Monday 9/12/19 - Final Evaluation

This project has been an interesting one, I learned a fair amount however it wasn’t necessarily what I expected from this project. Initially it was one I held a lot of interest for, I’m very interested in the idea of product design and it’s definitely a career path I would consider in future, so I was naturally excited for this. By the end of this I had in all honesty lost a lot of my initial interest however that was down to my individual experience with the project and not the general idea of product design. Though that’s not to say that I didn’t learn anything from this.

I feel like what really drained my interest for this project was the group, whilst I had nothing against them personally me and my friend both felt underwhelmed by their ideas. When first placed together the majority had their hearts set on a very basic and not particularly innovative idea. It was a cup that heated and cooled itself. I on the other hand tried to propose different ideas I had particularly liked such as smart glasses or haptic feedback gloves (These were for things such as architecture, helping those with disabilities or just for leisure). Unfortunately, these ideas were overruled when we put it for a vote and the cup won. I decided to go along with it as in jobs we wouldn’t always be able to get it our way. Though I felt very disappointed by this idea, it felt too unoriginal and that we were seriously lacking in terms of innovation.

When it came to working in a group thing started off well, we had a sense of organisation and even put together a plan pretty much straight away. We had set jobs too. Though this quickly started going downhill in my opinion. We rarely had all members in together on the same day and this affected our organisation. There was also a conflict in terms of ideas, I wanted to go for a more professional style but they had different ideas in mind. This in hand with the poor organisation meant we had ideas that didn’t really match. This really showed me how important communication is in terms of group work and our group lacked this.

Despite this I did learn some technical information that will be very useful should I do product design in future and with work in general. I learned how to do a technical drawing, for example what angles to draw and that it needs to be precise. I also learned a bit about 3D design through watching it being worked on, though I doubt I learned enough to actually be able to make something just yet.

In the group my role was to make advertisements and also work on web design and some of the graphic designs. I did a lot of research by looking through advertisements from high tech companies, I looked for what was popular in terms of visuals. Most went for minimalist styles and typically had limited colours (white usually). This information went into the few online posters I created, the app and partially into the website.

Overall it really affected my enthusiasm for this project, we were working on something I didn’t like and kept making poor choices with it. I rarely knew what to do on most days either, a lot of my own jobs relied on the 3D design and unfortunately that took a long time to actually finish. By the time the dragons den pitch came around things were finished but I felt that they weren’t up to standards. Personally, what I feel would have made this project better is having an idea I felt more passionate about, I didn’t enjoy working on the cup and I felt limited with it. If we had an idea that gave us more freedom and creativity I would have felt more engaged and enthusiastic.

In terms of the future I got a lot of inspiration from the London trip, specifically for the propaganda project. Since this one left me feeling very limited with what I did I instead want to feel free with this project, I want to put in a lot of passion and enthusiasm. Some of the inspiration I got from the London trip was through the art I saw at the Tate Modern, one artist in particular was Barbara Kruger. I’ve studied her in the past during GCSEs and I really enjoyed her work.