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This week we were able to bring our prototype back to Temple Hills in order to interview community members on their thoughts and opinions on our proposal. It was a great experience compared to interviewing students at UMD because a lot of these people experience the issues of food insecurity and deserts first hand. We managed to interview two ladies who gave us really good insight and feedback in order to cater our prototype more specifically to the needs of that area. One lady pointed out that it would be better to set a price tag rather than making it truly "pay what you can" because people don't want to be given freebies. Some people may view giving free food to be condescending behavior. It was a valuable experience to hear passionate responses to the issue we were trying to solve as it genuinely affects the daily lives of these people. However, a major issue we had was many people rejected to talk to us. There were more people who refused to talk this time, compared to the last time we came to Temple Hills and I think that's because some people get intimidated or confused by us carrying a physical prototype and don't want to be involved

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This week we made our prototype into a physical form and went to ask students of UMD how they felt about our model. It was very valuable to get the opinions of fellow students on our ideas. One of our interviewees was also a public health major and she thought that our idea is very effective. Another interview gave us a recommendation to reach out to a service offered at the business school which assists students with project startups. One new thing I learned from one of our interviewees was that the implementation of a mobile app would be very useful for our project. This will allow people to see what items are being offered in our "Pay what you can." The experience of being able to ask for the feedback of students in the community stood out because many of them were much more passionate about our cause than I expected.

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This week we began planning our storyboard for our prototype, designed to help Paris and the residents of Temple Hill in their lack of access to affordable, healthy food. We want to implement a "pay what you can" store that provides groceries and cooked meals from sourced, unwanted but good produce from local grocery stores like Aldis. This location will also provide transportation for those who do not have access to transportation. It was a very valuable experience to be able to brainstorm a realistic idea that could help a lot of people in a community. This opportunity is often not available in many of our other classes. However, I think we will have trouble trying to realistically plan this program due to monetary factors.

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I thought that experiencing an African drum circle was a very valuable experience for everyone in our class. It was my second time being in a drum circle as I've taken a west African dance class before where we also had a drum circle while people danced with it. The most interesting part for me was when each of us made a beat and the next person just added on. Even though none of us talked to each other about what beats we were going to do, everything still sounded very cohesive and it really shows the importance of listening but emphasizes that we all have something in common, and in this case it was music. I did not know that the instructor began one of the first women empowerment drum circles in DC which I thought was a great way for people to be engaged through others with music, with a instrument that requires little to no training. This exercise emphasized to me that even though we are all different people, there is always something we can relate to deep down which can be applied to our Temple Hill person of interest and better understanding their situation.

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For my groups person of focus, we wanted to focus on Paris who's primary concern was the lack of nutritional education and available healthy grocery stores. It was interesting to be able to generate ideas that are directed towards how it would help Paris's problems and not problems we perceive. Working with my team was a good experience as everyone was able to contribute new ideas to our design. A struggle we experienced was trying to think more creatively and out of the box to fix Paris's problems that weren't the typical, increasing educational programs or increasing the number of stores.

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It was very valuable to be able to see everyone's experiences on their interviews at MONA. Many of the interviewees gave us new perspectives on possible issues in the community. I thought the video that was shown that talked about the innovation process was useful because it emphasized that the solution should be directed towards the actual problem in the community and not the perceived problem by the innovators. Though it was difficult to brainstorm our ideas because my partner that did our interviews together was not here so I felt we may have been missing some information. But it was a good experience to try and explain our interview experience to our third group member who was unable to go to the MONA center and really help them understand the viewpoints from the interviewees.

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Interviewing strangers in the community felt a lot more intimidating because the population near the MONA center were generally older people and sometimes I would wonder if the age difference would affect their willingness to be open to us. But talking to our interviewees was a very valuable experience for me because they actually opened up even more than our student interviews. Many of them felt strongly about ongoing health and wellness issues in their community and I could feel how it was affecting people. However, it was difficult to talk to everyone mainly because of language barriers. Me and my partner were rejected by this one Korean man who worked at the gas station and did not speak very good English, unfortunately I only knew Chinese. I think that the consideration of other languages is very important to take in account when trying to interact ethnically diverse communities like these. One thing that particularly stood out to me was that the older population was much more willing to connect their personal lives to our questions. Many times they would bring up things about their relatives or friends that may be affected by health issues. In comparison, UMD students generally were more focused on talking about themselves. In particular, we had a very open and enthusiastic lady named Paris who moved here from Germany. We asked her about current health issues she felt that needed to be addressed in the community and she took a very strong stance on the issue of food insecurity. She emphasized that so many people do not know how to eat right because they are uneducated as to what is good and what is bad. She works at a food bank and would always see people take unhealthy foods rather than healthy. We talked to her outside Aldi's and it was visibly present that she cared about healthy eating as she only bought organic foods and healthy grains like quinoa and whole wheat rice. Paris recommended there to be more education on nutrition and healthy eating and went on to discuss how her religion taught her how to eat healthily and be sustainable by growing her own food.

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I thought that differentiating and really thinking about leading vs non leading questions was a very new mindset for me and it was very helpful. It's something that doesn't really typically come to my mind whenever I'm talking to another person but when someone uses those leading questions towards me, it definitely leaves a stronger impact of intimacy. When I went to interview student with this in mind, I was able to come up with leading questions quite easily. However, I feel the struggle with in person interactions is sometimes leading questions has the risk of being worded in a unintentional manner and be taken the wrong way.

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When I first heard we were going to be interviewing people across campus, I was honestly terrified. As a introvert, going up to random people and asking them a series of questions initially seemed like a significant challenge for me to step out of my comfort zone on a Friday morning. Initially I thought the people we interview wouldn't be very open as everyone on campus typically seems very frantic to be getting to places they need to be. However, it was quite surprising to me that our first interviewee was willing to share personal information and dive into the types of stress and anxiety they experience and their thought process of how they cope with it. I found it to be a lot easier to talk to strangers after the initial approach and I was much less nervous than I thought I would be.

I feel me and my partner Ro really managed to step out of our comfort zone to approach and talk to these people. At the same time I felt that we struggled with trying to bring the whole process into more of a natural conversation and adapting the things we say based on the interviewee's response, rather than simply asking questions and expecting answers.

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The first thing that caught my attention was how different the classroom setting was compared to any class I've ever taken in college. I really enjoy the space as it creates a feeling of freedom and comfort compared to being restricted in a classroom setting with structured seating. I wasn't exactly sure what to expect coming into this class but the group activities we did were definitely interesting to me. These days we get so little creative freedom in our classes and I think it's great that