My Rewritten Proposal

I have used all of my resources to get this proposal rewritten. I hope you understand what my point is. Thanks!

In every day life people experience many events where they forget things, whether they are minor or major. For example, they might forget to bring their keys so they can not get in the houses. Forgetfulness indeed brings us troubles. As a result, people usually have a bad feeling about it. We often associate forgetfulness with unintelligence, aging, and illness, such as Alzheimer’s disease. There are many causes of forgetfulness, and scientists are yet to discover even more. In fact, we all have moments when we forget things. None of us wants to forget things, but sometimes it is just inevitable. People should not be so hard on themselves when forgetfulness strikes.

I propose to create design to break the negative associations of forgetfulness. I am going to show that forgetfulness can be a vivid and humorous natural phenomenon in humans, by visualizing and personalizing its characteristics, instead of a potential negative medical symptom.

The objective of this project is to enhance people’s understanding of forgetfulness to change their negative feelings towards forgetfulness into being slightly more relaxed and forgiving.

Aging is a natural and unavoidable factor in affecting forgetfulness. Targeting an elderly audience whose memories have been declining due to aging will be disrespectful. Thus, this project is aimed towards a demographic that is relatively young and within the age group of sixteen to twenty-five-year olds who have an optimum memory capacity. I am confident in targeting this audience because of my similarity in age. This audience is the most active, and they will come across many situations where they will forget things. Not only once, but several times I found unplugged USB sticks in our computer rooms. People with experiences such as those who left their USB sticks are some typical examples of my target audience. Stress from studies might be the cause of their forgetfulness; after missing their important belongings, more stress and unpleasantness is added to them. This forms a vicious circle. As well, those lost objects usually can be found at the same spots or in the lost-and-found. In this sense, the extra stress caused by forgetfulness is a huge hassle and causes a lot of frustration. They should have a less anxiety filled attitude towards forgetfulness because if you give it some time you will realize the situation can be resolved.

After researching some scientific studies, I believe forgetfulness has an interesting mechanism called retrieval failure, which is where forgetting occurs when the correct retrieval cues are not produced to get at the contents from a person’s memory. A metaphor is an ideal tool to visualize this mechanism. Moreover, I will be communicating situations of forgetfulness that we have commonly encountered to evoke a strong echo of the target audience’s own experience.

There are many scientific writings about forgetfulness including a lot of surprising and innovative findings. For example, a study says forgetfulness is a tool of the brain to prevent us from being confused by overwhelming information. This type of research is going to be the reference of the metaphor for forgetfulness. In order to develop the project’s personality, a primary research aid such as a survey is necessary. I am going to ask the following questions: What do people usually forget? Why do you forget those things? What trouble does forgetfulness bring to you? What are some personal experiences on forgetfulness? The research found is going to be the reference and inspiration for the humorous elements of forgetfulness. Critiques and feedbacks from the target audience, of course, are the most important tools in perfecting my design. There is a limited amount of existing designs about forgetfulness. Nevertheless, this also indicates that there is a wide space for me to explore new and untouched concepts. With all this research, I am going to determine the most resonant content, the most interactive media, and the most imaginative graphic elements to carry my idea.

Overall, forgetfulness should not be conceived as an unsympathetic illness, but it can be a vivid and humorous common trait in humans. By interacting with my design, people are going to have a creative meditation, a new understanding, and a more positive attitude towards forgetfulness.