Blog Category: User Experience

Yoga Advertisements: Round 1

By Erika Goering,

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Matrix

By Erika Goering,

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Yoga Teachers

By Erika Goering,

Yoga teachers are an essential part of the yoga community. They provide guidance, motivation, and inspiration to aspiring and veteran yogis. They impart valuable knowledge and wisdom through their yoga classes. Their extensive experience with yogis of all backgrounds and proficiencies gives them the tools they need to create customized sessions and cater to the individual needs of their students.

Yoga teachers have lots of responsibilities to maintain, whether it’s teaching a class or running an entire studio. Like anyone else, they must balance their work life and their personal life effectively to keep stress to a minimum. They live by the eight limbs of yoga, striving for inner peace, compassion, and enlightenment. A yoga teacher’s life is full of fun, challenges, and rewards.

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Yogi: Verbal Analysis

By Erika Goering,

Eight Limbs

  • Yama: universal morality
  • Niyama: personal sensitivity
  • Asanas: body postures
  • Pranayama: breathing exercises
  • Pratyahara: control of the senses
  • Dharana: concentration and inner awareness
  • Dhyana: meditation
  • Samadhi: spiritual or transcendent

 

Spiritual Terms:

  • Moksha: Hinduism freedom from the endless cycle of transmigration into a state of bliss
  • Brahman: the one supreme universal spirit that is the origin and support of the phenomenal universe
  • Om: the sound and symbol for the seventh chakra (crown); represents open mindedness and transcendence

 

Religious Affiliations:

  • Hinduism: a diverse body of religion, philosophy, and cultural practice native to and predominant in India, characterized by a belief in reincarnation and a supreme being of many forms and natures by the view that opposing theories are aspects of one eternal truth, and by a desire for liberation from earthly evils
  • Jainism: an Indian religion that prescribes a path of nonviolence toward all human beings
  • Buddhism: a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs, and practices largely based on teachings attributed to Buddha

 

Practitioners:

  • Yogi: a yoga practitioner
  • Guru: yogi with a great deal of knowledge, wisdom, and authority

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Yoga Personas

By Erika Goering,

Sarah: The Fitness Sergeant

She sees yoga as a great way to keep a healthy body and mind. She’s certified with YogaFit, and has over 200 hours of yoga teacher training under her belt. She’s contemporary and trendy, playing popular music in her class and keeping a sense of humor. Her upbeat and vigorous class is a workout! She loves her students dearly, and is open and friendly to anyone who joins her studio.

“Yoga is first a form of exercise, second a stress reliever, third a therapeutic healer of body pain and ultimately it makes me a better person.”

Brandon: The Guru

He’s a traditionalist, with a spiritual goal. He routinely wakes up before dawn to meditate. He uses yoga as a means to ultimate enlightenment. His calm and mellow demeanor contradict his very strict, purist ways as a yoga instructor. His class is inwardly and focused, and he expects his students to be disciplined and passionate. Spirituality is the backbone of his philosophy.

“I’m looking to live in a more honest and truthful way led to my investigation into the yogic path as a way to link the physical, the mental, and the spiritual.”

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Subcultures and Ethnography

By Erika Goering,

Our culture as a whole has evolved from  being one mass market, to being a collection of lots of niches, subcultures, and genres. This is why research is important. No one will fully understand a subculture by just assuming. We’re all vastly different. We have to immerse ourselves in aspects of those subcultures to find the nuances and the identities of those groups.

Statistical data is helpful because it gives a designer/researcher a concrete view of measurable elements. It’s easy to transfer between people, and pretty easy to take at face value. This kind of data is in the realm of demographic information, surveys, and questionnaires.

Qualitative data is the hard part. It’s invisible, but palpable. It takes a variety of research methods to develop an understanding of the more abstract elements. This includes things like oral tradition, histories, responses, and attitude.

These types of information are helpful for design because, like in page layout (where it’s important to know the content you’re designing for), it just makes sense to truly understand the people you’re designing for.

Design is all about conveying information that is audience-appropriate. So, naturally, research plays a big role.

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