Thought 49: Trend Videos + Disney World 🏰

How do I make personal effective design choices?

For our first Maker 10 project, we were given the opportunity to go on our largest and most ambitious field study yet, but getting there would be a challenge.

Maker 10 is the PLP design course, and for our first project, we would design and produce 5 “trend videos” using various management tools. A trend video is basically just a viral video you would see on TikTok or Instagram, but our videos would all be filmed at the happiest place on earth, Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

But before getting anywhere close to February 25th, our date for leaving to Orlando, we had many things to do. The first thing we did was a Personal Productivity System. The PPS is a series of tasks used to organize your work and become more productive. The way we developed this involves 2 repeating tasks in Things: A twice daily review, and a weekly review. The daily reviews are for simple things, like checking your calendar or things to do’s, and the weekly review is to clear your workspace, reflect on your week, and plan for the next. I found the daily review to be somewhat helpful, because I have to open Things to mark it complete, and I can check my To Do’s from there, but I found the weekly review to be pretty useless. Maybe its just not good for me, but I found most of it to be very long and tedious, and not much benefit from it. I am usually pretty organized with my files and device, so I didn’t really feel the need to get organized, reflecting on my week didn’t really matter because I already did a short mental reflection during the Daily Reviews, and I couldn’t really force myself into being creative in the moment I was doing the reflection. I guess I’ll keep trying it to see if I see a benefit in the future.

Our next task was to create a plan for our trend videos. We did this by using a research and planning sheet and creating storyboards. I eventually came up with my ideas for my 5 trend videos, 3 by myself, and 2 with a group.

Our last step was to create a Things project, showing each of the steps we would take to make our videos. A project in Things is basically just a list of tasks that are categorized into the same topic. After we made our projects, we created demo videos, showing what we wanted our trend videos to look like, so we could reflect on them before flying out to Florida. One thing I did differently from most people was I edited my videos in iMovie instead of TikTok, simply because I don’t like TikTok.

It was definitely challenging to finish all of this before the big day, especially since we had a few other projects we needed to do in Florida, but luckily, everyone was finished and we were ready to leave.

Late in the night of the 24th, the night before we were supposed to leave, we received a  devastating email from Mr Hughes. WestJet had cancelled our flight, supposedly due to “weather reasons.” Many flights that night were cancelled that night because it was supposed to snow, but our flight was in the morning, when it wasn’t snowing, which was very confusing. The teachers and families worked together throughout the weekend to find a solution. The teachers stayed on the phone constantly, finding new available flights, moving reservations, and more to make sure we were able to put on another flight on February 28th. We were all extremely grateful and thankful that we had a solution and the teachers cared enough to make it happen. There was one problem with the new date, and it only affected me. I had to leave the trip a few days early because my family was going on a trip for spring break the day everyone else would be returning, on March 8th, but since our returning flight wasn’t cancelled, I was able to leave on our original returning flight on March 5th.

On our flight to Orlando, we had a layover in Salt Lake City, which gave me the opportunity to film one of my trend videos. I went around the terminal asking my friends to show off their outfits in a “fit check” style of video.

The day after we arrived in Disney world, we went to Magic Kingdom, where I filmed my second trend video during the nightly fireworks show. In my video, I pretended to be bored with the fireworks show, and instead started to watch the highly intellectual and comedically influential show Family Guy on my phone. Despite how it looks in the video, the fireworks show was one of my favourite moments during the whole trip.

On the 3rd day, we went to EPCOT, where I filmed my first group video with Max and Zach. We were given a bit of free time in the evening, so we went to Club Cool, which is kind of like a Coca-Cola gift shop. One cool thing at Club Cool is they allow you to test different flavours of popular drinks from around the world for free. We made a video trying the different flavours and determining if they were good or bad, “ass or gas” if you will. In my opinion, the best drink was Lychee Apple Juice from South Korea and the worst flavour was Smart Sour Plum Fanta from China.

On my last day I filmed 2 of my videos. We were able to wake up later that day because we didn’t have to leave the hotel until 1:00 PM. Unfortunately, we were so tired that we slept in until 11:00. It could be because me and Max stayed up late watching movies, but I think it was the magic of Disney that gave us sweet dreams.

In the morning, Zach, Max, and I filmed a dance video in front of the pool at the hotel. I’m not sure if this was more embarrassing than the Family Guy video. The second video was filmed at night, but I was planning on doing it in the morning, but we slept in. My last video was a “Get Ready With Me” video, where I made my outfit for the airport the next day. I think my video is unique from other videos in this style, because those are more relaxing, but my roommates thought it would be silly to make a disturbance in the background. I realized I forgot to show myself wearing the outfit, so I took a photo during my layover in Seattle, in the SEA “Kids Zone” where I was trapped for 5 hours. 

To answer the driving question, design choices are made by combining creativity and personal style with productivity and a motivation to create. I could have thought of the ideas for my videos on my own, but without a personal productivity system, I probably wouldn’t have actually made them. In conclusion, I had a really great time on the trip, and I wish I could have stayed longer, but nonetheless, I am very thankful that the teachers were still able to make the trip happen despite the challenges.