Design Workshop at Dartmouth's Dali Lab
More than just a visual phenomenon, color has emotional and cultural dimensions that can enhance or impede communication efforts. This workshop will provide you with guidelines and tips to keep in mind when choosing colors for projects as well as for providing a better understanding of color as a universal language.
The Dali Lab inside Dartmouth is an innovation lab where students design and build technology tools alongside partners. The development of these tools help change behaviors, elevate design thinking and drive change in different industries. The students that work inside the lab gain education revolving around the main pillars of experiential learning, leadership, problem solving and hands-on real world projects. Designers learn to develop and developers learn to design.
The Invitation
I was invited by the Dali Lab founders to give a workshop on design. The name of the workshop was called "Lost (and found) in Translation: A Workshop on Color Perception and Empathy" to focus on the power of color and the influential messages color creates. The outcome was for students to take into consideration how each visual choice carries a set of stories and that understanding your audience is key for a successful product.
This workshop merged design thinking, the power of color and empathy. The students in the workshop came from different fields such as computer engineering and programming.
The image on the left is the invitation that was sent to students in the campus. I created the branding for the workshop.
The Workshop
The objective of the workshop was to teach the ideation method of affinitization. The purpose was to tell stories through colors by affinitizing, which breaks traditional patterns of thinking.
Through affinitization students are able to make connections with the use of different words and phrases and create user stories. These user stories give insights about potential solutions to current problems.
Students were given a phrase and they had to connect these phrases with the different colors presented.
The Rules
1. 10 minutes of grouping phrases
2. Maximum 6 phrase cards per color
3. Grouping is done in silence
4. Do not overthink your choices
5. You may move cards around that have
already been placed.
Making Connections
Students learn how to make unexpected connections through different phrases that have been grouped together through color. Colors carry stories and connotations and it is important to empathize with users before making design decisions.
The final outcome is a first-person user story that provides insight on a current human need.