Task 7- Brooke Sossong

• Innovative design

My innovative design would be a new app I’ve named “CreateLively”  (it’s sort of a play on “creatively” as well as the word lively) until I can try to brainstorm a better name possibly. In today’s fast-paced world, it can be hard for people to feel like they have the ability to learn something new or express themselves in a new way. This app will be solely dedicated to providing a space where people can find people in their area who can teach them the skills they’d like to learn (and teachers of these activities can find students). There will also be a section for online learning where users of the app can find teachers who may not be in their area and other artists/creatives who share the same interests that any time someone wants to talk to other people with the same interests. They’ll have the ability to have discussions about the things they’re learning. Lastly, the app will have a section where users can post their progress. The only caveat is that if they want to post on the app, they have to post all the progress they make, even when they’re first starting and might not be very good yet. This way, there isn’t an expectation of being perfect at everything right away or that they only need to post the best version of themselves. This app will celebrate making mistakes and learning from them.

• Upgraded criteria

The design criteria I would hope to upgrade with this app is “Attention,” it happens too often that people get too sucked into technology and forget that they could be spending their attention on something meaningful and important to them. The reason I wanted to incorporate this into an app based on learning new things, especially those centered around different facets of creativity, is because I’ve noticed that in the past, I’ve put off learning new things that I really wanted to because I “didn’t have time.” But when I finally thought about it, all the time I wasted on my phone or using technology that could’ve been spent on the things I claimed I “didn’t have time for.” If “CreateLively” was a real app, it could help enable people to spend their attention more wisely and even devote their attention to learning new things and expanding their abilities, as well as finding communities of others who share similar interests who are at different stages in the learning process so that no one feels left behind or like they have to be perfect at something immediately.   

1. Supportive context

The community/communities that will support this app will probably be creatives who want to spend their time and attention more wisely and would like to learn new things within a supportive community that is learning along with them. I don’t think there will be a specific community that uses this app, the purpose of it is so that anyone can find a way to learn the skills they want to and so that they can post within their community/communities their progress and see how other people have been progressing so that they can be inspired by those around them, without the pressure to post something perfect every time, so the communities on this platform could range from learning a musical instrument to learning how to build a robot.

• Weigh Costs

To make sure “CreateLively” is up and running effectively, I’d have to get a team of programmers who understand the ideas behind the app and the communities that I’m hoping to create with it. I’d also need to keep these programmers on board with the project to create updates for the app if things aren’t running smoothly or if there are new ways we can improve on it. I would also need a way to ensure that there is some kind way that teachers using the app get paid by their students, this will most likely be through a method of the teachers choosing (such as providing a Venmo or PayPal account), but I may also want to have these transactions be more directly through the app. I also might need a group of people from different communities that use the app to create a “board” to decide what kind of behavior is and isn’t acceptable on the app and what kinds of things we would like to bolster within this apps communities and what kinds of things should be discouraged (such as making fun of others in the community, using the app as a way to “get views” rather than a place of learning and personal growth, etc. There may be other costs to create this app, but overall I think these are the biggest ones to start with.