Final Review and Reflection (Coffee Run)

Last Monday we began a Design Charrette. Our task was to design something that would give people who have recently moved to Brisbane the opportunity to find new areas of Brisbane that are not very well known. Our tour was required to cater to a specific audience with a specific interest or need. An example given to us was pregnant mothers finding out where to shop for their babies, and where to find other mothers of babies. My group members for this task were Pete and James (From Project 2), and also Mika and Jennifer.

I was pretty confident before starting this charrette as I had learned a lot of new things before this task. I had also been given experience with receiving a brief and trying to complete it on a very close deadline. I felt that a lot of the things I learned in my tutorials would assist a lot, such as the hands on activities, and the tutor’s advice. I attempted to include every suggestion into this  project.

We decided that our tour would show people the lesser known coffee shops in the center of Brisbane (Translink Zones 1 and 2.). At first our target audience was going to be middle aged business men and women, but after some more thought, we decided that we should instead cater to university students who have just moved to Brisbane to do their university course. After doing some research, we decided that catering to University students was the better idea because: 76% of coffee drinkers start drinking at the age of 15-24 (Which encompasses a huge portion of our demographic), coffee shops are a great place for socialising (even for people who don’t like coffee), and many university students want a cup of coffee in the morning or late at night so that they can be awake for lectures or assignment work. We decided that we would create a hop on/hop off bus tour that would start at QUT Gardens point (KG students can take the free campus shuttle to GP) and this bus would stop at 6 hand picked coffee destinations (We have a current list, but this list can change in the future with other cool places). We called our tour Coffee Run.

The 48 hour time frame was a drastic change from both the Mini Charrette which was rushed in the space of 3 hours, and Project 2, which took 2+ weeks from brief to presentation. We spent 8 hours on Tuesday as a group discussing and designing our solution. We divided up our workload in a fair way that allowed people to work in their strongest areas.

We all used advice and feedback given to us from previous projects. We included a logo, and we made the presentation follow the brand’s theme, both of which received positive feedback in Project 2. We also got James to present again, as our tutor said that he was great at it, and it also eliminated the distracting and time-wasting changing of presenters. It is great that we did all the preparation work, as I learned something new from each project and the mini charrette, and used each piece of new knowledge and advice in the Design Charrette.

Again, it was a pleasure to work with Pete, James, Mika and Jennifer, as we communicated well to each other, and we shared similar design ideas, which meant that we didn’t argue about any decisions that were made. We each had different strengths and weaknesses which made it easy to break up the work in order to cater to them.

This unit gave me a huge amount of new insight into the deign industry and reaching a deadline, no matter how close or far away. This isn’t what I expected to learn in this unit, but it is incredibly helpful nonetheless. I learned to more confident in talking about my design ideas with other people in my group, and I even feel more creative. I’m very happy with my personal progress in this unit, and it’s made me even more excited to be a part of the industry at the end of my course.

Project 2 Review and Reflection (Walk Again)

This week we presented our second project for KIB100. For project 2 we were split up into groups, with my group consisting of myself, Pete and James. Our task was to come up with an idea to solve a certain problem. The problem in question was to assist people who were physically disabled, either temporarily or permanently, in a way which would make their everyday life much easier.

One of our group members, James, suggested that we try to assist people whom have been disabled temporarily due to Lower Body Incapacitation. We agreed that it was a good idea seeing as James had been experienced in the damage, its treatment, and also how it affected his everyday life. This gave us a good foundation to base our research on.

I researched knee reconstruction and hydrotherapy in order to find out more about the disability and treatment. We decided that we would design a device that would simulate hydrotherapy by simulating weightlessness of the lower body as if it was submerged in water, allowing the user to continue doing everyday activities while rehabilitating with hydrotherapy. This idea was very unique in my opinion, although a bit too futuristic. My tutor pointed out that my sketch for our device should have had more detail in order to show the features of the device and how it worked. Our 1 minute video explained what our device did, but not how it worked, this is because we were low on time. We made a simple animation using pictures that we took of a doll, and it resulted in a funny, somewhat anecdotal way to finish our presentation.

Our powerpoint was professional, as we had a uniform layout and theme. We also had a logo which was made by Pete, which was situated in the corner of every slide, giving the powerpoint a very professional aesthetic. I had not thought of unifying the powerpoint with the theme of the brand, and I did not even consider making a logo. The positive feedback from our tutor (who is reading this right now, Hi John!) showed that using a themed powerpoint with a matching logo is a great way to make our ideas look a lot more professional. James was the speaker during the presentation and he did an excellent job. In my opinion, the presentation would not have worked as well if we had split up the speaking, as it was unnecessary.

James and Pete were great people to work with, as they were easy to communicate with and I was comfortable sharing my ideas with them. It was great to work with someone with experience in the problem we had to solve, as we got to hear his first hand experience with Lower Body Incapacitation. Our workload was spread evenly and we all contributed to the final presentation.

This, like the Mini-Charrette, was a great way to prepare for our final assessment, I learned a few more things on what to add to the final product in order to get a much better result and a much more professional presentation. In all, I feel that I am ready for the final charrette, I am happy with the many new things that I have learned, and I am happy to be working with Pete and James again.