Brunch Square-Our Bridge 3 Project

For this project, we went the Washington Square Park as a group and interviewed more than 10 people. Based on our conversations with them and their background, experiences, and stories, we designed this fictional brunch for them.

We feel that in New York such a fast-paced city,  where people usually do not really bond with or care about people around them. Everyday, in Washington Square Park, people just pass by without getting to know each other. People may never see each other again in their lifetime. If people are more willing to take the action to speak to strangers, or are willing to have serendipity, there may be so many interesting and moving experience. People would actually love it. Thus, we imagine ourself as an event planning company who caters a brunch party for all the people that we interviewed.

We imagined to have all the people who we interviewed to the brunch and give them a chance to know each other. We designed their plates and cups according to their personality, hobbies, experience, and by our understandings of them. The colors, imagined texture, and figures on the plates and of the tableware are reflections of the interviewees. Everyone gets a unique plate, which also comes with a cup and a sleeve that has a portrait of him/her. On the other side of the cup sleeves, there are their quotes or short sentences that represent them.


Bridge 3: Short Story Reflection

The most challenging part to work on a group project is the communication in different stages. In the beginning, when my group mates and I were brainstorming about the story we were about to write, we had a lot of different ideas. For instance, when generating the persona of our main character, Jasmine and I created our characters similar to the person we met at Washington Square Park whereas Nora had a more dramatic character who killed her husband in the end of the story. During in-class discussion, we had to decide if we as a group want our story to be more dramatic or closer to real life. While communicating with my group mates, I challenged myself to speak up more actively as well as to listen to my groupmates’ ideas. Despite the fact that we had different pictures about the story at first, we agreed on making it more dramatic. Our main character did not have to kill her husband at last, but the story can still be more dramatic than everyday life. On other stages of the process such as writing our first draft and revising for our final draft, it was a bit difficult for me to communicate with them through texts. Our schedules were different so that sometimes one or two of us may not respond to texts. When only communicating through phones, I found it challenging to make the whole story coherent, especially for the transition part between each person’s story.

However, while being challenging, this project makes me feel rewarding at the same time. The most rewarding moment was when Nora, Jasmine, and I read our story to the entire class. I felt that the effort and time I devoted to this project was worth it. While our story was being heard, I improved on my storytelling skills and my logic.

We divided the work pretty evenly in terms of writing the first and second draft. Based on the plot that we agreed on, we divided the story into three almost three even parts. I was in charge of writing Imani’s past story. Jasmine wrote from Imani departs Los Angeles until she almost finds out her husband’s animal testing while Nora did the part from that point til the end. I did almost all of the proofreading. I checked the grammar, spelling, and coherency of the story before we printed it out.

In terms of contribution, I would say I contributed the most for the coherency of the story and to the proofreading process. For the rest of the process including brainstorming, putting the ideas together, and writing, all three of us contributed quite well. My least contribution aspect was the printing. Jasmine was the one who printed out the two drafts and brought it to class. If I get to do the project again, I would advise that everyone to be responsible for their own proofreading. After proofreading our own parts of the story, we can still proofread the parts that our group mates wrote.