#LAPASSIONUY
Macarena Vázquez
My name is Macarena Vázquez. I’m 27 years old. I was born in Cardona (Uruguay) and I started the University in Montevideo, the capital, where I currently live. I’m studying Psychology in the Republic University and since March I’m working on this project to improve my skills and at the same time contribute to the community.
This week, the first one, was the opportunity to break the ice and get to know us. Through games, interactive activities, working in small groups and alone, we achieve the most important before starting with the project: knowing our strengths and weaknesses in a group and multicultural environment.
The second week of working was an introduction of the topic. We begin by contacting the population with whom we are going to work, through several interviews we obtained important information to detect insights that will help us to find the problem. I consider that this week was crucial to get involved with the topic, to get in touch with the users and to know the current educational reality.
Week 2
Week 1
During the week number three, and almost a month after starting the project, we continued working with the information obtained in the interviews. We tried to find the insights of the problems and selected only four of the ten problems chosen. In this stage, we tried to narrow our field of work to focus in a specific issue. Let’s see what comes next!
Week 3
Week 4
This week was uncommon due to the fact we travelled by bus to the Utec located in Durazno, where we worked in the project Bricks and Bits, a way to redesign an existing toy in another one. It was a challenging and creative task that mantained us expectant of what the child would expect of us in relation to the new toy.
Week 5
We are almost concluding April and we are still thinking about the idea, it was a big challenge to think about it and we are still defining which is the best idea! I thought work on an idea would be easier but actually is a hard task that require time, effort and be persistent to arrive to a good one. We are closer to the final idea but we need to test some aspects to continue working on it. The following week we will be on vacations but I'm sure we will be still thinking about how to improve the idea before starting the final week of April.
Week 6
We started our holidays testing our idea and concluding that it wasn't a good one. Personally I took the opportunity to visit my family and friends, enjoying the free time and the sunny days. At the end of the holidays I went to a night visit to the Pittamiglio Castle, an historic and mysterious castle located in front of the ´Rambla´, in Montevideo.
Week 7
After working in the idea to improve the quality life of children, we made the presentation of our product in front of the class. Although the feedback wasn´t so good because the product had some aspects to adjust, we maintained the idea and we are still working on it. There is a Albert Einstein’s quote that says: “If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it”.
Week 8
Trying to define a product isn’t an easy task, define the parts, the internal mechanism, the design... when you think that the task is complete, you arrive to the conclusion that actually there are incomplete aspects or that must be redefined. We were all the class thinking about it and talking with the teachers, receiving feedback and new ideas. Testing and prototypes were two issues that we worked at the end of the week.
Everything in life has a beginning and an end and now it is time to finish with this project that kept us working for two months. It was a challenging, intensive and multicultural experience that improved us in several aspects. Thanks for the experience and keep walking!
Week 10
The project had a duration of 10 weeks and we are now finishing week Nº9, time flies!
we are finishing the countdown and there are still things to do, design of Saki, poster, final presentation, blog, and the list continues… Let’s prepare to close this challenging experience by giving the best!