Week 6 - Supercrit

This week I was really struggling with style and aesthetic. From numerous conversations it felt the aesthetic I was currently using, came off as too feminine and would deter men from wanting to engage. However, this feedback was controversial with others stating the opposite. I really struggled this week to push my design further, but thankfully it was supercrit week and the feedback I received, reignited my passion and gave me some direction

The below book was a skincare manual which I had crafted for my job at mecca. However, as a lot of the content from within it is relevant to acne and this project, I am using yet adapting to make it more comprehensible for those that aren't quite so skincare savvy..

 My Report: 

Hey Jo,

Thanks so much for your feedback at supercrit. Here is a key summary of the points:

- “Connect the Spots” - Is a much better title than “28 Days” 

- Quite liked fluid organic aesthetic, but accepted that feedback surrounding it not being appropriate for boys could be valid.

- La Roche Posay has a skin analyser and to look at that for some ideas on how to language with an empathetic yet clinical approach.

- There is concern that the project may be a bit too commercial - it is a personal journey so the gold is really in being able to track your own skins progress and see how new treatments have been working. As well as recognising when your skin, is actually better than you think it is, focus on the personal journey, allowing them to seek out help if and when they want it. 

- Look into making acne no big deal. 

- Less literal skin colouring so it can be more accessible for everyone, also be cautious with colouring and name of the app, so that it doesn’t have a “period tracker” aesthetic”

- Try app without colour first and focus on the journey and outcome more. 

- Explore the tension between something the clinical and trustful aesthetic balanced with a beautiful and engaging one. 

- Learn section could contain information on prescribed medication, and possibly  community opinions on how they found these.

- User circles and highlights their own problem areas of their skin?

- Tracing how user is feeling in themselves as well as how they’re feeling about their skin. 

Ultimately, the gold is really in creating a personal relationship with your skin journey. 

Additionally, I opted to speak to Tim about my project also. Tims feedback was as follows:

- Refine your target audience and question. Destigmatising acne is a really broad and interesting project, but maybe it doesn’t necessarily need to target both genders. On a whole his opinion was that men (unless their acne is real severe) typically aren’t as concerned about acne as girls are due to societal pressures. So, from this I could refine it down to Communication design can address the dysmorphic acne perceptions which girls may have, through education. This is something which could effectively be adapted to any issue, eg. body image, but ultimately I am exploring it through acne.

- Don’t shy away from challenges. He said that it was good I had explored things and new where the tension was and why it wouldn’t work, but instead of taking the easy route, try to challenge why it wouldn’t work. For example, if you want to show other peoples skin for example, but theirs privacy issues how can you do this in a non-controversial way. 

Thanks so much for your feedback today! I really appreciate it. 

I hope you have a great break,

Holly

Additional feedback jo sent through:

Thanks Holly, pretty good synopsis I’d say! A couple of Sunday morning thoughts from me:

 

• I think personally aiming for ‘gender neutrality’ might make sense, because I’m wary of ‘designed for girls’ as a thing because it usually means ‘make it look a cliched version of ‘feminine’ involving pink’ rather than ‘catering to address specific issues that a society imbedded with misogynistic attitudes directs at those identifying as women’ 😃. Granted it may appeal more to women because of the points Tim has raised, but perhaps focusing on attitudes/behaviours rather than genders specifically is more appropriate (and fits more with the current shift toward recognising gender is more than binary). Which I am sure boils down to the same thing Tim was saying, just with a footnote that gender might be an increasingly blunt way to categorise…
• On community, I’d absolutely be led by your research and I may have been interpreting what you meant too narrowly (‘Facebook for acne!’). My gut feeling (based on my sample of one!) is that I would have got a lot out of reading about other people’s experiences (of treatments, about how they felt about their skin, to have hope that my skin would improve etc), but not so much connecting with other people directly (in fact, I would not have wanted to do that at all). If community is about feeling less alone through stories, comments, even forums and you can retain thequality of info, great. In some ways this could be a good way to balance my perception that it was currently weighted to selling me stuff from Mecca 😊 Also, the below example suggests that some people are absolutely happy to put their acne on display and that can be quite empowering…
• When I mentioned the ‘acne positivity’ movement it was probably because I’d read this or some thing similar:https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2018/sep/18/pimples-in-rise-of-acne-positivity-movement
• I agree with Tim that you might be able to manage the privacy issues about showing other people’s skin through, for instance, really transparent process for submitting entries, not using their full name so they remain a little less ‘googleable’ (but if they tagged you in on social media with their ‘skin review’ that’d be ok), having professional dermatologists giving opinions, moderating and screening out troll comments… Have you ever seen the way plastic surgeons redact people’s eyes so you can’t tell who they are? Might be worth investigating (I had laser mole removal on my face so there might be photos of me in the surgeon’s book now with my eyes taped out!)

 

As I said, it’s great to see an issue covered that is, as far as I recall, a new one for CoCA4 – keep going!

 

Jo.