This is a process blog for the creation of my Thesis at the Academy of Art University of San Francisco.

February 12, 2017

As I assemble this work I am looking out of the window at a rainy New York view, Bryant park is a block away and there is a sea of umbrellas going by. I have never been to New York and I have made it a point to try and understand this city a little better.

I know that we are not supposed to design the raw data, but I thought it would be good to give it a flavor that fits with the work from GR 600. At this point I have only done raw research, gathering as much as I can about what is being and has been done about equine helmet wear. I discovered two main organizations in the US dedicated to the subject. Most agree that western riders are the biggest challenge. The word stigma is used extensively.

After sending feelers out I have already gotten two letters from mothers that have had young adult children who have come off of their horses with severe injuries. One is wheel chair bound but would have likely been dead she not been wearing a helmet. I am noticing a that the majority of competitive riders are female and so there seems to be quite a bit more on female riders out there. Christopher Reeves and his equine injury is the most famous male injury and he was wearing a helmet when he came off.

It will be very interesting to assemble a survey.

Lewis Franklin

February 19, 2017

We are on week two of the quantitative research phase.  We have begun to assemble questioners, but these are in the early phases and will most likely be extensively modified. Week 7 is where all of the research needs to completed. In this latest PDF you will find a large research to include audience, topic and outcome. It is a bit hard to say my outcome is to somehow get everyone to start wearing helmets, but maybe we can get a few, even one would be worth it.

In this post you will find a few new insights along with all of the rest.

Lewis Franklin

February 26, 2017

During this week I needed to do quite a bit of revision work on my questioner and so it was not out to the test groups by today as I had hoped. I will begin to schedule interviews this week so that I can gain deeper insights.

I have been really digging through background research again to further expand my understanding of laws associated with horses.

Lewis Franklin

If you have trouble getting the submit form to work on these forms please just fill them out and send them to...

lewis@everyrideeveryday.com

March 6, 2017

This week was tough, I have had many issues with Adobe Acrobat forms. This was the first time that I had used the ditribute and collect functions and it did not go well. I am thinking that it might be because of all of the secerity functions now in Windows and how few actually had Acrobat Reader.

In an effort to remmidy this, I have turned to Survey Monkey. The reason that I had not used this tool is because you really cannot design the survey which I had thought was a critical piece. As I was inputing questions I have found some additional errors. Reading the instructions, I will continue to collect these until I get enough responses, if this fails I will go ahead and pay Survey Monkey to find a larger sampling.

Here are the PDFs for this week that includes an SD chart, some raw data and revised insight slides.

Lewis Franklin

March 12, 2017

A much better week. The survey using Survey Monkey was very successful. I was able to use a Horse sell and trade web site to get a much larger sampling. I will say that the data is a little skued because the majority of respondents were female. This may be a reflection of horse riding statistics or it may be that men are just less inclined to respond to surveys.

In any case I was able to get 176 responses, 26 within the target group. I have gotten 6 interviews within the target group and I still have more in the coming week.

The DS chart is coming along and deliverables are starting to take shape.

March 19, 2017

I was able to talk with ten people in my target audience and did find another key insight as part of that process.

April 3, 2017

Just prior to Spring Break I had finished thise set of 20 slides that include insights and a chart of possible deliverables based on my research into the target audience. The PDF below is the version of these slides as of the date of this posting.

April 10, 2017

Have begun doing pulls to try and develop a new logo. These are sitting on my personal pinterest website. I wonder if it would be a good idea to do a mood board.

April 16, 2017

Started with this list of “keywords”

Protect
Safe
Ease
Instant
Hard
Attractive
Fun
Care
Pain
Danger

Narrowed it down to 3 words

Protect
Instant
Ease

Pinterest Links

Protect

Instant

Ease

Organization name thoughts.
Saferide Safe Ride
Helmet Safe
Right Head
Cool Cap
Everyride
Helmet Smart
Safe & Sensible
Horse Armor
Horsegear
Safe Topper
Safe & Sound
Brain Bucket
Horse Helm
Cranium Can
ProtectaHead
Capper
Not an Option
Choose Safe
Wear It
Smart Ride
Good Ride
Wise Ride
Head Wise
Helmet Savvy
Helmet Sassy

Also starting work on the promotional video by creating some story boards.

April 23, 2017

Really challenged by video, not my field. I need to get some books on Premiere and After Effects. Spending most of the week in Florida at the Photoshop World conference. Not doing well getting work done between meetings and jetlag.

April 29, 2017

Working through revisions of the logo the matrix and the DS chart this week. Have downloaded current Creative Cloud for video and web apps but leaving illustrator, photoshop and iIndesign in CS6 until they upgrade my classrooms. Discovered an amazing new application (new to me) called Muse which is my likely tool to create this initial web site. Wordpress will be important in the coming years but I am just not in a position for that right now.

May 7, 2017

Creating roughs of web site and created a storyboard for my video concept. Downloaded some rodeo footage to help with that. Continuing updates to Matrix and DS chart. Getting close to a final logo.

May 14, 2017

Module 13

Well I seem to be having issues finding some of my previous blogs so I will post this one for now and the others
when I find the word files.

This week I was able to get the thesis website up, create the promotional video (first version), went through three
drafts of my bio, my one sheet for the identity, several revisions of the Materials matrix and the DS chart. So it was
a very productive week.

The web site can be found at www.saferide.horse and I have included the three PDFs for the print projects for this module.

May 21, 2017

Not an easy week of work. I am challanged by the video portion of this project and getting very frustrated. I have renewed interest in doing a decent job on my thesis since it could actually become a real thing if done correctly.

Was able to get the corrections done to the DS chart, and materials matrix. Updated the single with new colors and a small revision to the logo. Completed the timline for the next two classes in this series which I will not start taking until Spring 2018.