Let’s Talk About ADHD – a summary

In Future Cultures, students are tasked with producing a digital artefact (DA) that addresses the future and has a clear target audience and public utility.

In this summary I will:

1. Outline my DA – including the concept, methodology, public utility and trajectory.
2. Identify background research that informed my DA.
3. Provide evidence of continual refinement of DA across the duration of the semester – a timeline comparison of the one included in my original DA pitch vs. how the project actually progressed.

1. DA overview

At the start of this semester, I pitched a concept to produce a business plan for my pre-existing Instagram account/brand – Let’s Talk About ADHD – spanning across three blog posts, as well as a nine-week content production/posting schedule. The resulting final product closely reflects this pitch; however, a structural change to the business plan was made and it was split into two posts rather than three.

You can view my Digital Artefact here:

Digital Artefact Pitch

Part 1 of my business plan

Part 2 of my business plan

Let’s Talk About ADHD socials: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.

DA outline:

Image 1: Let’s Talk About ADHD business plan and content schedule – project outline
Source: Amelia Phelps | CANVA

2. Background research

Prior to commencing production of my digital artefact, I conducted formative and operational research about business plans and content scheduling as well as underpinned concepts and theories from lecture materials to the core purpose and functionality of my DA to ensure my DA would address the Future Cultures challenge. 

The chief sources I relied on to develop an understanding of the structure of a business plan and what should and shouldn’t be included in the plan for Let’s Talk About ADHD included:

• Develop your business plan – Australian Government | Business 
• Write your business plan – U.S. small business administration 
• 7 Business Plan Examples to Help Write Your Own | Shopify 

Lecture concepts and theories:

• Wendell Bell’s theory of possible, probable and preferable futures allowed me to identify these futures within my chosen career of content creation and digital marketing – this connection was explicitly made in the audio element of part 2 of my DA. 
• Masini’s understanding of a futurist’s social responsibility and multiple futures aligned well with my DA and guided my production of content to support and uplift a marginalised, stigmatised and misunderstood community. 
• Cathy Hackl’s specialist understanding of the metaverse and it’s role in the short to long term future helped to inform and direct my future thinking regarding my career in content creation and digital marketing.

3. Project timeline comparison

As I set myself up for a significant amount of work within this DA, my original projected timeline differed from the actual outcome, however I did follow my content schedule’s closely and engaged in consistent daily interactions on the brand’s socials as I originally intended to. Thus, I would say that while the amount of work was achievable, the timeline was inaccurate and should have more closely reflected my ADHD tendency to leave things to the last minute to get that dopamine boost hah!

Original Timeline:

Image 2: Original predicted production timeline
Source: Amelia Phelps | CANVA

Actual timeline:

Image 3: Actual production timeline
Source: Amelia Phelps | CANVA

Advertisement

The good, the bad and the ugly – peer feedback, BCM325.

As part of the BCM325 subject, students are challenged with the task of commenting on other peer’s Digital Artefact pitches to generate feedback loops which provide valuable insight and constructive criticism. This process is of mutual benefit to both parties involved as the commentary seeks to stipulate reflection and consideration of the commenter’s DA too.

Comment 1: Tegan has created a Bookstragram account and intends to explore the future expansion of her account and business within her DA.

 

Summary: Within my comment, I noted my excitement for Tegan’s concept, the highly interactive nature of the feedback loops generated by the bookstagram community, the benefits of utilising more specific hashtags and an example of one that she may like to use, how Tegan’s DA may benefit from a more defined future focus and the importance of considering the past in order to predict the future.

Reflection: Upon reflection of my comment, I believe I found numerous takeaways from Tegan’s DA concept and the approach she intends to adopt. As my DA will also outline the future of an Instagram account, I found I was able to relate well to her pitch and in turn, provide her with some valuable insight. By suggesting how she may better engage with her target public through the use of more direct hashtags, I provided Tegan an avenue of feedback-loop enhancement. However, I found it challenging to offer any further suggestions beyond this point as it was difficult to identify in the pitch what exactly her DA’s “future focus” was. For this reason, I made identifying and narrowing down the future focus of her DA a suggestion within itself and encouraged the exploration of week’s two and three BCM325 content as it breaks down the future cultures focus and explains how to apply it to your DA. I benefitted myself from this suggestion as I was able to comb through previous lecture content and narrowed down my own DA’s future focus as well (as my official pitch feedback from the subject’s tutor recommended developing a better understanding and development of the future cultures focus). I referred to various lecture concepts (short/medium/long-term and multiple futures) and as such, constructed a detail and thoughtful comment.

Comment 2: Samantha’s DA intends to determine and analyse the probable future of Bookstagram through scheduled posting and metric analysis of her bookstagram’s content, as well as the production of three blog posts.

Summary: My comment on Sam’s pitch included praise for her well-developed DA concept, a recommendation of an analysis of @readingwithsammy’s metrics to predict trends in bookstagram content, a suggestion to consider a more medium to long-term future focus so that she may address the future of the bookstagram holistically and provided a link to a two-part article that pulls apart the longevity and current and future environmental impact of paper books.

Reflection: I was particularly interested in Sam’s DA as I have previously run a successful bookstagram account from the ages of 15-19 and so wanted to offer genuine advice and feedback.  I spent a significant amount of time researching the future of bookstagram to offer her truly useful recommendations for her DA. In opposition to my previous comment on Tegan’s bookstagram DA, I encouraged Sam to expand her future focus so that she can offer a more detailed and conceptual exploration of the future of the bookstagram phenomenon. I suggested Sam track her account’s metrics across the semester as a means of future trend prediction – by taking note of which content is received well by her target public, she may be able to better predict what bookstagram content (such as challenges and tags) will look like in the future. Through encouraging Sam to explore other contributing factors to the future of bookstagram, I was able to reflect upon how else I may be able to analyse the future of my ADHD Instagram account and have decided that it may benefit my DA to consider Covid-19’s role and influence on the ADHD/social media community – something I had not intended on including in my DA.

Comment 3: Pia will be researching the future of fashion trends in relation to global events through the production of weekly TikTok content and fortnightly blog content.

Summary: My commentary on Pia’s pitch included the identification of my interest and excitement in her concept, a suggestion to consider TikTok’s influence on fashion trends and a recommendation that Pia explore the role of fast fashion in the fashion industry and how fast fashion has and continues to influence the speed at which trends are introduced and fade.

Reflection: Due to my previous experience with research of the fashion industry, I was able to provide Pia informative and constructive feedback on her DA – which intends to address the future of fashion trends. The resources I linked, including a Vogue article and my own personal research project about fast fashion, provide ample information about Tiktok’s influence on the fashion industry and the impact that fast and slow fashion will have on the future of the environment, respectively. I provided a specific example of how a world event (Covid-19) has impacted the industry and posed a question for Pia to follow up within the example to encourage active engagement with the commentary. I also referred to lecture concepts through my discussion of how Pia may explore Anthropocene within her DA. Ultimately, this was my favourite comment as the writing flowed very naturally due to my extensive knowledge of Pia’s DA topic –  it also provided an avenue of consideration for my own DA as I hadn’t previously considered utilising the TikTok platform to publish any of my DA content.

A quick chat about what defines “good feedback” …

References:

Hatch, E (2020) ‘Going Beyond “It Sounds Good”: Developing Student Capacity to Give Meaningful Feedback’, General Music Today, vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 29–35, accessed 28th March, available at:

https://uow.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/61UOW_INST/otb3u8/cdi_crossref_primary_10_1177_1048371319892241