Anney Norton

Showed a rough visual of how the website can look. PROTOTYPE SIDES OF ROUGH WEBSITE VISUAL AESTHETIC The audio wouldn’t play on zoom. Jheanell had the idea to play around with adding a white card behind each quote so it looks like a note card, but keep it the same font instead of a handwritten font because the feedback on current font choice is good. Then between the version where it shows up one at a time or multiple on the page at once, the one at a time was preferred – though it would depend on how they appear and disappear. I think one at a time is what I’m going to go with. I need to add arrow or button of some sort so it’s clear there’s more affirmations you can see after the one you’re currently viewing. Also some sort of “how to write an effective affirmation guide” would be helpful for when people want to add their own affirmation – so there’s some guidance on how to write one and also an opportunity to tie in the research I’ve done. Someone said that the location element is probably the most interesting because seeing how this person from Egypt said this makes the person and their shared quote feel more real.

Also asked Brian on if there’s a general practice if someone I reach out to say they will get back to me but haven’t yet, do I reach back out? The recommendation is that if the person’s response is important to the survey or project, then yes you can, if it’s not, and their response is interchangeable then no need. This was super helpful and clarifying!

Between March 27 – April 3: I want to create an initial design for what the affirmation site could look and feel like, then I want to send out that design to see what people think about it and how it makes them feel.

April 4 – April 16: I want to work on what makes a technically “good” affirmation and look more into why people think of manifesting the same way they think of affirmations because they are very different.

From April 17 – April 24 I want to begin synthesizing the data I’ve collected and maybe make a few mock “pages” or “submissions” to use for my presentation as a proof of concept. I’ll wait to build out the site until summer.

After that I’ll need to start prepping my presentation and finalize all of my research. I also want to start practicing the presentation and make sure that all of the research and the mock up work smoothly together.

Meeting with Brian and getting feedback today 3/23 was really helpful.

I realized that there is a disconnect or a confusion between affirmations and manifesting. Manifesting is like trying to will something into existence (such as thinking I’m going to be rich and successful or I’m going to win the lottery today where you try to think a dream into reality versus affirmations, for when the mind is stressed, overwhelmed, anxious, etc where you try to shift your mindset and re-affirm to yourself that you are able to deal with the situation at hand. For example, if I’m super stressed at work, I’m not trying to will the stress or work away, but rather trying to re-affirm that I’ve dealt with challenging situations before and dealt with them successfully. It’s more so about taking something that is already true about myself and empowering myself by reminding myself that I did it before, got through it, so I can do it it again.

Met with Sarah today and shared my survey questions and the types of responses I received. I’m going to also look into the counter argument to affirmations since they don’t work for everyone. However the website I’m designing will be for self-identified women who want to read the positive self talk from women around the world, and/or want to contribute to it.

The website I want to create will hopefully have an ambient sound playing (like when you get a massage or facial!) and the color scheme is light opacity pink, purple, blue – calming, welcoming, not stark. I’m going to continue to ask more women I know and am also waiting to hear back from a few more. The idea is these personal, encouraging phrases will appear and disappear on the screen.

Also was recommended to document process more in posts and watch previous thesis project videos.

Hi all!

I got an overwhelming number of really beautiful, honest, and encouraging responses. If you are one of them, thank you so much for sharing. These wonderful ladies opened up to me and every single one (so far) uses some sort of positive self talk. The vast majority uses affirmations and find them helpful, but they are uniquely personal to every single person. Almost no affirmation is the same with the exception of “I can do it”, “I release what doesn’t serve me” and “You’ve got this” – but even those are usually followed by different sentences. I find it so much more interesting and personal – affirmations such as ” I don’t need to rush to become ‘successful’. Success is small efforts that grow into the bigger picture”. – they resonate more not only with the person, but also with me. I’ve gotten responses back as well that this positive self talk closer align with the form of “mantras” or another response “Actually what I like to do rather than a positive affirmation is to manifest the day before it begins. So I will say, “I did very well today, it was extremely productive and I succeeded in my tasks” THEN begin the day. It tends to work because you chose to believe you succeeded before beginning.”

I believe that women would really, really benefit from seeing what each other wrote. Not only are the themes so consistent, and similar (it’s amazing and makes me feel less alone in my experiences!), we can really empower another through the connection of our positive self talk – be it mantra, affirmations, meditative thought process “I keep mine really simple, as I find repetition to be a really helpful part of self-affirmation. So I like to keep them short and sweet, so they’re easy to repeat and become meditative! Usually it’ll be something like “you’re okay, you’re fine”, “you know what you’re doing”, “this is great work”, “today is a good day”, etc.”, it can be really encouraging for a variety of reasons.

I think the form of a website is where it’s headed. It’s much more accessible. The option to share your own personal mantras, affirmations, self talk and the option to leave your first name and last initial, and the state you’re in (New York) or the option to stay anonymous for either name or location will help people who are not comfortable disclosing their name feel more safe to share their positive self talk.

To have a better understanding of affirmations, and whether they actually work or not, among other things like how often or not often women experience imposter syndrome, I’ve reached out the the badass women in my life, and asked them 5 questions.

1) Have you ever heard of a positive affirmation?

2) If yes, have you ever tried using one? Why or why not? (If you answered no to 1 you can skip this question)

3) Do you now or have you ever experienced imposter syndrome?

4) What types of things have you read, watched, listened to, or said to yourself that help you through negative thoughts or negative self-talk?

5) Positive affirmations are a form of self-talk aimed at improving self esteem. An example would be: “A girl who does big things cannot let small things get to her.”

Are there positive affirmation(s) that you use in your life? If you’re comfortable with sharing, I’d love to hear them! If not/bonus question: Can you try creating one?

**Feel free to write as little or as much as you want to each question!!** 🙏🏼❤️

The answers have started coming in… To be posted on a separate post!

I met with Sarah. We talked about some of my past work, art, projects, etc. It was helpful to organize my interests and get a sense of possible project directions. Sarah helped point out that I might be a bit too project oriented and that thesis is more of an umbrella with the project as just a small part of it.

We talked over some of my ideas around empowering women and some of my personal experiences with sexism. Some possible avenues to explore are:

-History of affirmation poster 

-How do you measure how empowered women are before and after (emojis?)

-Low fi daily practice 

-Conversations and ways to test out what emojis people might respond with in the context of empowering women 

Recommended assignment: Pick a publication and write about my project even in a very vague way in the voice of the publication

Obligatory Hello World!

We did the nothing to something exercise in class. It was really helpful for organizing my thoughts and figuring out some of what I might be passionate about. I’m not sure that I’ve fully “picked a topic” or anything like that, but I am leaning towards something women empowerment related.

We’ll see how it goes!