project brief
Conceptualize a disruptive book review system by blending design methods
School: Ohio State University
Year: 2022
Class: Industrial Design 2
Partner: Hattie Carr
Process
The process was curated by our professor. Dr. Proulx taught us 3 different design thinking models which we used to come to a disruptive conclusion.
Double Diamond
Below is an illustration of the double diamonds. It is more or less an analysis of the timeline of the design process. This is what we used to refer to when looking at where we were along the design process.
We would expand and ideate heavily and contract our ideas into the strongest ones.
DIvergent Scenarios
This tool is an example of expanding ideas and ideating
We created charts to constrain our ideas, then plugged and played them into different axises to come up with creative ideas.
In my project specifically, we used this to come up with the concept for Negative Nancy, which was to explore the effect of bad ideas.
Differential Moral Framing
Differential moral framings are the archetypes of ideas. They are complex, but essentially we took our concept and played with it in each of the individual framings.
Below is each of the moral framings, they are referred to as "worlds".
Result
Our submission was a presentation with a slide show explaining our idea to a local librarian on campus. Below is the slideshow and explanations for each slide.
Negative Nancy is a book review system where users' reviews are submitted through a phone application and then seen publicly for others to see. With more research, it might lead to a significant impact on book review systems.
Design statement + supporting principles
How we came to decide on highlighting bad reviews
Negative Nancy is a book review system that works by publicizing bad reviews. A user will leave a bad review, Negative Nancy will then curate which review gets public attention.
Explaining how Negative Nancy comes from the world of opinion
Users leave a bad book review using a smartphone app, which is then curated and displayed publicly
End slide
Reflection
Negative Nancy was only a conjuncture, but the discussion afterward reveals something interesting about the concept.
There are many different book categories and many unseen ways that users might react to this type of book review platform. During the feedback session, we ideated possibilities of how it might be used:
Users may become sarcastic and leave funny reviews since it will be displayed publicly
This new form of feedback for authors could become a new category of review
Negative Nancy might be better for some types of books than others. For example, discussion and controversy might take place if there were book reviews on philosophy or science