new KacyDukeFitness.com launched

On February 17, Kacy Duke launched her new web site.

• Read about her Philosophy of Self
• Check our her book The Show It Love Workout
• Learn new recipes for luscious, healthy meals and snacks
• Exercise along with Kacy by following the Woman Warrior exercises on the site or podcasts for home and gym workouts
• Listen to music she selected for her Show It Love Weekend Workshop
• Sign up for her signature Underground Groove group exercise events
• Watch a video about Kacy’s ability to sculpt some of the hottest celebrity bodies around

design implications

The following criteria will be used in the creating all deliverables for this studio project.

empowering
Realize inner strength, grace and beauty without demeaning men or perpetuating stereotypes.

emotional
Tap into sensuality and passion as a way of integrating responsibilities and interest into self.

accessible
Make activities and information easy to understand and integrate into everyday life.

non-hierarchical
Foster an environment where everyone feels welcome and able to contribute regardless of experience, skill or seniority.

worry-free & guilt-free
Provide encouragement and support for women to take time for self.

balancing act: survey responses

An online survey asked 162 women about their daily routine, lifestyle and
their perceptions of women, femininity and empowerment.

Responses showed that women struggle to strike a balance between their
responsibilities and taking time for themselves to do what they enjoy. Many
women said they avoid taking time for themselves because of guilt or worry
for perceived neglect of their responsibilities.

super women: research participants

The participant group for my research project was selected based on who I could access throughout the process.

• age 18 to 55
• works full- or part-time and/or attends school full- or part-time
• responsible for the care of others and other forms of unpaid work
• lacks time for herself
• enjoys socializing with friends

thesis poster: design opportunity

Support for organizations in the women’s movement has decreased over the past two decades. When I was employed by the largest feminist organization in the country, I learned that many women want to participate or get more involved, but don’t. Often they’re deterred by lack of time and money, or conflicting ideology, both liberal and conservative. At the time, I was unprepared to tackle the issue. But now with more professional experience and human-centered research, designing an organization that considers the needs and desires of women is finally within reach.

With this as a starting point for my thesis, I approached Kacy Duke, a celebrity fitness trainer in New York, who I had been working with to redesign her web site. While building the site, I learned a tremendous amount about her general philosophy of self – the greatness is in you – and her holistic approach to fitness.

Kacy explains that if you don’t first address the emotional relationship you have with food and your body, no fitness or weight-loss plan will be successful. Work on the emotional first, the spiritual second, then the physical happens naturally: love yourself and your body and it will love you back. With that in mind, I set off to design a way for Kacy Duke to teach the world how to Show It Love™.

thank you

As part of the requirements for my thesis project, I had to create a poster that displays my research and concepts thus far. A week of blood, sweat and tears went into this, as well as significant input from friends and designers who I would like to thank.

Kirk Alan Johns, for your penultimate art direction and insight into the Kacy Duke brand

Kacy Duke, for your continuing support and inspiration, this project wouldn’t exist without your love and light

Kristin Hughes, for your patience and infinite design wisdom

Mark Minnerly, for your keen sense of structure and ability to see the “whole” among the parts

Phil Robinson, for your unabashed honesty and criticism, as well as random, weird URL links in the wee hours of morning

Marina Posniak, for your company and support through this harried process, and for sharing the peanut butter brownies

thesis poster in-progress

On December 12, Carnegie Mellon School of Design will hold a thesis poster session. All of the second-year design grads create a poster that explains their project, their findings so far, and most importantly what they’ll make.

The session gives grads the opportunity to get feedback and go through the rigor of explaining their research to fresh ears and showing what they’ve found to fresh eyes.

Here’s a rundown of the content for my poster.

What I’ll make

• A workshop framework and a communications plan to foster community before and after
• In addition to the actual end product, this section will cover some basic design criteria for the product. Design criteria is based on my own experience and research I’ve done thus far. Some of the ones I have already
  • accessibility: participation shouldn’t be limited or deterred by lack of time or money
  • positive: should not perpetuate negative stereotypes of women or feminism; should not pit women against each other; empower women without demeaning men
  • non-hierarchical: it’s not a race, it’s just you – there’s no hill to climb, just a new path to take; flat, organizational-learning structure – no queen bees, just sisters – everyone’s got something to contribute no matter where they fall on the spectrum.

Who I’m making it for

• at least 3 personas of women, ages 15 to 55, English-speaking, non-pregnant, who have internet access, either work full-time in some capacity or go to school full-time or a portion of both (think super busy woman who might feel guilty to varying degrees about taking time for herself)
• Kacy Duke to implement and carry on (so however this is packaged in the end needs to make sense to her)

Why am I making it

• some articulation of current state (so that the future state of workshop and community make sense as a future state) based on research

How I’ll make it

• research activities left to do
  • home visits
  • self portraits
  • card-sorting of images for self-portrait (which image evokes which emotion, if any at all)
  • map-making (map out women’s individual networks of other women)
  • journal
  • hold event(s): observe, collect data, survey, record
• timeline of activities to completion

and the survey says…

nothing yet… I just sent the link out for my first web survey as part of my thesis research.

I developed the survey with the hope of getting some general demographic information, potential research participants, and perceptions of major themes of my research: women, empowerment, leadership, etc.

I capped the response collector at 1,000. ha! We’ll see how it goes.

If you haven’t taken the survey yet, please do.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=S8KrkhjpU6SQdXBgErcbZQ_3d_3

it’s go time!

I received approval from the IRB today, so I can move forward with my research… finally!

purpose of research: IRB application

Since my thesis research will involve human subjects, I need to have my research protocols approved by the Institutional Review Board at my school, Carnegie Mellon University. The review ensures that my research doesn’t pose a mental, physical or psychological risk to those participating in my research. Part of the application requires a description of the purpose of the research. It’s pretty much an expanded version of my original proposal. Hopefully the purpose of my research becomes more clear as this process continues. *fingers crossed*

An abstract of the proposal
This project addresses the problem of decreased membership in, support for and national prominence of formal women’s organizations. Having worked for the largest women’s organization in the United States, I attribute this decrease, in part, to the design (or lack of design) of such organizations: most national women’s organizations have not been designed with the needs of the women they intend to serve in mind. Often, women are deterred from participating in and benefiting from formal women’s organizations, either due to lack of time and money, or because of conflicting ideology, both liberal and conservative. And since most women’s organizations attempt to bring about equality or equity for women, a women’s organization that is not designed for all women serves no women well.

The decrease in participation does not mean women do not wield incredible influence in our society. Presidential elections are just one example. Since women won suffrage in 1919, presidential candidates win or lose, depending on which way women cast their vote. In fact, winning the right to vote is another example. Suffrage was largely won by women in small towns and cities across the country – women who were so inspired that they marched, rallied and lobbied tirelessly until the pressure they exerted in their hometowns was felt in Washington, DC and the 19th amendment was passed.

Yet, almost 100 years later, we live in a country where the gender wage gaps continues to widen, where much of women’s work goes unpaid, where sexual harassment and discrimination occur in almost every workplace, where one in six women will experience sexual assault, and where reproductive rights continue to erode.

This project aims to harness women’s untapped potential to bring about positive change in the areas they choose. Information and insight gained through aforementioned research activities will aid in the design of tools, materials and a framework by which women can empower themselves and members of their formal and informal networks of other women to achieve self-determined goals.