from the emerging future. The two root questions of creativity were: Who is my Self? (one's highest self), and What is my Worth? (one's purpose, what they were put on the earth to do). I particularly found it helpful to know the three different types of presence in terms of my own life. They are: presence of the past (current field), presence of the future (emerging field of the future), and presence of one's authentic Self. When all three collapse, there is a profound shift from which we operate. The diary entry titled I'm Falling Apart was very powerful, and I feel gave an excellent real life account versus Sharmer's numerous adventures. I enjoyed the reference of giving birth to  breaking through the membrane, which is how good can can come out of pain and frustration. This is very true for giving birth, because a woman can go through a lot of pain, but once the child is born just that simple first look at your child makes all the pain worth it.

Chapter 12: Crystallizing

This chapter discussed the next step in the "U", which is sustaining connection from presencing and beginning to operate from it. Crystallizing clarifies vision and intent of the emerging future. The principles of crystallizing are: Power of Intention, Letting Come, Grand Will, and Venues for Waking Up. All these are basically ways of letting go of the old and digging into the new in order to change the world and learn from the emerging future.

Chapter 13: Prototyping

When I first read the title of this chapter, I immediately thought of app or website page prototypes, and had no idea of the different context Sharmer puts them in this chapter. It has basically the same concept of presenting a concept before you're done, and allows fast-cycle feedback learning and adaptation as any prototype for an app or website would have. The field structure of prototyping takes the movement from presencing and crystallizing to its next stage by deepening the holding space and advancing the letting come process in the center of the figure from envisioning to enacting. An effective prototype includes three types of intelligence is head, heart, and hand. I found the phrase "mindless actions and action-less minds", which are major dangers and pitfalls, to be very useful, because they are both ineffective when progressing through a process. I particularly enjoyed the principle 0.8: fail early to learn quickly. It's not quite version 1.0, but regardless of how much you have done, you need to present a prototype preferably within 3-4 months in order to get feedback which will ultimately make your first version even better in the end.

Chapter 14: Performing

Chapter 14 was pretty much straightforward with performing, and operating from a larger field that emerges from our deep connection with the audience and place around us. Sharmer also touched on the Evolutionary View of the Modern Health Care System, which was discussed about needing to be changed for the future. The four stages of development are: Institutional Care, Managed Care, Integrative Care, and Integral Health.

Week 6

This past week, Nicole, Juan, Trey and I have come up with the idea of possible donating food from the Upper Deck or the Anchor to the Campus Cupboard or other food donation service as part of our next group project. After talking to my one manager at work at the Upper Deck, I was told to talk to Edward Nase, the Director of Dining Services to find out the different food restrictions and limitations in terms of donating it. I sent him an e-mail in hopes of a meeting, but unfortunately we didn't get an e-mail back from him, so today we went to the Dining Services office and talked to Gerry Shehan, the Associate director of Dining Services here at Millersville. He informed us that it might be difficult to donate food from the Upper Deck since it is a buffet-style dining area and there are limitations to food in terms of contamination issues, but the Anchor would be a better idea, and to look into that since it is more of a grab and go type place. We will most likely be in contact with him throughout the project.

Week 5: Theory U Ch. 6-9 Reflection

Chapter 6:

Chapter 6 highlighted more philosophical views of the "U." Two words that stuck out to me, mostly because I had no idea what they meant when first mentioned, were Ontological (being) and Epistemological (knowing). In the table that Sharmer made, these two are seen in the section related to the blind spot mentioned before in the book. A less confusing part of this chapter that I found to be the most interesting were the quotes about love given by Kitaro Nishida and David Hawkins.  Nishida said "Love is the deepest knowledge of things." Hawkins believes that we learn to access the deepest part of the "U" when we realize that love takes no position, and is "...unconditional, changing, and permanent." Love is the simplest form of understanding, but yet it is also the deepest form of understanding.

Chapter 7:

Chapter 7 once again brings up  the idea of the blind spot, as well as the different levels: individual, group, organizational, societal, social sciences, and meta levels). What really suck out to me was when it was mentioned that the only way to step through the threshold is to confront the source level of the situation, which is ourselves. I enjoyed the reference to a crack in the path that you come across. You can't help but attend to it, because its right in front of you and rather hard to ignore.

Chapter 8:

The next chapter focused on the field structure of downloading, and urged to not download because as long as our attention is guided by habitual patterns, the source of our attention will come from the center of our own minds. This can potentially hold back your organization from advancing and "learning from the future as it emerges." This is the first step in the U process that must be overcome in order to advance to the next step. The example of the failure of a fictional Global Health Company really shed some light on the different methods of different CEOs, each of which failed because of never properly following through with their missions to change. Each CEO exemplified the barriers to organizational learning and change, which are:

1. Not recognizing what you see
2. Not saying what you think
3. Not doing what you say
4. Not seeing what you do

Chapter 9:

Chapter 9 advanced to the next stage of the U, which is "seeing." After a person has overcome their habit of downloading, they can then shift over to actually seeing, which gives them the ability to clarify question and intent, move into contexts that matter, and most importantly suspend judgement and connect to wonder. The example of George's stay in India and attempting to give medical care to those in need, and then receiving help from an unexpected person showed that people are willing to help a good cause. This opened up the avenue of researching the type of patient-physician relationships. The results included the four levels of the patient-physician relationship, which I found to be very true, and should be utilized more. Those four levels were broken parts, behavior, thought, and self-transforming presence.

Week 5: Ch. 2-5 Reflection

Had this saved as a draft for about a week and forgot to publish...oops!

Chapter 2:
                                                                                                                                                                    Chapter 2 begins discussing the five levels of change, which is two more levels added from the previous section. The first is called presencing, which is, according to Scharmer, "seeing from our deepest source." The first thing that popped out at me though while reading this chapter was the interview with Brian Arthur from Xerox. He discussed the two levels of cognition, with the basic level being just working with your conscious mind. The second level is a much deeper form of cognition, which is knowing. This is basically coming from within yourself, and where you're coming from in your own experience. I took this as almost a realization. It may not come right away, but once it does, you must act upon it. This is illustrated in a three-step process, which is to observe, retreat and reflect, and act in an instant. Chapter 2 also elaborated more deeply on the processes of the U. I feel like upon reading about the five levels of change that this is where businesses sometimes fail because of the fact that they don't follow through, causing them to be stuck in a rut.


Chapter 3

Chapter 3 discusses learning and change on four levels. These include the first level reacting, or responding naturally by your normal habit. The second level is redesigning, which is to change the underlying structure and process. Level three is reframing, or changing the overall outlook, and level four is presencing, which was discussed in Chapter 2. The second two levels, I feel are the most difficult because companies will realize the problem and strive to redesign their structure, but fail to rethink the problem at hand in-depth. This ties into the difference between learning from the past, which is what is usually done given that its easier, and learning from the future, which can be difficult to do unless you rethink the situation.

Chapter 4

Chapter 4 started out explaining the three different types of complexities. The first was dynamic complexity, which is the most well known, and is when there is a systematic distance or delay between cause and effect in space or time. I particularly enjoyed the example of global warming that Sharmer included, being that our emissions of carbon dioxide may not have much of a noticable impact now, but could possibly have a long-term impact, possibly over thousands to millions of years. The second, social complexity, seems to have its focus more on the different interests and worldviews among everyone. This is where personal beliefs and interests get in the way of finding a universal way of pleasing everyone, which can be virtually impossible, depending on the situation. The third and final complexity- emerging- has a similar reference to the phrase enveloping the entire book: "Learning from the future as it emerges."

Chapter 5:

Chapter 5 was probably the most confusing to me, but the point that stuck out to me the most was the fact that people create organizations and such, but then face the risk of ultimately failing because they get trapped within their own rules. I feel like the touchy subject of religion can fit into this, back to when you were shunned or killed for not following the bible or the guidelines of the religion, to this day in age with the struggle of equality for all people, specifically those of the LGBT community.

Week 5: Poster Project Statement

We came up with a poster that would allow observers to interact with the poster by filling out what their peace is, along with a Peace Campaign. We also held an event that allowed people to fill out their own banner piece which was to be strung up like a Tibetan peace banner. Just the amount of anonymous, personal answers given on the banner pieces shows that the Peace Campaign was a success. It gives a new way of looking at peace by seeing what others value that you might take for granted.

Week 4: Final Overview of project

Over the course of the past few days, we got multiple participants to fill out our banner pieces through a small event that was held in the lobby of Breidenstein, as well as the posters we hung up in the stairwell of this building.

We also strung up all of the banner pieces and hung them in the design lab to be displayed, and plan on hopefully hanging it up in the lobby if Breidenstein for everyone who enters the building to see, and pick out the piece that they filled out. We were excited to receive so many honest responses, and decided to not promote the hashtag feature so much, because people are more honest and serious in their answers if they are kept anonymous.

Overall we had a great time with this project, and hope to further promote our Peace Campaign beyond Millersville University.

Week 4: 9/14

This week, Emily and I worked on further refining our poster after receiving the feedback from the last class critique, which included changing the color of the flags at the bottom to resemble the Tibetan peace flag, and adding more tags to the poster. Other than that, we kept everything else the same.

We also created our Facebook event and put up posters in Breidenstein, McComsey, and Shenks Hall advertising the event here in Breidenstein on Wednesday. Emily is going to be at the event to pass out the individual pieces to people for them to fill out, and I will try to get people to fill them out who are in our other classes or work. We are hoping to have all 48 filled out, plus the ones on the poster as well.

Week 3: 9/9

Over the weekend we worked on further refining our poster. We have both decided after discussion that a Facebook event would work well to promote our campaign. We would like to go to the Student Memorial Center and hand out the triangles for people to fill out and hang on a line to be hung up. This campaign would strictly be campus-wide, because it ideally it wouldn't work as a nationwide-type event.

For next class we will work on creating the facebook event, making some adjustments content-wise on the poster, and print it out.














I also worked on a potential banner that would be put as a cover photo for the Facebook event. Some changes will most likely be made to better describe the event since it is not allowed to have a profile picture.

Week 2- Survey Results

Below you will find the results from the survey that Emily and I created on Survey Monkey. We asked general questions to get an idea of how we should carry out the poster, such as people's personal preferences of image sharing, viewing posters, and promoting social change. In just a 24 hour period, we managed to collect 24 participants for the survey.

Most of the participants in the survey were students from Millersville except for 4, and most often see posters or look for them in the Memorial Center, Academic Buildings, and Dining Halls. Other places outside of campus included Bus Stations, Supermarkets, Telephone poles, and Coffee Shops.




























I was not surprised to see that Facebook was the most popular social media source for sharing photos. I was a bit surprised though that texting came out in second over other sources. In terms of what type of content people are more likely to share, those results came out fairly even, with comedic coming in first.





























To help figure out the overall placement and design of the poster, we asked the question of which aspect catches a person's eye the most. The most popular answer was Color, and content came out last, which was not too surprising, because the first thing a person's eye will catch while walking past a poster is the color and placement of the poster (not in a cluttered mess of other posters).

Week 2: Poster Ideation

As you saw in the previous post, I came up with a few different ideas, but sadly they weren't exactly meant for this project in terms of how broad they are. After combining our research, Emily and I decided to try another topic. Today, we brainstormed during class and came up with the idea of education, and how it impacts our future. unfortunately, we had to throw those ideas out as well, and instead thought of the general meaning of peace, and brainstormed the idea of an interactive poster that encourages others to think bout what gives them peace. At the bottom of the poster, there would be perforated tabs to rip off, almost like a phone number for a job ad or lost puppy flyer. They would then write down what gives them peace, and post it up somewhere for all to see.

Week 1: Peace Poster Ideation

My partner, Emily and I have decided to do the peace poster competition for our project. We are each doing separate posters, but both will revolve around a central idea: What do you think of when you hear the word "peace"? What will vary is some of the different answers we get based on our surveys, which will be used for the ideation for our posters. In order to get started and get my mind starting to think about where exactly I should start in researching ideas, I simply looked up the definition of peace on the Merriam-Webster dictionary website. Below is the complete definition of peace:

So after reading this, it is clear to see that there is a broad range of meaning for the word peace. Whether you're in a relaxed and quiet state of mind, or harmony between different beings. I then began thinking, "We wouldn't know what peace is unless there is a bit of disturbance." In other words, we wouldn't know how to appreciate peace without a little upheaval or conflict. Everybody seems to want some sort of peace on their lives, whether it involves wars, inequality, violence, disease, disorders, or simply noise. I have yet to hear of anybody who appreciates any of those things. Instead, they appreciate when those negative aspects are resolved. So where does this leave me in terms of ideas for the poster? 

I have been thinking of raising awareness for certain organizations that strive for peace in all aspects of life, but aren't the first that people might think of when they think of "peace". The Epilepsy Foundation is near to my heart because of my younger brother having epilepsy. They basically raise awareness and assist those with epilepsy, such as providing basic information about it, new advances in medicine, and many more useful resources.

The next organization is Music for Relief, which is a non-profit organization started by the band Linkin Park. They fully support disaster relief and the reduction of global warming, and respond to natural disasters all over the world by assisting those in need who have been affected.