Group Project Proposal

Group Project Proposal

For our collaborative group project, we have collectively agreed upon a project that we feel can serve an important purpose for our college community while being executed with simplicity and fun.

We want to create a “To-Do List” for the whole student community, a list of things that are constantly being set aside or forgotten in our hectic school schedules. These things are simple daily chores (“wash dishes”), tasks that are generally executed on the weekend or once a week (“do laundry”, “clean apartment”), and urgent items (“pay rent/phone bill/etc.”). We also want to include relational checklist tasks, such as “call a family member” or “catch up with an old friend.” We’d even like to include simple things that we sometimes forget to do for ourselves every once in a while to keep ourselves well-balanced (“take a leisurely walk”, “turn off your cell phone and take a nap”). The point of listing items that are urgent, seemingly “more important,” such as paying rent, with items that seem more self-indulgent, like taking a day off for rest, is to emphasize the fact that everything on the list is important and productive, that even the small things we brush aside in the great storm of our weekly schedules can be enormously beneficial. This project is for the busy, the forgetful, and the dismissive in our community here at Eastern.

To execute our project, we want to design pads of paper with “The To-Do List” that we can post in high-traffic areas around campus, like the Student Center, the library, and Pray-Harrold. Passers-by can tear off a sheet with the entire checklist on it and take it with them. We figured the project would be more fun and intriguing if the checklist items weren’t printed all in columns, as we instinctively write them when making a list, but rather configured in a creative design so that those passing by would be drawn in. This would also make the list more memorable if it were to be taken and carried around…adding an element of whimsy would help alleviate the burdensome character of some of the tasks, and even the burdensome idea of a to-do list in general (does anyone have fun making a to-do list?).

In addition to the “take one” pads posted up, we would make signs that we would post around campus for each item on the list, as an additional friendly reminder to take care of business (or pleasure). We were wondering if it would be a good idea to have tabs at the bottom of every sign that could be torn off, like advertisements for an apartment or guitar lessons with contact information on them, except these tabs would be a reminder to do that one thing on the list (“REMEMBER! ___________”).

For a bit of research, we will be asking our fellow students about things that they are constantly forgetting to do, meaning to do but putting aside until “later,” or outright neglecting, so we can have a legitimate starting point from which to build.