Tricia Okin

Revised Methodology
12.12.10
Thesis Studio & Writing, Fall 2010 / Anezka Sebek & Barbara Morris

ABSTRACT:
This document serves to once again analyze and document the methodology of researching my thesis
project. It also includes descriptions of the explorations and a review of what new insight was gleaned
from each experience.

1.0 THESIS CONCEPT:

1.1 Design Problem: Self-employed entrepreneurs, specifically designers, tend to treat their clients better
than themselves. As a group, they don’t make enough time for themselves to improve skills, network,
and create the art they wanted to create. We all make excuses and put our clients ahead ourselves,
mostly because there’s a deadline involved and another person to whom we have to answer.

1.2 Solution: Solo+Tribe is an online community for solo creative entrepreneurs to find small and
personal motivating groups to spark much needed offline interaction for a better work-life balance. On
the site, people will be able to select small groups according to the personal goals they are trying to
accomplish and then create local gatherings to accomplish them. Personal or business and goals users
decide to tackle can range from exercising 5 hours a week to attending at least one art event per week to
sharpen skills and keep up with trends.

The overall purpose is to find like-minded professionals in your local area with complementary talents
and goals to help one another reduce working in the independent contractor vacuum via healthy
interaction.

1.2 Core Questions:

What is “life balance” for a solo design entrepreneur?

“Life Balance” is a shortening for work-life balance, where people attempt to maintain the individualʼs
needs of health, security, career accomplishment in line with personal recreation, family and spiritual
development. My question asks, what does this mean for an individual who makes his or her own hours
outside of a corporate structure?

Where does the concept of life balance fit into the realm of digital labour practices?

Digital labour refers the new information-based economy in the post-manufacturing and post-industrial
ages. There have been several cases and examples of corporations shifting treatment of digital workers
to that seen in labour abuses in the 1920s manufacturing sectors, thus creating a “digital sweatshops”.
Even when the maltreatment is not that extreme, employers are now expecting even more of workersʼ
time during the day while they are at the office (increasing the workday from 9am – 5pm to 9am – 6pm),
to issuing smart phones so employees can constantly check in to work during their free time.

What are the mental or real hindrances to people creating a good life balance for themselves?

Personally, I can identify my own hindrances: lack of self-confidence; anxiety; taking on too much at a
time; not being able to say no; and procrastination. In addition to those above, more reasons that may
apply for other people may be: location; familial obligations; health issues; or even drug or alcohol abuse.
What techniques would help solo designers get over the mental hump to start doing what they love again
or try out new ventures?

Does this include using actual pen and paper as opposed to even more digital tools that require staring at
screen? I have seen a marked increase in the amounts of sketching I now do compared to even six
months ago simply because my anxiety reduces once I step away from the computer.

1.3 Main Argument:

The abuse of digital labourers is now becoming similar to the treatment of manual labourers at the turn of
the 19th and 20th centuries. Later in this paper, I will refer to landmark case of Jamie Kirshenbaum vs.
Electronic Arts, Inc., where EA Games was sued for large abuses from approximately one-third of its
employees. For now, Iʼll briefly review labour history.

The main reason why Americans, particularly the Baby Boomers, pursued higher education was to
escape the long arduous hours of factory work. Current employers and clients are increasingly asking
people within the digital labour and information markets to work 8 – 12 hour days with little or no extra
compensation other than a promise of loyalty from the company. However, loyalty from employers and
managers in business worsened precipitously within the last 20 years in the United States. Now weʼre at a
point in the economy where corporations have depressed wages[1] for the last 10 – 20 years, depending
on the sector.

I am actively arguing for people to regain control of their time and to put themselves first. In addition to
having more control, actively balancing oneself with different activities usually results in a more dynamic
personality that will attract others and keep the loop of learning and sharing new experiences going.

1.4 Why This Thesis Matters:

A wave of a new class of creative entrepreneurs was created within the last 10 years, specifically due to
the recent recessions following September 11, 2001 and, more recently 2008 – 2010. During both
recessions, employers drastically slashed workforces and pay to levels not seen since the recession in
the 1980s. The post-September 11th recession coincided with the dot.com bust and left a lot of innovative
tech people out of work with a great deal of time on their hands to begin new chapters in their lives along
with striking out on their own to form new businesses and inventions.

Now America has one of the largest percentages of self-employed workers in its history. While contracting
these self-employed workers allows corporations to accomplish tasks without having to pay for benefits,
they continue to attempt to drive the costs down by taking advantage of the large supply of freelancers
and the lack of confidence or job security of their in-house staff. Potential clients are now asking for more
and are willing to pay less, thus devaluing the work and the people who do the work.

From what I have seen and experienced anecdotally, these digital workers overworked themselves trying
to deliver or over-deliver and now theyʼre realizing itʼs time to scale back as that method is unsustainable.
Clients would present them with nearly impossible deadlines but not nearly enough budget to cover the
expenses of doing this type of excessive creative crunch time work.

                                                         
1
Greenblatt, Aaron, “Wages Likely To Stay Sluggish For Years to Come”. In National Public Radio (NPR Online), February 24,
2010. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124003086 
It is now commonly accepted that the more hours people work in a day or week, productivity actually
begins to fall off, reaching the point of diminishing returns. Evan Robinson, a game designer and writer,
decided to study this more in-depth back in 2005 in response to the 2004 EA Games class action lawsuit.
In that case, EA Games was constantly operating on a crunch time schedule with every project and
making 85-hour weeks mandatory with no overtime. Their excuse for no overtime was a deliberate
misinterpretation of the U.S. labor law stating that people classified as salaried workers are exempt from
overtime, even though “salaried worker” has several subclasses that allow overtime to be paid. From the
suit [2] [3],

In the complaint, Kirshenbaum alleged that EA had "improperly classified

some of its employees, including 'animators,' 'modelers,' 'texture artists,'
'lighters,' 'background effects artists,' and 'environmental artists' as
exempt from overtime, and therefore failed to pay those employees
overtime compensation."

The lawsuit was eventually settled for $15.6 million and EA paid another $14.9 million in a separate suit
brought by software engineers.

In an attempt to wrap his head around the situation, Robinson dissected the issue finding that productivity
is hard to quantify for knowledge workers[4], but still concluded that for overuse of crunch time schedules,

It comes down to productivity. Workers can maintain productivity more or

less indefinitely at 40 hours per five-day workweek. When working longer
hours, productivity begins to decline. Somewhere between four days and
two months, the gains from additional hours of work are negated by the
decline in hourly productivity. In extreme cases (within a day or two, as
soon as workers stop getting at least 7-8 hours of sleep per night), the
degradation can be abrupt.

[…] The ability to do complex mental tasks degrades faster than physical
performance does. Among knowledge workers, the productivity loss due
to excessive hours may begin sooner and be greater than it is among
soldiers, because our work is more affected by mental fatigue.

1.5 Measuring Success for This Project:

I want these users to feel like they are part of a community but more importantly that their life goals are
not insurmountable and can align with their business goals. I want people to be able to not feel guilty for
having proper life balance. Ultimately, my goal is to introduce this platform at the 2011 Creative
Freelancers Conference to its 150 attendants and to have them be meaningful active users who truly find
it helpful in their design practices.

Measuring numeric success for this project would ultimately entail adoption by an active set of users and
grow about 100% per month during a year. In the case of metrics this would first be the original 15 – 20
people in the early user group and have it grow slowly to about 50 – 70 active users during the Spring
semester. The next stage for growing the user base besides word of mouth would be to incorporate it into

                                                         
2
 Feldman, Curt, “EA Settles Labor-Dispute Lawsuit”. In Gamespot, October 5, 2005. http://www.gamespot.com/news/6135106.html  
3
View the original lawsuit document at: Electronic Arts Overtime Litigation. http://www.eaovertimecase.com/
4
Robinson, Evan, “Why Crunch Mode Doesn't Work: 6 Lessons”. In International Game Developers Association (Online), 2005.
http://archives.igda.org/articles/erobinson_crunch.php
the marketing of the Creative Freelancer Conference scheduled for late June 2011. The next technical
move after getting feedback from conference attendees would be to implement mobile functionality as it
was already requested last year when I first told them about the project idea. Afterward, I plan to submit it
to Tina Roth Eisenbergʼs Swiss Miss blog for another push to publicize early in the summer season when
people are reevaluating their vacation and business time.

1.6 Project Medium and Is This the Best Design & Technology Solution?

Solo+Tribe will be an online community that I am hesitant to call “social network” due to the negative
connotations of social networking and general buzzword overload. It is in essence what online
communities were before “social networking” overtook the sphere. A place to meet people and hang out
but it is not specifically about building up as many contacts as possible. If a user decides to solely have 8
contacts that will only further the userʼs meeting of goals, that amount is completely fine. The purpose of
the site is to get things done offline and not to rack up more digital waste or reasons to stay in front of a
computer.

Doing this project online allows people to track their interactions seamlessly while putting their goals and
accomplishments out into the ether to spur accountability. Building the project off the open source
BuddyPress platform from WordPress will help me quickly build the standard online community
interactions that web users are now accustomed to seeing.

At the beginning of the semester, I was intent on building the site using a Drupal platform because I
wanted to “get it right” in one shot for large scalability. Learning Drupal has a large learning curve and
though I would have help, it would have taken me several months to cobble together what I needed for an
online social network via various Drupal modules. On the insistence of Professor Sebek and that of
classmates, Caroline Romedenne and Ashley Ahn Williams, I tried the BuddyPress module for
WordPress. Just the installation of the plug-in alone has cut my development time in half and will allow for
rapid iteration when it comes time to implement other site functionalities.

2.0 IMPETUS

2.1 Motivation & Prior Experiences

The motivation and impetus behind this project developed within my first few months of being a solo
creative entrepreneur myself. In February 2009, I quit a soul crushing job as a designer at a mobile
software company where I felt my skills were stagnating. Upon leaving I had several clients lined up
including a startup client that gave several red flags straight out of the gate. What ensued in the following
months was a lot of 4am deadlines, working on the weekends, bad blood, lack of confidence to stand up
to the client and generally not setting appropriate boundaries from the start.

In the midst of this bad experience, I happened to attend the Creative Freelancer Conference in June
2009 where I felt like reached the freelance designer Promised Land. There were about 300 people in the
slog I was in and trying to get their business practices shored up. By the end of the two day conference, I
decided to dedicate my thesis to helping the design community in some way. With that in mind, I returned
to the 2010 conference with a new video camera in hand to do interviews and was able to secure hosting
a workshop on when to start collaborating with others to increase productivity, free time and money[5].
Both exercises were received extremely well within the conference community and served as two of my
prototypes for this semesterʼs work.
                                                         
5
Okin, Tricia, “Creative Freelancer Conference Breakfast Roundtable – Growing Your Team, When is the Time?” In Papercutny
Blog, June 2010. http://papercutny.com/blog/2010/06/09/video-creative-freelancer-conference-breakfast-roundtable-growing-your-
team-when-is-the-time/
2.2 Personal Relevance

I am ultimately passionate about this project because I fully admit to having a habit of not finishing what I
start. Through introspection the last couple of years, it has become clear to me that to succeed, I must
push myself harder to finish and accomplish goals, but to do them well instead of half-heartedly. One of
the primary ways in which my career will advance is by me having the self-confidence to break out of old
habits and to get things done.

Again, at the conference, it was rather apparent that other people had a similar issue of not having
enough confidence with clients, not balancing their time well or not finishing what they started. I want to
help other people feel less stressed and feel that itʼs okay to reach out more often for help but to similarly
to take time for themselves.

2.3 Inspiration

When I attended my first Creative Freelancer Conference in 2009, I realized I was not alone in this
thinking. Plus, I saw this as a way to have a career-changing project that will be useful to the community
at large. My goal is to again do something well and not in a mediocre fashion so it benefits everyone. This
entails fully learning the iterative process of doing design well instead of being an automaton like I was in
my previous job.

2.4 Contribution to the Field

My goal is to give this demographic a more tangible outlet for working with others to get their personal
goals accomplished. The bottom line for this project is that I want people to take the following when using
the site:

Be Inspired to take action.

Have Resources & other people to support you.
Have the Tools to help you take action.
Just Freaking Do It.
Feel Better and move on with your life.

In all, I see it as a kind of self-help program but in a more palatable package for creative people past the
1980s – 1990s self help age.

2.5 Design Questions

Will watching others take the journey before them (via featured online stories) help inspire them to action?

How can I make a compelling enough user experience and interface to hold my audienceʼs interest? I
donʼt want this experience to replace any other online design experience, but to see it as a creative
business decision.

People have requested mobile access for this application before. On the whole, how can I make this
experience so seamless and fun across all media or scenarios that people do not have to “think” to use it
in their daily lives?
 
 
3.0 METHODOLOGY
3.1 SUMMER PROJECT: Designer Interviews At The Creative Freelancer Conference

I undertook this experiment for two reasons. Firstly, my main target audience consists of solo
designers/creative professionals who attend the Creative Freelancer Conference and are looking at ways
to push their push businesses in a more positive direction. Directly interviewing them would give
immediate insight into my core demographic and to understand how they currently operate and what they
need.

Secondly, I used video interviewing as a way to get over my fear of talking to people and to play around
with the process of rapidly editing video. A month earlier, I bought a Flip Video Camera on a lark to start
exploring the medium again with a small portable device.

The methodology for conducting the interviews was to initially give a brief overview of my idea, couching it
in the context of the Creative Freelancer attendees. Afterward, I then asked each person what “life
balance” means to her and to explain what current steps sheʼs taking to achieve it. The line of questioning
followed a pointed method of asking about what they perceived as fact and then asking them to
personally reflect on those choices. Some of the questions follow:

What does “life balance” currently mean to you?

What routines do you have set up?

What ruins your life balance?

What do you wish you were doing or do you feel is missing in your life that would make you feel better in
the long run?

What steps do you think you would be able to take to improve your life?

Do you feel having someone to whom you have to answer will make you more apt to accomplish these
goals?

Would you feel the site and the community would helpful in you achieving the goals?

Common responses to these questions were lack of setting boundaries, making balance for a time and it
becomes eroded when a client crunch comes around and doing what they love but itʼs only as a way of
repair after the crunch time.

Figure 1: Interview with Jennifer Cole at Creative Figure 2: Interview with Beth Goldfarb & Genevieve
Freelancer Conference in Denver, CO on 06.05.10; Margherio at the Creative Freelancer Conference in
viewable at http://vimeo.com/13199255 Denver, CO on 06.05.10; viewable at
http://vimeo.com/user3321626
On the process side of the experiment, I soon learned that rapidly editing video and uploading it was not
as rapid as is often portrayed in slick media ads. Moving the video from the camera, editing it in iMovie 8
with its difficult interface proved frustrating, slow and discouraging. After that, the process of uploading the
video to Vimeo.com was incredibly long, taking about 4 hours for each 600 MB video to upload, even on a
fast connection left alone overnight. From that experience, Iʼve resolved to buy Final Cut Pro for an easier
editing interface and to use a media compressor or an even higher T1 or T3 connection to upload video.

3.2 SUMMER PROJECT: Interview with Samantha Bennett of The Organized Artist Company

Back in early July, I conducted two phone interviews with Samantha Bennett of The Organized Artist
Company, one 20 minutes long and a follow up one hour long conversation. Sam was a speaker at
the Creative Freelancer Conference I attended in June and where the designers in the previous section.
Samʼs main focus as to help creative professionals understand whatʼs important to them, finish the
projects their working on, help them learn to say no and hold them accountable.

My reasons for interviewing Sam were to get her insight on what

psychologically makes people even seek out accountability partners
and to find out what types of techniques she used with her own clients.
I came prepared to Samʼs interview with a load of questions to
understand her process, a few of which I outlined below.

Click the link below to listen and follow along with my notes below also.
My questions/parts are in bold and my notes on Samʼs answers are in
normal text.

Samantha Bennett Interview – 07-08-10 – Life Balance

Last time, we talked about people starting to be

right with themselves before externally organizing their surroundings. Can you
talk more about ways people can approach coming to grips with what needs to
be fixed on the inside or becoming more self aware of their patterns to help them
understand what needs to change externally?

Look at what you’re tolerating instead of being happy with. When the pain becomes
intolerable, that’s what motivates people to change in dramatic ways. If you can move that
process up a bit to more immediate action, all the better.

Can you give an example of how you’ve directly helped a client figure out a tough
situation with regards to life balance?

Procrastination means your project is too big. It doesn’t mean you’re lazy, there are just too
many mental components to it.

How much do you think interacting with others online & offline plays a role in
making our selves feel correct? You know, being another person’s cheerleader
can sometimes help motivate you to get your own game started also.

We’re the median of the 5 people we spend the most time with. Their income, weight,
aspirations, motivation, etc. We’re tribal & social animals. Take stock of the people around you
and start evaluating where we aspire to be.
 First thing is to hang with people you vibe with. And, Sam’s also a big fan of formalizing the
agreement in writing when you’re going to start asking accountability.

The Five Languages of Love (a book) – we all like to give & receive love in different ways. I
could give this as a test on the site so people can pair up with people who are symbiotic, ex: a
praise giver or time; it can help people figure out their reward system.

What action steps would you give people to start working on now? Why?

1. Create a list of 15 minute tasks related to your project – daydreaming, research, doodling,
contacting people, etc. Spend 15 minutes a day on that project every day before you even check
your email or turn on your computer.

The pain of not moving forward on stuff can be very debilitating. And the 15 minutes can
alleviate it so much

2. Do research instead of what you’re wringing your hands about

3. Figure out what is urgent or important. Building the business is important but not
necessarily urgent.

4. Do. And Ask.

The most important values, conceptually, that I took away from this set of interviews was the idea of
becoming aware of whatʼs uncomfortable in oneʼs life, to evaluate from time to time and donʼt be afraid to
say no. Also, the tactic of having an outlined reward vs. penalty system with tangible consequences built
into a written contract can be a great motivator for a lot of people.

Technically, Sam introduced me to FreeConferenceCalling.com, a web service that lets users hold
conferences calls and record them easily from their own phones. Iʼll continue to use this service for the
rest of my interviews along with SnapzProX, an application that allows you to record Skype video calls as
well. The latter will facilitate making personal video stories for the site content that much easier.

3.3 SUMMER PROJECT: Points for Designers to Move Forward

Underneath Anezkaʼs mandate, I read and re-read the summary of The

7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey and then
created a similar list for designers dealing with overwhelm and general
disdain for their current situation. Iʼm sure some of these seem familiar
as they fall along the veins of numerous self-help theories. Iʼll
eventually reduce these to a more manageable lesser number and
incorporate them as tenets and main content of the site. I also did this
as an exercise to help myself distill what I have learned over the past
year of mentoring through various people and programs.

What Sucks About Your Current Life? What Would You

Rather Be Doing?
Too many obligations or are you complicating things? What hurts
the most right now? What makes you just generally uncomfortable?
What are the benefits of each of those? Eliminate the activities or aspects that hurt the most or are
uncomfortable that give you little in return.
 Decide Who You Want to Be Now & in the Future
Figure out who or what you want to be or do in the next 5 – 10 years. You could return to a past loved
profession or an activity, a career, whatever you’ve always wanted to try. Personally, I would love to be paid
to travel and design. The next step is to try to map out how to get there.

Map Out How to Become the Future You

This doesn’t have to be super detailed and it can even be a 1, 2.5 or 5 year timeline of how to achieve the
new you. What habits do you have to lose in order to do this? What habits do you have to acquire?

Ask Yourself What is Stopping You / Ask Why You Are You’re Stopping Yourself
The first sentence is reactive thinking while the second sentence is proactive thinking. Well, what is it?

Make Yourself a Priority

No one else will do it for you. For a lot of clients, it’s business and never personal. If need be, think of
yourself as a business and needing to care for it unless it will go under soon.

Make or Do Something That Will Help You Feel at Peace

It doesn’t have to be huge and seminal like a landscape painting. Just starting a sketch of a landscape
painting can help ease the way into working on it gradually. Making or doing can even be organizing
folders, because every little bit helps.

Compete With Your Future Self (And Others) / Find Competition

Competition spurs people to actually do something especially when we know another person will best us.
What would you cool future self do in the particular situation you have? Does that future self have more
confidence?

Tell Others What You’re Doing to Have Accountability

We get client work finished because there’s another person waiting at the end for it (hopefully with a large
check) and our reputations are on the line. We have to answer to that person and give reasons why a task
was not accomplished. Imagine having to tell your design accountability partner why you didn’t finish
designing your portfolio site. Yeah, not pretty, but it’s a good motivator.

Keep a Record
It’s a lot easier to understand progress if you see what you’ve done. Nobody can remember all he or she has
done over 3 months without some visual reminder. I myself follow Ilise Benun’s / Marketing
Mentor’s Marketing Plan Calendar and it’s good to look back and see what you have accomplished and still
what needs doing.

Give as Much as You Receive

Everyone needs help. 10 – 15 minutes here or there can suck up one’s time, but allocating for giving usually
brings the same in return.

Collaborate to Accomplish Goals or Finish a Project

You don’t have to take it all yourself and there are most likely people who have more expertise in a
particular area of your project than you do. It’s okay to get help.

I felt mentally lighter after writing these. This is mostly because it made me reflect back on my
experiences in the past year and itʼs good to realize that Iʼve actually absorbed what was presented to
me. Putting all of the above tenets into play takes time and repeated practice to become routine but itʼs a
work in progress. My thesis itself is an exercise or experiment in trying to make the above tenets my
personal design practice.

For my process in this project, I deliberately gave myself a short limit of 30 minutes to write all of the
points by hand and away from a computer, phone or any other electronic distraction. After writing, I again
gave myself another short limit of 20 minutes to have it as a fully published blog post to just get it done.
The purpose of it was to do a rapid iteration and not to dwell on an object too long or to make it too
precious to destroy. This method wholeheartedly worked so well that I have started imposing time limits
on other experiments just to see what creativity spurts out in the given time.
3.4 Summer Projects Conclusion:
Through doing the above short projects, I was able to start answering some of my design questions,
namely those about what life balance means to a solo designer and what techniques they may utilize to
achieve it. My next steps are to expand out to a larger user group of 10 designers including 7 women and
3 men, interview them via Skype video and start determining how I can address their needs best. One of
the recurring thoughts or problems entering my thought process is how to make people actually want to
participate or to make it fun without so much seriousness as a self-help program.

Because of this, Iʼm exploring using video to tell user stories and a simple game or point system called
“Life Balance Bingo” on the site where users can collect visual indicators of what they accomplished,
similar to FourSquare badges. For my prototypes in the next week, Iʼll be making wireframes of what
users will encounter at the site and a rough paper version of “Life Balance Bingo”.

3.5 FALL 2010 METHODOLOGY:

3.6 Paper and Digital Wireframing

I have a tendency to keep a lot of information in my head to a point of anxiety. Basic drawing or paper
wireframing tends to lower the confusion level and helps me work out the first layer of kinks in a project. I
started drawing the interfaces out on paper and making annotations on the side to remind myself of what
content or features belonged on each page and how they should be connected across the site. The first
set of sketches was also an attempt to illustrate the user flow and experience of how a typical user would
encounter the site: via word of mouth, a conference or a featured post on a well-established design site.

At first they start as sketches while Iʼm on the train, but once in front of a computer, I check competitor
sites or usability design references to ensure I have a checklist of necessary functionalities. Because my
drawings are usually not to scale, the digital version of wireframing is a way to get it into a real “physical”
web space of a 978px wide grid space and start arranging elements as neeeded.

For my initial stint at digital wireframing I used an application called Mockflow { http://mockflow.com/ } to
create templates and work out concepts. The first pass at wireframing showed that my systems were
much too cluttered and did not pass some of the basic heuristic principles of usability design. From there,
I decided to go back to the drawing board of mindmapping (to be covered later) to determine what
functionality and features were truly necessary for a user to use the Solo+Tribe site efficiently.

Below are the pages in the following order: Home (how the user arrives to the site), Find a Group or
Person, and Featured Member.
Below are the pages in the following order: Home, Featured Member/Soloist, and Member Profile

3.7 Logo Design & Colour Scales

The first iteration of the logo design featured a lot of slashes

as dividing lines and a bit of figure ground elements. The
graphical slash played a large role in design sketches
because it implies a natural division of several parts to make
a whole. This evidenced by the classic mathematical symbols
for percentage ( % ) and division ( ÷ ).

After
- was looking for a clean thin typeface that was
specifically not Helvetica
- preferred a typeface with different weight fonts such as
bold and styles like italic or oblique. This would have
been easier to implement instead of creating a false
impression with artificial bolding or italicizing within
the web browser.
- Searching for a typeface that hopefully was supported
by TypeKit, FontSquirrel or any of the other web type
rendering engines.
- Eventually settled on Raleway which has no other
fonts but felt the cleanest to me out of all my intial
mockups
- For colour palette, I selected palette #2 because at the
a solid grounding colour of dark blue, and two highlight colours of medium pink and light blue. The
next version of the palette you will see in the first design iteration has a modified blue and pink to
 make them brighter against the white compositional background. In the second iteration of the
design, I incorporated more bright colours but muted the harshness of the stark white.

3.8 Renaming/Rebranding the Site

My thesis project was originally called Balanced Design; I first thought of it last August at the 2009
Creative Freelancer Conference because from a conference attendance survey, most participants were
seeking balance between client work and their personal lives.

In early September during a weekly Skype video conference, Professor Sebek pointed out she thought
the name, Balanced Design was too sterile and lacked a real call to action. We bandied back and forth
different synonyms for group using ThinkMapʼs Visual Thesaurus tool { http://www.visualthesaurus.com/ }.

In this exercise, we refocused the naming/branding on concept of group dynamic instead of just individual
goal of life balance. Although it did lead to much better name, I think this is where a conceptual
disconnect of “life balance” and “solo+tribe” began to emerge. I have to now pay special attention to this
nomenclature disconnect to help better explain the concept.
3.9 Revised Logo

After selecting a new name, I went back to the drawing board to rethink the logo and typography. My
ideas kept bouncing between “the one plus the many”. When actually designed digitally, the new ideas
took on a hackneyed feeling. The circular dot group idea looked too similar to generic mid-2000s tech
company web site logos. The people icons were also too reminiscent of MySpace, especially when paired
with the blue colour palette. My final logo choice was a simple typographic wordmark with a “+” sign to
indicate a connection between the individual and the group.
3.10 Defining the User Group

For the most part, the core of my user testing group

of 28 is predominantly aged 28 – 40 years old, white,
self-employed and have been running their
businesses for at least 6 years. Most participants
reside on the East and West coasts in major
technological and urban centers such as New York
City, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

There are a few outliers along the major categories:

there are four (4) participants above the age of 40
years old; four (4) are non-white; six (6) live in the
Mid-west, Southwest and the Southern U.S.

When I initially contacted the group via email in

October, there was an active response of 10
participants. My feeling is that I would need to be
able to show an actual visual design or working prototype in order to garner more active participation.

In addition to this self-selected group of users, several critics and classmates have strongly suggested
using my classmates and schoolmates as a focus group of participants. It has been said the project
speaks to this demographic of stressed thesis students much the same as design business owners in the
amount of information and concepts they have to juggle. Based on this feedback, during the winter break,
I will release a beta version to both my core user group of designers and to my classmates within my
thesis class.

3.11 Game: Life Balance Bingo

In early September, I struggled with materializing the concept of

what “life balance” really is. At the time, I was trying to juggle three
client projects and a horde of school projects and reading. I had a
constant sensation that “something was off” but it was hard to
pinpoint how I should start adjusting. That uneasiness and stress let
me to start playing with images and put down on physical paper
some of the main aspects of life that I felt could be improved. This
led me to create a game entitled, “Life Balance Bingo”.

The idea is based off the Mexican card game called La Lotería which
is kind of like a pictorial bingo. Whenever a player gets four images
in a row, he or she wins. Another model for Life Balance Bingo is the
geo-location game, FourSquare { http://www.foursquare.com } in
that’s similar to the badge system used. FourSquare users check in
to different places or businesses and depending on how each
location is tagged in the database, the user will earn a badge usually
with a funny written and pictorial description. For instance, if users
checks into three locations with photobooths, they earn the
Photogenic badge (at right, first row).

Life Balance Bingo is meant to mimic the kinds of activities that

people can achieve and track while using Solo+Tribe, hence
FourSquare being a reference. The board is currently broken into 15
categories of activities (seen right) that touch most aspects
of our lives. To speak frankly, these are issues that keep us
up at night worrying if we’re doing them properly or not.
There is not necessarily an objective to get a specific
amount on the board accomplished well and then you win.
The point is to look at each of the categories, mark an “X”
through each one that you’re not performing well (at least
50%) then sit back and evaluate.  

I first tested the game as a paper version during one of our

in-class open user testing days. The reaction and feedback
was stellar. The effect of having several Xs on a sheet in
front of them, made most participants realize their lives were
completely out of balance. One of my classmate participants
in particular had X marks on 14 out of the 15 boxes on her
sheet and was a brutal reminder to start the pendulum
swinging back the other way.

The overall goal of the game when used on the site is

pinpoint two or three major goal areas a user can focus on
while acknowledging what he or she does well.

Doing so will help people choose complementary partners

with complementary skills who will propel them forward while
working within small groups. From there, I developed a rough
online jQuery prototype of Life Balance Bingo {
http://papercutny.com/parsons/thesis/bingo/demo.php }
that I intended to integrate into the site.

3.12 Mindmapping with Popplet

After struggling with the interface and doing wireframes, I decided to go back to the drawing board to flesh
out main goals of the user interactions on the site. The current interface I had mapped out was much too
cluttered with too many actions for the user to take.

Popplet { http://popplet.com/ } is an online Flash mindmapping application currently in beta testing. I was
able to procure a beta invite by asking on Twitter and following up via email. Waiting on the invite delayed
my mindmapping exercise for a bit, but it was wholeheartedly worth it. Popplet is similar to doing a paper
mind map, simply because of how the application moves in space smoothly like a live interaction. This
allowed me to spatially organize my thoughts without overtaking my living room floor with paper thatʼs
easily confused or trampled by cats.

I originally started my new Popplet on my own, but at weekly Skype video session with Professor Sebek,
we narrowed down more goals of the project and the site by me adding her to my Popplet mindmap. We
then defined the different reasons for user interaction and movements and what kind of content each
section would access. By doing this incredibly useful exercise, trimmed my main site menu down from
nine links to six. The current version of my Popplet mindmap is located here:
http://popplet.com/app/#/7739.

3.12 User Interface Design

The first iteration of Solo+Tribeʼs

interface design was based on the
revised Popplet mindmap with a
more streamlined menu and was
heavily decluttered. During another
Skype video session with Professor
Sebek, we revised and streamlined
the interface even more.

The home page of Solo+Tribe

features a top-level navigation with
immediate access to goals, groups,
members as well as tools and
articles such as Life Balance Bingo.
To the right of the top navigation is
the Search function present for
those users who prefer to discover via search instead of clicking around a site. Below the navigation is a
brief blurb detailing what the project is about and expressly telling the viewer that itʼs a thesis work in
progress where feedback is appreciated to help the grow the community.

After the header section comes the main content area with an image carousel that rotates slides through
5 different rotating promotional spots used as entry points into the site:

o A quick description of the site

o Google map showing where members are
o A featured member story
o Life Balance Bingo icon to push people to play the online version of the game and discover goals
o Featured project or group

To the right of the main content area is

an obvious “Sign Up” area that will
always be visible in that area to
anyone not logged in. Further down
the page are three columns displaying
the latest activity from Members,
Groups and the General Activity
Stream.

With all that said, the aesthetic design

of site was still painfully sterile. This I
knew immediately and consequently
received feedback from classmates
stating, “it was too clean” or even
antiseptic. Another classmate of mine
in particular, Caroline Rommedenne,
gave the advice to try making the
design warmer and more emotive in
some way.

When taking another turn at the

design, I drew on my background as a
photographer to remind myself of what types of imagery would make me feel happy upon viewing a site.
To me, the answer was expansive photographic backgrounds mixed with solid blocks of colour to catch
the eye.

Below is Solo+Tribeʼs revised home page design reflecting those aesthetic values. Iʼve incorporated a
background photographic image selected from user photographs of their projects. The main background
colour is now a warm and inviting cream that light enough to not overpower the rest of the colours or
design. As it stands, I can do much more to push this design version even more, to keep the subpages as
aesthetically pleasing as the home page. Also, the next major revision of the design will incorporate
“featured” areas on the right sidebar to highlight other content around the site and later down the road for
ad serving space.
BuddyPress Platform & Building

As previously stated, Iʼm prototyping Solo+Tribe

using BuddyPress, a flavour of the WordPress open
source CMS (content management system)
platform. BuddyPress allows site builders to create a
social network right out of the box with important
features such as groups, private messages, status
updates, posting documents and photos and more.

Over the winter break, I will be building out the core

functionality of the site with the goal to have it
functional for user group testing by January 15,
2011. After introducing it to my user groups, I will
revise applications and aesthetic design as needed.

Below left is an example of what the basic install of BuddyPress on a site looks like. To the right is the
beginning of the Solo+Tribe customization and build out.

Final Presentation Evaluation and Next Steps

The overall feedback from both my critics and classmates was to start building Solo+Tribe immediately.
That only through making, building and letting people experiment with it will I really begin to see user
interaction patterns to better inform design and development.

As for funding, according to accepted venture capital proceedings, it is expected to personally meet my
first 10,000 users in order get any sort of funding or to be at a stage worthy of launching. This was a
dramatic wake up call to be more ambitious with my project and to plan for large expansion quickly but not
to necessarily worry too much.

Another design/production milestone for winter break requested by the critics is to distill the 11 goals for
designers down to four major goals/actionable steps that will propel users to dive in immediately and start
using the site. Then, my next task is to create four crude applications to match those goals by January
15th, 2011. For instance, Life Balance Bingo could match the first goal of “Make Yourself a Priority” to help
understand where people can or should focus their energy.
Both Professor Sebek and my classmates frequently requested I create a visual method for people to
obviously share skills and collaborate on projects together besides the goal setting and achievement. The
point of this feature is have make Solo+Tribe not just a site meet accountability partners but also a design
business networking and collaboration site similar to Behance.net

In all, my goals over the winter break are to have a built working prototype and four crude applications by
January 15th, 2011. My other main goal is get a better handle on the business plan writing process for the
final thesis paper by setting up meetings with SCORE and other small business community groups to help
fund and guide the project.