{"id":57,"date":"2018-10-07T21:42:03","date_gmt":"2018-10-07T21:42:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/picture-yourself\/?p=57"},"modified":"2018-10-07T21:42:12","modified_gmt":"2018-10-07T21:42:12","slug":"picture-yourself-week-six","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/picture-yourself\/index.php\/2018\/10\/07\/picture-yourself-week-six\/","title":{"rendered":"Picture Yourself: Week Six"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Work This Week:<\/strong><\/p>\n

We had two key meetings this week, which will hopefully help narrow down some of our design aspects moving forward.<\/p>\n

Student Ambassador Group:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Firstly, we had our meeting with our client’s Student Ambassador group, represented by Sachi Shah and Hamza Qureshi.\u00a0 Clarification: they are not \u201cthe tour guides\u201d but they get the same Questions as on tours.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>They also get some more time with students vs. the tour guides because students come early before the tour starts.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to the ambassadors, students seem to be curious about their intended majors<\/strong>, and they are interested in the statistics that go with it.\u00a0 The parents, as well, ask a lot of questions about jobs after graduation<\/strong>, and seem to ask more career-based questions than the students.<\/p>\n

Both parents and students seem to be curious about the social life at CMU<\/strong>, wanting reaffirmation that CMU is a social school and not just a STEM school.\u00a0 CMU indeed has social events like Buggy, Carnival, and Greek Life, and its departments in Drama, Design, and Fine Arts, to name a few, are some of the strongest in the country.\u00a0 So disspelling the “asocial STEM school” myth<\/strong> should be a task for our exhibit to do.\u00a0 Sports is a also a big talking point that helps to do this.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not many international students are attending tours at this time, so the ambassadors don’t see “how diverse is CMU?” that often from students.\u00a0 However, they personally often get asked “where are you from?” and are asked to tell their own CMU story<\/strong>.\u00a0 Also, once the tours start, it seems that the question of “where are you from” provides the bridge for different parent\/student groups to intermingle.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow would I fit in?\u201d<\/strong> is a good question for us to be asking.\u00a0 The ambassadors said that “B<\/span>eing able to show whose been in your shoes before, and what they\u2019re doing on campus is powerful.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Regardless of where you\u2019re from, you can fit in.”\u00a0 We then discussed that s<\/span>ome aspects of CMU are hard-to-imagine in discussion, so instead maybe we could incorporate them in a screensaver-style opening image that visitors can see when they approach the exhibit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Also, the ambassadors reiterated that humanizing famous alums is a good idea<\/strong>.\u00a0 We can show what they did while at CMU, show how they used CMU resources, as this connects them with people coming in.<\/p>\n

Finally, in terms of incorporating group selfies into the exhibit, the ambassadors recommended it.\u00a0 \u00a0Parents are just as interested as their kids<\/strong>, and it would draw them in.\u00a0 Also, s<\/span>tudent\/parents are probably gonna have similar questions.\u00a0 The ambassadors noted that the visiting experience\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>can be intimidating, so students often stick w\/ their parents<\/strong>, especially in the beginning of the tour, so we should facilitate a sense of comfort.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the tours, there is u<\/strong>sually one parent \/ one kid pairing at least<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Sometimes, the ambassadors have seen students\u00a0<\/span>coming together as groups, as well as a<\/span>thletes meeting with coaches, but the parent\/student pairing is a big one.\u00a0 Going forward, a few of us are going to enter a tour pretending to be students to try to gleam more information from the experience.\u00a0 Monday and Friday are the heaviest tour days<\/strong>, with seven tours over the course of the day from 9:30AM to 3:30PM, every hour, and often involve more surface-level questions like “what is the average class size at CMU?”.\u00a0 The middle of the week has only four tours during a day.<\/span><\/p>\n

While the prospective student group is not the entire portion of our target audience<\/strong> (we need to be thinking about alumni, donors, and community visitors as well), they make up a large bulk of it, so this meeting was very helpful in terms of thinking about the questions to ask students, and how we might want their experience to look.<\/p>\n

Meeting with Kevin Allen:<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Wednesday, we met with professional Entertainment Designer Kevin Allen, talking a lot about how our design visualization might look, as well as the main questions\/challenges that have come up in our design so far.<\/p>\n

Censorship<\/em><\/p>\n