Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde.
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New Survey Show’s People’s Opinion on the General State of Public Health
This week, I set up my first survey. While I’ve crowdsourced in other ways, I felt this way was the most effective. I was very pleased with the number of participants. I was able to get 95 responses. These are the questions I put on the survey, and the results for each one laid out in chart form.
I think these results speak very loudly. I will take these into consideration when developing my website.
Mapping Assignment
What to Expect from my Website
- Make Healthy Happen
- Getting healthy is easier when you know what to do.
- My project’s mission is to help people get into shape by laying out the best ways for them to do so. The website will provide plans for people based on their specific information (gender, goal, etc.).
- I feel like I could work on setting up something where people could enter in their information. Another thing I could do instead is set it up so there’s multiple pages for people of different goals or gender.
- Karley did her website on managing money and fitness, and I thought it’d be cool to incorporate how one might be able to manage a fitness regimen in a busy college life.
- I believe I’ll need a significant amount of time. I’ll need probably most of that time up until that deadline.
Read, watch, think, write.
- Experts claim that it is our duty as journalists to include all aspects of the human experience. Stereotyping can cause our work to be inaccurate and must be avoided at all costs.
- It suggests to not focus on bad news or problems, but also creative ideas on how to solve them.
- I learned about the dangers of microagressions and how important it is to avoid them. I also learned about the brave men and women standing up for the environment in Honduras and how corrupt the Honduran government is.
- In my time at UMD, I have observed nothing but inclusivity. Everybody I have met here are accepting, loving people that celebrity diversity.
- One idea would be a story covering all of the different social justice based groups at UMD. Another could be taking a poll from UMD students about whether or not they feel that UMD is an inclusive community. Another story idea could be interviewing professors to ask them in what ways they aim to respect and champion diversity through their work.
Captions make the Photo
Empathy Research Summary
- What topic, community, problem, issue or “thing” did you decide to explore?
- Who did you decide you should talk to, observe, interview to learn more about this? Be specific. (I am asking you to talk to at least 5 different people for this assignment)
- What methods did you use to talk with people? (Focus groups, planed interviews, man on the street, polls…)
- What did these people tell you? Summarize what you learned from your interviews. Use as much detail as you can based on your responses.
- What did you learn that surprised you?
- What kinds of problems, topics, ideas did you discover that you would like to learn more about?
- What key insights or findings did you discover that excited you most?
- What’s next? What do you think your next step is?
- Reflection: Briefly, did the design thinking process help you see this topic in a new way?
- I decided to explore the topic of fitness; specifically, fitness for college students, as that is what I’d be able to help with the most.
- I have multiple friends who are very into fitness, so it was a no-brainer to talk to them. Their names are Daniel Thienes and Riley Sundeen. I have one friend who is an exercise science major that I was able to interview named Kat Caswell, and one person I heard of in one of my classes that is an exercise science major that was willing to speak with me. His name is Justin Gronewold. They both provided very useful information. I also have a friend who I immediately thought of that I could interview. His name is Josh Clarke. He is an undefeated amateur MMA fighter, and Herbalife Health & Wellness Coach in training. He was able to provide valuable insight into the core elements of fitness.
- The elements I used were either planned interviews and phone calls. I had three planned interviews and two phone calls.
- Daniel and Riley take their fitness incredibly seriously. Daniel’s main talking point was that it is important to take everything in moderation. Riley’s main talking point was about sticking to a routine and developing healthy habits. He said fitness becomes so much easier when you develop good, healthy habits. It is very difficult starting out. Kat talked of the different ways to achieve a caloric deficit. She stated that many people will just starve themselves to do it. She emphasized that this is the most unhealthy way to get in shape. Justin spoke of how complicated a person’s metabolism is, and how working with it can be your friend and your enemy. Josh spoke in a broader sense. He brought to attention how everyone is different and no two fitness paths will be the same. Every requires a different routine and different nourishment. I have all of their contact information and plan to speak with all of them once more.
- I was surprised about all the information that goes into developing a fitness program.
- A problem that I discovered from talking to people and in my own fitness journey right now is a plateau in your progress. I don’t know what causes it and would like to know more about it.
- I was really excited to learn of the different ways you can enhance your metabolism. It’s something I’m definitely gonna learn how to do.
- I’m going to do more research and start planning how I’m going to lay out my website! Part of this research includes talking to these people more, as they are all very knowledgeable.
- Honestly I don’t think it made me think of it differently. It gave me more information for sure, but I don’t think it made me view it any differently.
Taking to the Media for Fitness
Fitness Healthy Plan Into Your Daily Routine
The problem that faces society that I would like to tackle with my website is physical health. I will first say that I am by no means at a healthy weight, but I was once much heavier than I am now. I still have a long way to go, but I’ve lost about 45 pounds so far. In order to do this, I’ve developed a great routine to follow that helps me. In order to do this, I’ve done an unbelievable amount of research on different workout routines, meal plans, and supplements to take. My website will house multiple fitness and meal plans for people of different health statuses, backgrounds and schedules. If I could say there’s one thing that bothers me that’s a common misconception about fitness or weight loss, it’s the notion that there are secrets and shortcuts to achieving the body you want or the physical health you want. If that were true, then everyone would be in great shape. There are countless people in many situations. For the people in my position, trying to lose a significant amount of weight, it is important to understand that it is going to be very hard and take a very long time, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do for it to be otherwise. Design thinking will play a huge role in the layout of my website. My website will have multiple pages you can click on to show different plans for different types of people in different types of situations. I will do research to determine the most common situations, and I will display them at the top. There are only so many different health scenarios I’ll cover, so no matter the person it won’t be difficult to find what you’re looking for. A great example of solid design thinking was in the Brexit example on the canvas page. You don’t want an unbelievable amount text, or impatient readers will get bored. Using many hyperlinks, they were able to provide so much information without cluttering the page. The amount of information used in this project really inspired me to do as much research as I can in order to be as helpful as possible. I learned from my classmates that many of their problems they’re tackling have a lot to do with or are very common with college students. Since I’m most knowledgeable about building a workout routine with a college schedule, mine most likely will be very college oriented as well. I honestly think the next step for me is just doing research and becoming well-read in what I intend to help people with. Empathy will play a huge role in this for me because I’ve been there. I know what it’s like to struggle with your health and your self-confidence because I still do. However, I have no doubt that in the future I will reach my goal, and I want to help other people reach theirs.
What’s Your Problem?
- I believe the news outlets of the world hold people accountable and keep people up to date on what’s going on. The problem is nobody holds these news outlets accountable or keeps us informed on what’s going on with them.
- A solution is the way to solve a problem. Sometimes solutions can be problematic, but it doesn’t make them a problem themselves.
- Maybe different news outlets and people who work for them. They may not find a problem with their own news outlet, but I guarantee they could find one with a competing news outlet giving reason for a site such as the one I’ve described.
Final Project Ideas
It’s going to take a fair bit of thoughtful exploring to come up with some good ideas for my final project. I will start by answering the questions to generate ideas. I believe open journalism has become harder and harder to find with the emergence of entrepreneurial journalism. I really can’t point out one specific way in which journalism is the same. The Melanie Sill reading states that you can find open journalism outside the mainstream media. Although the mainstream media was never comprised of open journalism, it did at one time include it. One example of entrepreneurial journalism I found inspiring is the Spanish site: eldiario.es. I think it’s a very cool form of entrepreneurial journalism. They have a group of people that pay for exclusive access to their content hours before it goes public. The public site is free, so really what these people are doing by paying this fee is supporting this non-partisan news site. I’m confident I’ll be able to use my own passions and interests to develop a solid final project idea. Looking through people’s past projects, I can see that is what pretty much everybody did. Over the last four months, fitness has become a big interest of mine. If all things fail, I can definitely see me doing something with that; however, I have one big idea that I will save for the end. The part of the design thinking process I think I’m going to do well with is empathizing. I’m a very empathetic person. When empathizing with others, you see their problems. I will be inclined to solve that problem. The moment of truth: here’s my main idea for my final project. A news site that covers all the main news outlets. These massive news conglomerates have so much influence and spread the news of everything, but nobody’s covering what’s going on with them. That would be my job.
Mikey's Bloggy 