Week 7 Reflection

A new marking period, a new class. The first half our experience was all about focusing on specific problems together as a class using careful observation, experimentation, problem solving skills, and a sense of empathy with the user. Since then we've started a much bigger, more ambitious class: true open source learning. We were encouraged to begin by identifying a problem, and I used my own life experience for this. Even though by most universal standards I have an amazing life with a supportive group of family and friends, I can't help feel negative emotions and self doubt every once and a while. I've teamed up with David to try to combat this. We are working on a system to try to go beyond simple fixes to be happy, but to truly identify what is at the core of one's emotions and to try to help empower the user to take steps in their own life to better themselves. It's unclear at this point exactly how we will proceed with this project, but we've been inspired with websites such as 7 cups of tea, an anonymous online counseling website. So yeah, this upcoming week we will be trying to pinpoint exactly what features we'd want our project to solve and try to think about ways we can come close to that goal.