Socorro Carlos – Final Assignment – design thinking @ coursera

Visualization Tool – Reflection on Beauty

Pattern

Problem Statement: The Challenge  In a daily basis, society is bombarded with media information that dictates beauty patterns. Constantly,  men and women of all ages are being told what is the accepted human pattern that they must belong,  suffering from the consequences of trying to fit into this beauty pattern. For example, the long-term  effects once a teenager girl starts to pursue the intangible beauty are widely known and reflect on  increased rates of eating disorders just to cite one consequence. In contrast, older women are being  heavily attracted to the pursue of the anti-aging era through more aggressive treatments (surgical and  non-surgical treatments). However, in this reflection, the hypothesis is that the pursue of beauty may be  endless and more than often, it does not bring happiness to those individuals. We all have seen  celebrities whose faces seem disfigured due to the high quantity of cosmetic procedures, but they keep  going on more. Such globally known examples are Michael Jackson, Jocelyn Wildenstein, and Rodrigo  Alves, the Human Ken doll.

In this reflection, it is also accepted the lasting benefits of skincare routines coupled with good lifestyle  choices. In another words, the usage of good quality cosmetics brands in a daily skincare routine by itself  does only half of the job of keeping a healthy look. It is extremely important that the lifestyle of choice  matches the common goal. However, most people expect that the cosmetic products generate not only  an amazing effect on their looks, but also a result that shows quickly.

The main challenge is to effectively encourage a lifestyle change that connects the individual to their  inner beauty and core values, but also provides information to feed into the self-care of their bodies and  deal with aging of their bodies and face, by using social media and/or online tools such as Facebook,  Instagram, Tik-Tok and other widely known networking platforms.

The Tool  For this challenge, I have chosen the Visualization Tool since it provides a blank canvas for the user to  dwell on many aspects they desire and at the same time, focusing on the current topic (the challenge).  The objective is to capture any information that flows naturally and with no direction from me – the  facilitator (no guidance will be provided, except by a few information) on how the user would expect to  connect the most important areas of facial beauty to their inner happiness, and how they expect to  achieve it. As Megan Cook stated in her video, Visualization is a way [that people] communicate in a  non-logical manner, and by using this tool, I expect to find categories of people and patterns of  problems, and finally, to be able to discover how people expect to deal with the body and facial aging. I  also expect to gain insight on the strategies that people may come up with in order to deal with the  aging process. Most importantly, as Myers highlights during her speech, the Visualization tool has a  major goal to understand the users in a passive manner, and this comes in direct alignment with the  Design Thinking practices.

Socorro Carlos – Final Assignment – design thinking @ coursera

Application   The user received two pages (on an A4 size paper) with a large face draw on it. The first face represents  their face now, and the second face represents their face at a future state (about 20 years into the  future). Both drawings of faces have no hair and are generalized simple faces with just the contour of  the head, lips, nose, eyes and eyebrows. The user was asked to draw/collage/paint/write the parts of  the face that brings happiness now. The second face the user was asked to draw/paint/collage/write  how they imagine their looks after all this time (20 years).

Once in possession of the results, I hold several 10-15 min interview with each user, individually, to ask  about their drawings. At this time of the interview, the question is “how are you planning to accept the  changes that you draw in your face?”. After collection of this information, all responses were  categorized in groups, patterns and insights were identified.

The categories of groups are divided by age, ethnicity, region (to capture the influence of weather  conditions) and social status. Additionally, I was able to analyze the results based on easily identifiable  concerns for example, if the lips are the most mentioned problem area in terms of happiness and which  groups consider that feature the most important. My major interest was to identify which strategies  users are planning to deal with the aging process.

Insights Gained & Approach  From this exercise, I learned that most people don’t have a defined strategy on how to deal with the  aging process and most of the responses indicate that this is an area of concern that we are not  prepared to deal with. While some responses mentioned that they consider performing plastic surgery  in the future, there was a consensus on how the surgeries are the last resort and users prefer a gradual  skincare routine to prevent major issues in the future.

Some answers included the healthcare aspect (for instance, skin cancer is a concern specially in the  Northern regions, in contrast with South American responses). But also, mental health was mentioned in  many answers stating that the aging process may cause depression in some, so definitely it is of public  interest to take preventative measures to prepare individuals for the future, in terms of skin and body  care.

The process in which the Visualization tool was applied seemed to be satisfactory not only because it  allowed each user to express themselves more freely, but it allows the user to not be tied to directions,  and therefore, the responses were of a varying degree of details and very different from each other. The  Visualization tool, as applied in this exercise, benefited on the post-interview. The rationale behind it is  that each user was able to express themselves in their unique way, and I needed some degree of  quantifiable information in order to categorize the responses. Therefore, when using this type of tool, I  recommend the interview or a table-format follow up in order to gather key points, otherwise the  exercise becomes very subjective.

Socorro Carlos

11/02/2020

