Time to nail down the problem to solve

Having to formulate a well written research question is both time consuming and mentally exhausting. However for this first draft of questions I am trying to at least focus on wording it so its goal is on disabled people as the main group to solve for, and contactless technology as the medium to solve their problems by. Without further a due these are some of the questions I thought of: In what ways can virtual assistant serve disabled people beyond turning a light on? Under what circumstances can contactless technology be of use for disabled people? To what extent can design help fill the gap between disabled people and contactless technology? In what ways can design allow virtual assistants to help disabled people get emergency help when not able to ask for themselves? Under what circumstances can design and contactless technology be of more benefit to people with disabilities looking to live a life without another human being support? 

What is there to solve?

I feel like writing this out for Alenko Designs has been long over due but with this pandemic in 2020 I have gotten to have some time to think about who I are, where I am going, and to why I do what I do. As part of defining the answer to all this questions I had to go through a very throughout process, for starters I had to list a couple of successes I've had in the past few years and try to figure out what theme(s) os there in common. Past Successes At my part time job I was able to identify where there was a money leak Landed my first design project with Alenko Designs without any reviews or recommendations Have maintained a workout streak for 15 month straight (totally off topic but worth mentioning since I didn't work out at all before) Have helped a couple of small Latino businesses through design Now when looking through this list a couple of themes I could observed was a sense of community, willingness to help minority communities, patient, but mostly consistency. Throughout this years I haven't given up, always strive to give the best out of me. These themes tie up to our second step where we have to identify our core value, next is a list of the values that define us: Core Values Patience Detailed Hard worker Go getter Passionate Intelligent Fast learner Loving Ambitious Achiever Adaptable Curious Devoted Generous Organized Positive Professional Sincere Responsible Trustworthy Consistent Courteous Decisive Dependable Determined Efficient Enthusiastic Kind Motivated Perseverant Planner Respectful Transparent Now from this long list my top 6 would be hard-worker, curious, devoted, dependable, and transparent. From this I would have to say my TOP core value is transparency , no matter what or who or when but I always tell my family, friends and clients what they will get from me. I have nothing to hide. We have established my past successes, the themes around them, my core values, next up is my list of contributions for me to make as a designer, a mom, a Latino business owner, and a human to this world. Contributions Provide quality design at accessible price for the Latino community Boost Latino businesses success through design Improve costumer/client experiences Provide reliable design needs Lastly, I had to come up with some short and long term goals in order to help me finalize my mission statement. Goals Get a job that supports me while I finish school Finish school as soon as possible Grow Alenko Designs to the point it becomes my Full Time job Become a successful Latino women business owner Help the Latino community/businesses grow/improve constantly due to my design and marketing help Wow! That was a lot of writing and thinking. But it was worth it because it has helped me determine my Mission Statement: "To empower Latinos businesses through design support." Next comes a task that I think was way harder for me than what I just did. I will try to develop a Design Philosophy. A design philosophy helps designers explain the why of their decision, their unique Point of View, how we got our ideas into action, and to define our success. In order to achieve this I had to do a self exploration as to what my Definition, Users, Purpose, Differentiation, Value, and Goals were. Before I give you my final result, let me show you what I had for each step. Definition I intend to provide branding, web design, and social marketing services. Users Want to focus on small businesses, mostly Latino businesses. Purpose Most small businesses, specially Latino, lack good design decisions. This is because most think that such services are too expensive, unnecessary, and a waste of both money and time. However, this often leads to a problematic/stuck business that doesn't grow to its full potential. Differentiation I help by offering quality, results, and professionalism at a reasonable/accessible price. Value I will help clients take off stress on their lives by having proper online presence and developed brand that will allow their business to grow and be recognized on the market while increasing sales and gain repetitive costumers. Goals To be the go to for small latino businesses for their design needs. I feel I have achieved this goal when I have at least 5 major projects per month. I'm not going to lie, even after such exploration I had a difficult time trying to put the answers together to form a coherent design philosophy. But with patience and a lot of research on how how one should be I figured out mine. "Design for your community, not to results." I know it sounds counterintuitive to say you have to focus on your community but what I mean is focus on doing design for the user you are targeting rather than designing to obtain a quantitive result. Feelings are more powerful than numbers, and at the end of the day like Simon Sinek said at his TED Talk , "people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it." If you design for them, you got them.

Nowadays in such an overflowed market where everyone is selling either a product or offering services is near impossible to make yourself stand out. This is exactly what I intend to do with my design firm: Alenko Designs. After doing my Self-Assessment I came to realize that my main media are both digital and print media (particularly stationary brand articles). This because I find myself the most excited working on a project when it involves such media, I have tried working on motion graphics, product design, screen printing, sculpture, and so much more media but I don't find it as exciting or fulfilling as the digital world does. When it comes to style I tend to incline my work more into the minimalist side with more flat type of work, I tend to avoid child like drawing or hand drawn work as well as 3D effect and realistic kind of imagery, I prefer to go into the abstract aspect. These two aspects sure correlate to my selection of services provided: branding and website/app design since they are very well tied to both my selected media, my style, and my skills. Currently the job market for my desired services looks for someone with strong communication skills both verbal and written, proficiency with coding languages, and ability to work with different branches within the firm whether it be developers or stakeholders. Right now, as discussed on previous blogs my skill set needs to be polished a little bit more on these ones because my communication skills aren't exactly the best I need to polish my grammar and focus on my jargon. As to the coding languages I need to get into it a lot more, so far I got an introductory base of how coding languages function but not enough to fully code a website or a fully working app once i get this skill more polished I think I can be able to have that ability to work with the different branches on a firm like some jobs suggests because I will ave the basic knowledge to have a valuable conversations with them. Doing all this thinking, made me analyze what I would like to do once I graduate since is soon to come. It has always been my dream to have my own business, so it only seems adequate to start Alenko Designs ass my own business for me to start off with. Now this won't be easy, but since I plan on introduce myself into the Latino entrepreneur market offering top-notch quality services at an affordable price it might make my start easier. Like I have in my landing page: We make your brand stand, we give you the best without the overprice. The Latino community has so many branches when it comes to the marketplace because there are more and more entrepreneurs in my community every day starting all kind of business whether it be in construction or beauty or even financial services. But a common issue is the lack of proper branding and adequate online presence, most of the time all I see is some logo made on Paint or just a phone number and the name of the business on Google without any other information. I know that this is for a lack of knowledge, thinking that all this services like proper branding development, website, social media marketing are techniques that only big brands can use when in reality they are accessible to anyone, I just need to get into contact with my community by showing them that I can make them be a better business visually. Some businesses I have worked for include www.westcoastprocesspiping.com and www.villaltaroofing.com. But I am always open to new ideas like this: www.coloradoseamlessgutters.com, www.racopavingservices.com, www.weddingsbyrenzo.com. So, after all these exploration I decided to create a list of problems I would like to tackle after I graduate: Nonsense logos/brand: I can not stress enough how many times I have seen businesses with nonsense brands and then they complain all the time because their business isn't growing. Well if you can't tell your story, values, and goals through your brand doesn't matter if you have a crazy cool ad video, it will do no good to you because what you need is to know who you are and show it to the world in a proper way. Nonexistent online presence: Latinos simply don't know how powerful a simple website can be to their business, in today's age if you are not online, you don't exist and that can be a big killer for any business. Lack of price accessible design solutions: When talking with some of my clients the major concern that comes to mind is the price tag. Latino community is known for being very conservative with their money, but as a designer I have to let them know that it won't be a waste but rather an investment on their business that will help growth it.

As part of this preliminary research I am simply trying to find problems which need a solution. This list includes exploratory ideas with some links and citations from what I have found so far, this ideas are my starting point to decide on a thesis question. Facebook Marketplace does not show the buyers the high interest on certain items This might be personal but if you have social media and use the marketplace option that Facebook has you will agree with me that it is a bummer to send a message to just be told: Sold. If it had a feature where it shows how many people are interested it might help the user decide whether to ask for the item or not. Stuck at a traffic light when there is no one crossing Not the only one that complains about this. Is the middle of the night, there is no other cars driving but you have to stop and wait for eternity so the light changes and you can go on again. Couple Latinos I spoke too complaint about it, and mentioned that back in their countries it is allowed to run the red light at night when there is no traffic usually between midnight and 4 am. I also saw in some blogs that it has been suggested to have lights with AI integrated so it would change according to current traffic flow.(Carmen, Driving Instructor Blog 2017) C. (2017, July 14). Red lights that stay red forever = Drivers must learn about traffic sensors! Retrieved September 3, 2020, from https://drivinginstructorblog.com/red-lights-stay-red-forever-drivers-must-learn-traffic-sensors/ Everything is touch, no contactless options With COVID-19 changing or daily life from now on it only makes sense to start moving to "contactless" lifestyle. We already have contactless payments, why not signatures, or changing radio station, or changing a TV channel without the use of a virtual assistant but radar technology. In this one there are people on both sides saying it would help stop the spread of viruses and bacterias, but others argue that is healthy for the body to be exposed to such in order to build ones immune system.(Castaneda, Health US News 2019) Castaneda, R., & Schroeder, M. O. (2019, September 19). Could Getting Dirty and Being Exposed to Germs Boost Your Health? Retrieved September 3, 2020, from https://health.usnews.com/wellness/articles/hygiene-hypothesis-could-more-dirt-and-germs-boost-your-health Pop ups everywhere Not the only one complaining about undesired promotional or cookies advisor poping up my browser when going into a website. It actually is becoming one of the trends for 2020-2021 Design Trends to get rid of pop ups. Based on experience I have seen people close such as soon as they come up without even looking at what it said because it distracted them form what they were looking for. (Bowers, Toptal 2019) Bowers, M. (2019, December 10). Looking at the Future – Design Trends of 2020. Retrieved September 3, 2020, from https://www.toptal.com/designers/ux/digital-design-trends-2020 Not equal access to technology and/or internet for remote learning Again COVID-19 shook our lives pretty harsh and pretty quickly. The most affected is the education system having to go into remote learning and even thought we live on a first world country there is still people with technological disadvantages. Me been one one them, either there are people with no computer or with no internet access. A quick solution that Mexico presented was doing school on TV, but there might be other ways to do it where everyone gets access and is expected an equal amount of work to be turned in. (BBC News,2020) In pictures: Mexico school classes resume on TV. (2020, August 26). Retrieved September 3, 2020, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-53917882 Inefficient public transportation Is no mystery for those people, like me at some point, that is incredibly ridiculous how it takes 30 minutes i a car to do a 25 miles trip but on public transportation it takes you roughly 2 hours to fo the same trip distance. Personally is frustrating, couple friend and family find it mesmerizing that a first world country doesn't have good public transportation, that even Mexico can do better on that end. Some articles mention that people use Uber or Lyft as an alternative, but unless you are in a good financial state, it is an expensive alternative. (Sisson, Curbed 2019) Sisson, P. (2019, January 02). 10 challenges that will define cities in 2019. Retrieved September 3, 2020, from https://www.curbed.com/2019/1/2/18165392/2019-cities-housing-transit-traffic-big-tech Tons of food waste This seems more of a worldwide issue, millions of tons of food gets wasted every year and most is of unsold goods. Most of this are vegetables or fruits that even if they have a little tiny dent, people no longer want it and wont buy it; therefor is a loss on revenue for companies and a waste of really good food that eventually contributes to climate change. There has been several food banks in the US working on reducing food waste but it is still a big problem today. (Food Prints, 2020) Food Waste Is a Massive Problem-Here's Why. (2020, April 15). Retrieved September 3, 2020, from https://foodprint.org/issues/the-problem-of-food-waste/ Forgetting where you parked EVERYBODY suffers of this everyday. Every time you go to store is a struggle to remember where was it that you parked so you just walk around the parking lot until you find your car. In the summer not such an issue but in winter is a rough experience, specially if in a rush. When asked people around about it some suggested having like an app that had the exact location like FindmyiPhone kind of app where you can track 24/7 your cars location. Which would be good, specially when they steal your car you could just go into the app and see where it is. (College Times Staff, 2017) Staff, C. (2017, December 09). 32 Ultimate First World Problems That Everyone Faces. Retrieved September 3, 2020, from https://www.collegetimes.com/entertainment/ultimate-first-world-problems-90543 Buying clothes online Every single time I think about buying clothes online comes to mind order fails or clothing expectation fails that flood social media. Is impressive how much companies spend on convincing you to buy online but still have not figured out a way for us to try on the clothes first, in some way, shape or form, so there would not be a need to return them. But no is like playing the lottery, sometimes you win and looks fabulous on you ro most of the time you loose and look horrendous. Most people I asked mentioned that they buy online either one they had try it on in a store and saw it cheaper online or they simply buy everything else online just no shoes or clothes. (Hanbury, Business Insider 2018) Hanbury, M. (2018, September 29). Startups are on the brink of solving one of the biggest problems with shopping online. Retrieved September 3, 2020, from https://www.businessinsider.com/startups-fix-clothing-fit-with-tech-2018-8 

Strategies Building a thesis on a design realm is quit the job compared to the rest of thesis for a Bachelor's degree. With this in mind, I have come to realize that it might be a good starting point for all my short, mid, and long term. For short terms I think starting my thesis research will help me focus more on what I want to do next semester as the final product without having to worry about both things at once during one semester. For mid-term goals, I think my thesis research will help me know what is the important information to put out there for a possible client to see. It would be a good practice to know how extensive and rigorous research can be for a project no matter the size of it. For long term goals my thesis will be so helpful to establish the foundation of all future jobs that my firm will do, since it will show the depth, time, and dedication I put to every project I embark myself into, it will demonstrate to clients that I don't work on projects just because of money but rather to help them grow since there is so much research involved about the client, its costumers, competitors, market, etcetera. However, part of my strategy is to gain more hands-on experience which takes a long time to gain. But with the amount of family, and friends I like to believe that it might take a few years to gain enough to reach my long term goal before my 10 year mark. For example, right now I am working on the re branding for Beta Event Center, formerly Beta Nightclub. Also, working with a friend to get his photography gallery started, both projects being pro-bono in order to both gain experience within the field and grow my portfolio. Like in any project, there are things that I need to improve on like written and verbal communication plus fully developing my geeky side by learning back end and design web design coding for which I both enrolled myself to the web design class plus been developing a mentor relationship with the professor of the same class in order to grow more on that field, which I want to fully embark myself on going into the work field. So far, if I am honest, time will be my biggest obstacle since I work full time, I am a full time single mom, working on building a firm from the ground up, and I go to school full time, I am struggling to keep up with homework I really try to keep things on an agenda in order to turn in things on time but sometimes is just not as simple, sometimes I need more time to get things done. I hope that as time passes by working on this thesis helps me out on my time management in order to finish things on a timely manner. Resources Next is a list of resources I think are beneficial when it comes to learn new design related skills as well as entrepreneurial and self-growth skills like communication and finding value within yourself. Designers + Geeks is a Facebook group that has online events that teach how to code, tips on branding, dealing with clients, etcetera. Adobe Creative Cloud as part of their membership offers constant webinars and crash courses relate to arts Ben Eveloff is a great mentor in web design business Matthew Yelick is a good coworker which is more than knowledgeable in back end coding AIGA offers really good conventions, seminars, and webinars so related to the always changing field of design HOW Design conference to keep up to date technologies and procedures on the design world Timelines By the end of September I want to have a research question ready to start my research. This involves more deep self-search in order to know what I want to focus on from now on. This might include mini personal projects in different design areas to know which I enjoyed most doing and which I didn't. By mid-October I would like to have finished the new brand for Beta Event Center. This will require me to dig a little deeper into its story, why the name, and the new direction they want to take in order to have the brand evolve. Throughout this semester I want to conduct my own research as to what kind of business is the best from me to develop as a designer in order to make my business official, hope that by the end of the semester I have filed all the paperwork needed. Throughout the semester I plan on staying in touch with my mentors and attend as much webinars as possible in order to grow my skill set. So far I have seen 2 seminars from Adobe Creative Cloud and one from Designers + Geeks which focus on growing traffic to your website and how to make three-dimensional illustrations through coding.

Being a designer brings a lot of thoughts and interests that sometimes is just hard to focus on the most important ones at the moment. As part of this journey during my Thesis Research I've come to realize that I have some really important values that I would like to keep. TOP 5 VALUES 1. Accomplishment 2. Challenge 3. Open-minded 4. Entrepreneurship 5. Ambition However, I have to be honest and say that some of these are not in aligned with my current life while others are. On a scale of 1 to 5, Accomplishment would be a 2 because in a sense I feel accomplished of how far I've gotten regardless of working full time and turning into a single mom mid-way through design school, I haven't given up on finishing school and starting my own design firm. Challenge for me means working on a wide range of projects, meaning types of businesses along their unique needs and to not always have it easy, I like to feel like I have to work twice as hard reason I think it would be a 3 on the scale. Open-minded is going to be a strong 1, because even though I would like to say I have fresh ideas, and I am very receptive to new things I definitely am not, but I am working on it in order to see that on my clients as well. Entrepreneurship is a strong 5, since I started my own design firm brand which focuses on helping small businesses within the Latino community. Lastly, Ambition with a strong 3 simply because I like to reach for more, my main goal is to be one of the major design firms in America but only time and projects will tell. However I like the ambition to learn new trends, techniques, and design methods in order to expand my horizons and skills. From this list I think the major value that will both help me on my professional career and personal happiness is Ambition. I would like to use my Thesis as a starting point to better align with this value. For starters I would like to decide on a theme within my subject of interest, UX/UI design, which goes farther into anything I've done so far, this will imply doing a retrospective study of my capabilities (Look Skills and Weaknesses). Afterwards, I plan on having an inspiration board or something similar to keep me focused on my short term goal: finish school as strong as possible. I plan on having a complete Thesis Research done by the end of November, so I can focus on my mid-term goal, which is to start my own design firm where I focus on helping Latino businesses find their niche and use it in order to build brand that will allow them to grow. With this I think my passion really is to help small businesses like mine especially for those minority's businesses. If I could I would do pro bono work to help all small businesses to find what they are good at and use it to grow their income, however that is not the case. But these doesn't takes away my passion to help, sometimes they not be able to pay what would be a fair price for my services but sometimes I feel like helping a business for half the pay is worth so much more because I am following my passion to help those in need through my skill, design. Personally, and I might be wrong, I think this passion I have to help entrepreneur people succeed comes from the people in my life that helped and pushed me to do better than the majority of people within my community. When so many people were there to support me and push me to be better, reach for my own business, it made me feel so much good about myself, it made me feel loved. I like that feeling, and I want to be the person that spreads that love and mind set, share that we can always grow for better. These values that I have uphold along with my passion to help others has made me realize that my purpose as a designer is to be the mentor, for lack of a better word, to the Latino community starting small businesses that wants to grow and be of benefit to the community but that at the moment can't afford a super fancy design firm. At the moment I am helping a family friend with his website in order for him to be out there, to officially become a real business. Since I'm sort of using him as a lab rat to polish my skills in marketing and web design I am doing this project as pro bono in hopes that it will help both of us. In a way I feel like this has helped me out to reach that goal to help small businesses because lately I have been getting more requests to work for small local businesses like Beta Nightclub, which I would've never thought I would work with but thanks to those small "free" projects I've done here and there now I am starting to grow into those more difficult markets for mid-size businesses. Where I am right now really reflects my progression since I started my journey in Design School, because I feel I have grown so much since then. When I started school I barely knew how to create a new document on Illustrator and now, even though I don't love it, I am able to create motion graphics on After Effects and even do 3D Models with Cinema 4D. My skills, passions, purpose, values, and goals have gone through so much and have changed million times before I finally figured out what I am good at and to this moment where I am starting to get involved with projects I really feel connected with somehow. Since I know what I want for my career path, now what keeps me motivated is to grow into bigger or more difficult projects. Having that challenge of "What do they need? How can I be helpful to them?" is what makes me want to get up and help businesses with their design needs, it fulfills my sense of purpose of helping people out. SHORT TERM GOALS Decide on a thesis project along my career interests Finish Design school as strong as possible Develop a strong new brand for Beta Nightclub MID TERM GOALS Grow my portfolio, even if it means do some free projects once in a while Fully establish my design firm as a small business, meaning getting licenses and taxes set up. LONG TERM GOALS Have my design firm run without me being there 24/7 Decide which projects to work on for pay and which would be good to do pro bono Be able to give, even if is small, scholarship to Latino students and Single moms in Design through my firm Hope that after reading my interests, values, purpose, and goals that you feel empowered to do the same. Now is the time to share: What are your primary interests and goals?

Part of my Thesis Research class requires I write a blog about my journey through such. What better way to start off than by writing a Self-Assessment. One always gets asked: What is something you are good at? We think the question and answer are quite simple. However, the real question should be: What are one's professional interests, knowledge, skills, strengths, and weaknesses? Here the answer is more difficult to articulate at once. In my attempt to answer that same question, I have come to see that most of the answer lies within a recent project for which I am very proud of. On a prior class I did a website, www.weddingsbyrenzo.com , as part of a project. Through this project, came evident that being persistent and eager to learn one can accomplish almost anything. With time, I have found out that on every project I tend to be the one person that takes the leadership role: I would schedule things, create goals, do checkups, organize ideas, keep things go as planned. Is not an easy role, but the fact I'm an older sibling might be the reason I was able to take on such role without hesitating. After all, in life we always come to a moment when we must overcome an obstacle, mine being able to ask for help and guidance when I don't know the subject. In such cases I use my organizational skills and pin it on a calendar to go and ask an expert on such subject, without marking it down until i do so. Personally is frustrating but helps since I have a mild OCD problem so whatever I write on my agenda I have to do it. These skills get me praises from close colleagues because if I didn't keep everything written down, I would probably forget about half of my to-do's and would never finish projects. TOP 5 STRENGHTS Organization Costumer Service Patience Listener Problem-solver After long self-research, I came up with this top 5 strengths of mine. This been that the top 2 are the ones I have master not only through school and day to day experiences; but, at the jobs I've had have always been a pivotal role on my positions. The two after are ones I am not particularly most excited to use on a daily basis, but I am most proud of since they are my secret master skills until today. Can't say there are some of the skills on the list that are more important than other, since all of them together help build a successful business: which is my final goal. Although, I feel there is room for improvement, a skill I would like to acquire is curiosity. I love research and numbers but when it comes to find answers that are way out of reach, I simply give up. This is a skill I have to acquire if I want to stay relevant. Now the fun part, my weaknesses. In this category I feel is more focused to my capacity as a UI/UX Designer rather than as a designer overall. By this I mean that i think I am a strong UI/UX designer, however, i lack the skill of being able to do the back end and overall coding of a website or an app. As a designer I feel competent to do logos, posters, some video editing; but when it comes to heavy illustration motion graphics I feel just like the Titanic hitting the iceberg. Simply I have no interest on such field and I haven't dedicated much time to learn more about how to use the software for such purpose. For example, a project that I really found interesting because included in a way coding, motions graphics, and UI/UX was a project for Creative Coding class where I used Houdini in order to do an audio visualization/motion graphic. TOP 3 WEAKNESSES Intro level coding knowledge Not enough curiosity Basic video/motion editing knowledge These are the most notorious weaknesses I found so far. I have become aware that when on a team these play a major role as to what roles not to fall into, for instance not being in charge of the motion piece of the project, or having to do all of the research on my own. Not that I won't do it, simply prefer not to be put into those position but if needed I would ask for someone more competent than me on those fields to be my partner. It has come to my attention that this weak skills come from both a lack of interest in learning more about it and a lack of training, something that if given the time and right tools could be fixed. Simply between school, work, home, motherhood, starting a business, and taking care of myself it is difficult to find time to polish skills. *Not an excuse, more of an observation.* Due to this weaknesses I would like to use my Thesis project to work on these. Not sure exactly yet how my thesis will align with my weaknesses but I'm confident that within a few weeks my strengths will help me decide that real quickly.