Problem
Young adults are challenged by finding the right balance between professional and personal life. With working from home becoming the new normal, it has become essential to draw boundaries and to know when to step away from your job and take care of one’s personal life in order to recharge and disconnect. How will young adults who have none to minimal work experience address that challenge? How can they take care of their mental health and personal life while also putting their 100 percent into their careers? I plan on addressing those concerns with the selected group.
Role: Design Researcher/Facilitator
Timeline: March 2021 - May 2021
Design Team: This is an individual project.
Project Brief
In this project, I will develop and facilitate a collaborative workshop that reshapes how a group of non-designers from a local organization acquires knowledge through hands-on creative exercises that apply lateral thinking strategies. I will select a group of individuals who are not designers, explore a problem or issue the group is encountering, and help the group explore creative ideas for solving the problem. After defining a problem, I will create an activity plan. The activity plan will outline the ways in which you will design and provide a warm-up activity and a visual storytelling activity to your selected group. Each stage of development will offer an opportunity to seek feedback from the group as well as offer feedback. Peer collaboration and feedback will assist you in the evolution of the project.
Identify and Choose Group
Based on my age group and the people I know, I have concluded that the most appropriate group to reach out to, and the most convenient to meet (because of COVID restrictions), are my group of friends.
This group of individuals are all young adults who either recently graduated, just got their first professional job, or finishing up graduate school and looking forward to starting their careers.
None of those individuals are designers. I have reached out to inform them about the project and they were all interested.
Describe the entity from which you selected your group and why you chose it
I’m selecting young adults who are barely starting their careers or just landed their first job in the past 6 months. I chose this group because the challenge of finding the right balance between work and personal life at the beginning of one’s professional life can be overwhelming and can have an impact on one’s mental health, which was personally a challenge for me.
Describe your group composition and how many people are in the group
I plan to invite 6 young adults who have recently graduated college and just landed their first job or have been working for approximately 1 year and are challenged with work and personal life balance. Here’s the message I sent to them:
Hey guys, I have a cool assignment coming up that entails facilitating a group session and I would deeply appreciate it if you are interested in being a part of that. I wanted to facilitate a group session that is focused on young adults and the challenge they face balancing work and personal life. If you are interested, please let me know. Thank you.
Summarize the overall experience of the entity selection, group selection, and any difficulties or challenges that you encountered
I wanted to research a problem that has personally affected my life when I graduated back in 2018 and landed my first job as a graphic designer right after. As I witnessed my friends going into the same challenge, I realized that it is important to address the issue and I found the responses motivating to go through with this selection
List any encouraging or concerning thoughts you may have about the group you selected pertaining to their ability to complete the activities associated with the project
Over the past year and because of COVID-19, this group of friends experienced challenges that no one has seen before. The time spent between working from home and/or applying for jobs was overwhelming. Sometimes work and life balance would be unevenly balanced that it starts to show in daily behaviors.