MINOR PROJECT

Luisa Audrey / 0348741 / Bachelor of Design in Creative Media (UI/UX)
Minor Project

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LECTURE

At the beginning of the module, Sir Mike briefed us about Design Thinking for Beginners. 

“Empathy is at the heart of design. Without the understanding of what others see, feel, and experience, design is a pointless task.” Tim Brown, CEP IDEO.

Interviews, observations, and shadowing 'Walk in their shoes

Human-centered design is all about talking with people about their challenges, ambitions, and constraints. But as we move through the empathy phase, there will be moments where we’ll need more context, history, or data than a man-on-the-street style interview can afford. Social sector challenges can be really thorny, which is why Secondary Research, whether done online, by reading books, or by crunching numbers, can help us ask the right questions.

What do you need to do? Creating Personas

Creating personas is an effective way to focus on your user and ensure that you are designing for their top needs. Personas are a representation of your target user—their typical characteristics, challenges, and desires. On average, you should create 3 personas for your project so that you can focus on different needs and inspire divergent ways of looking at a problem.

How Might We?

1. Start by looking at the insight statements that you’ve created. Try rephrasing them as questions by adding “How might we” at the beginning.
2. The goal is to find opportunities for design, so if your insights suggest several ‘How Might We...’ questions that’s great.
3. Now take a look at your ‘How Might We...’ question and ask yourself if it allows for a variety of solutions. If it doesn’t, broaden it. Your ‘How Might We...’ should generate a number of possible answers and will become a launchpad for your ideas generation.
   

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INSTRUCTION

At the beginning of the week, Sir Mike gave us a few options regarding the topic that we are going to work on. There are 10 options in total so we are going to form 10 groups consisting of about 6 to 7 people.

I formed my group with Yiyun, Sky, Sim, Emeline, and Caelan at first. We all agreed on taking Cool Daddy by Brandialogue with Yiyun as the team leader. In the next 2 weeks, we got a new member Afif. 

The first thing we need to do for the Minor project was the proposal. The few important things that we needed to have ready were the target audiences, personas, interviews, survey, problem statement, how might we, and also the user journey map. 

At the start of the proposal progression, I helped the team with the interview questions and survey questions. After we finished the questions, there were times when we had a hard time deciding on who to interview. However, in the end, we decided to interview Sir Vinod, Sir Choy, Sir Shamsul, and Sir Philip.

After summarizing everything, we moved to personas. I made 1 persona together with Sim and Caelan. I made a persona based on a dad from Indonesia.

After this, I also helped make the User Journey Map together with Sky. 

I also helped with other stuff aside from these in the proposal. However, most of us contributed as well so I counted those purely as group work.

After finishing the proposal, we moved everything to Canva for the presentation. I wrote down the contextual research, interview key insights, and also the microsite. As for the part that I presented, I did the interview and also the microsite.

For the microsite, these are the references that I planned on using. I think the looks match our art direction and it compliments the color that we are using.

The left one is the sketch that I made.

After we presented the proposal, I immediately continued the microsite. Here are the few first designs that I made before any revision:

After I showed the result to my teammates, Yiyun told us to change the customization part to modification. Since we have 3 different sets, I had to redo the layout. After we showed the microsite to Sir Mike, he also told us that we need to make more content.

So I made the revision part:

After I'm done with the whole design, I made the animation. The animations are mostly simple and just to make it look more attractive.

In the end, I had my final revision since I need to make it consistent with the Kickstarter. I changed our unique selling point with carousel cards. I also changed the 

This is what the final one looks like:

After creating the microsite, I helped the team remake the merchandise. The old merchandises look pretty much plain and they didn't contain our brand motifs. Here are the old merchandises:

I also added one more piece of merch which is the desk fan. Not only that, I also created more than 1 variant to make it look more appealing.

Here are my merchandises:

I also created the ig post promotion for the merchandise:

The promotion consists of 6 posts. I also did the coming soon post:

In the end, I also helped Emeline fix her ig story post. Here are the ones I created:

After I finished everything, we compiled them in our final presentation. I also did the microsite presentation, here is the video I made:

These are all the compilations of our minor project.

This is our group's miro:

This is our final presentation:

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REFLECTION

Week 1:

For the first week, we were tasked to form a group of 6 to 7 people. Mr. Mike briefed us about the task and the projects that we are going to work on. There were in total 8 projects that each group need to choose to proceed. Our group chose the “Cool Daddy” project where we need to brand the baby wagon for daddies as the target audience. We first discussed what to do in task 1 and we formed questions to ask the client so we can understand our work better. We had a meeting on Friday to analyze and discuss the Zoom meeting with Ms. Zae and proceed to ask the questions we had generated during the previous days.

Week 2:

For this week, we started the contextual research and we had to analyze the market of the wagon. We also found the competitors and minimize them into 5 top brands for kid's wagons. After that, we compare them starting from features, and cost, to the way they promote it to locate our brand position. We also managed to meet Mr. Damien, our client to view the product that we are going to market. However, turned out the actual product is not ready yet and he only showed the product that looks similar to it. We asked him a few questions about they wanted us to market it. We also asked him about the secondary data research for the survey and interview. He mentioned that he prefers us to market the lifestyle of a cool daddy rather than focusing on the product itself. 

Week 3:

After listening to his feedback, we continued making the questionnaire and interview questions. However, Mr. Mike said that we should make the user persona first before we make the survey questions. I contributed to making the demographic questions and the rest continued with the other section. After we finished creating all the questions, we discussed which questions are relevant and should be put in the final Google form. Before we spread the survey, we sent it to Mr. Mike first to get feedback. He asked us to fix a few questions and right after we made a few changes, we spread it. I approached a few of my friends to refer it to their dads or uncles. I also put the link on Instagram just in case. Since Mr. Mike told us to do the interview after the survey, we just started making the questions. I finalized the interview questions as well as created the insights for each question. 

Week 4:

In week 4 we have only gathered 50 respondents in total for the survey. We were worried that we wouldn’t be able to get enough respondents on time. Thankfully Mr. Mike told us that 50 should be fine and we can improve it by conducting interviews. At first, we were thinking of making and sending flyers to the public to scan our survey to be answered, however, we scrapped that idea and focused on the interview instead. We showed Mr. Mike our interview questions and he approved so we just had to proceed. We decided to interview Mr. Vinod, Mr. Philip, Mr. Choi, and Mr. Shamsul. I did the interview of Mr. Philip with Yiyun on Thursday and I also joined the interview with Mr. Vinod on Friday. For the rest, I didn’t get to join because I had a class to attend. On Friday, we did the analysis of the interview as well as the survey. I also did the scripting part and I finalized the user persona so we have something to show on week 5.

Week 5:

For this week we were still stuck in survey and interview since we found out that most of the Malaysian market are not willing to spend that much for kids' wagons. Mr. Mike suggested we choose whether we want to force to go into the Malaysian market or to go for the Western market. So we asked Mr. Damien and fortunately, he told us that he is not going to market it in Malaysia since he is going to be competing with other strollers such as Keenz, Wonderfold, Veer, etc. On Friday we were discussing the art direction and overall I prefer the neat and standard one. After we decided, we worked on the presentation slides.

Week 6:

This week the graphic design students made the proposal for the social media content. We also answered the “how might we” in the miro. At first, we were having difficulty finding out the right sentence for the third how might we, but we finally realized the key point which is for dad to get involved more in the children’s life. After finishing it, we moved on to the user journey map. I did it together with Sky. At first, we were confused on how to fill it up, so we followed references from the internet and previous tasks. We finally showed our user journey map to Sir Mike, and he suggested we be more specific with what we want to do. For example, if we want to make social media posting, then we need to put the exact number of postings that we are going to make. I believe this also helps us to focus more on our tasks so we don’t get confused about what to complete and how to complete it at the end.

Week 7:

This week we presented the revised User Journey Map and Sir Mike approved. We started working on the Gant chart. However, by that time, the work was mostly given to graphic design students. So I helped by starting to make look for the website’s references. I noticed that our brand looks very simple yet classy. I was trying to achieve that by looking for simple and sleek motifs. I also planned to go with a rounded theme since our logo has a rounded edge. After getting enough references, I helped the team prepare the proposal presentation. The presentation was supposed to be held on this week, but we had a hard time arranging the time with the other group so we ended up agreeing to present on week 9. We had a meeting on Friday so Yiyun can assign us on what to present and what to put in the presentation. I got to fill up the contextual research, interview, and microsite. The first thing I did after the meeting was put on the contextual research in the Canva slides. I also did the key takeaways for the interview. Lastly, I did a last-minute sketch for the microsite. It was not final, but we can see the idea already.

Week 8:

This week was independent learning week. Honestly, it was a hell week for me because I had no time to focus on anything else aside from my CDP module. I was in school from Monday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm. We planned on having a presentation rehearsal and Yiyun told me that my part is the interview and microsite. We did have a meeting on Friday to rehearse for the presentation and I think it didn't go very well. Some of us still had a hard time presenting as they haven’t prepared their script. We had to follow the time rules or else we would hold back the other group so we had to rehearse multiple times. But in the end, Yiyun told us which part we need to cut off so we don't exceed the time limit. 

Week 9:

We did the presentation today and it went on just great. I think we all did well with our own part and the client didn’t have any questions or feedback either. For a second we were relieved so that means we don’t need to change anything related to the logo and art direction in the meantime. They also agreed with the name Dadventure which is cool. Now, we just need to focus on the whole of creating the brand. I need to start making my microsite. I also put on the deadline for the parts that I need to finish with Sim. For the microsite, we will be working together. We agreed on me making the design in Figma and Sim will do the HTML with a little bit of my help. I immediately started finalizing my sketch in Illustrator at the end of the week so I can show my groupmates next week. I made a few choices with different colors so they can just vote on which one looks better.

Week 10:

This week I showed my teammates the microsite that I did and they all seem to like it. Unfortunately, Sim was sick so I tried to do the progression as quick as possible so we will still be on track. We showed Sir Mike the Microsite and he likes the overall design as well. However, he said that I need to put more content and make it look more believable by comparing it with our competitor's website. At first, I thought we had enough content already because this is just a microsite and not a website. I was trying to avoid customer scrolling too much as everything will be put on 1 page. I already looked at other websites as references but we agreed at the end that we don’t have much content to put since our product is not even launched yet. So we cannot put stuff such as wagon types, partnership, or even review. In the end, we decided on adding discounts for people who are going to donate on Kickstarter and add unique selling points to increase our content. Yiyun also told me to change the customization part into modification since we had a few types of wagons to be shown. But in the end, since my microsite was approved and I just needed to add a few more contents, the rest of the team members need to redo their work to match my art direction. We ended up using my microsite as the new art direction and I tried to help them by creating a template for them to see as reference.

Week 11:

For this week I tried to modify the website as Yiyun and Sir Mike asked me to. I planned on using cards for the unique selling points but Yiyun said that it would not look appealing. She said it is better if I divide it into 2 sections. I was so confused about how to divide it into 2 sections and I was kind of lost. I went back to Pinterest multiple times to look for references and finally came up with a pretty interesting idea. We have 5 unique selling points and I decided to put the product ecosystem and scalability in 1 section, and cool, multifunctional, and transparency under the second section. I tried to make the first section fading carousel and the second one just the wagon image with texts. I think in the end they look pretty interesting. I also changed the customization to Modification. The modification is a long section with 3 parts and every part has a slider under it. At the end of the section, I also put a call to action the Kickstarter. After giving the finishing touches, I showed Yiyun and she likes it. We also showed it to Sir Mike in the end and he approved my microsite. I was so happy since he seemed to praise me too. We also asked sir to make sure whether we have to make the coding or not and he said that we don’t have to since we don’t have much time. Since my part is partly done, I just need to wait for the picture assets from the GD students, I decided to help the GD content. I made the coming soon post for Instagram and sir also approved the design. Surprisingly we had a meeting on Friday as well. By that time, I felt like dying already since I had so much work to do not only for this module. Yiyun made an agreement that if we meet physically then we just have to discuss and if we meet online, everyone needs to come up with an idea. But in the end even after I came physically, they still asked me to make an idea. Oh well.

Week 12:

This week I focused on the animation for my microsite. I tried to make the animation look as appealing as possible but for some reason, there are some parts that don’t work when I put after delay. I was quite stressed doing it since I have tried multiple times and it didn’t work. Especially since I was pretty sure that I did it correctly. I tried to put it on click but it ended up not looking as good as it will lag more. So I found an idea in the end and tried to put it on hovering. It looks so much better in the end and I was quite satisfied with the results. While I was finishing my animation, Sky also finished some of the assets that I need. 

Week 13:

I think this week was the chill before hell week. I got to rest a bit and just tried to finish my animation since I was focusing more on the other module. By this time, Sky has finished most of the assets that I needed and I just need to replace the images. At this point, I thought I was almost done until Sim told me that he wanted to change the look for the unique selling points. Since everything is based on 1 art direction, so if he wanted to change that means I needed to change as well. He showed me his card idea just like how I proposed to Yiyun. I thought that Yiyun didn’t like this idea but after Sim showed the final results, Yiyun seemed to have no problem with it. So I tried to change unique selling points. I also realized that with the current design, it is hard to make the merchandise look presentable. So I also tried to change the layout for the merchandise. While I was mentioning the whole layout changes, Yiyun brought up how I needed to help change the merchandise because Afif didn’t do his work. I was dying at that point but I had no choice.

Week 14:

For this week, I focused on finalizing the layouts and creating the merchandise. To my surprise, I was actually enjoying the process. It was so satisfying to see different variants of each merchandise. I also added more motifs that resemble our brand identification and I think I did pretty good. I also tried to add the camo motifs for the hat with our brand color palette. In the end, I recreated all of the merchandise and I also added 1 more which is a desk fan. I showed my results to my teammates and they all looked satisfied which made me quite proud. We showed it to Sir Mike and he also approved my designs. Right when I thought my work was done, Yiyun asked me to help fix Emeline’s key visual. I did not mind, to be honest, but I also had a hard time trying to figure out how to fix the designs to look better. I felt like we couldn’t really explore because we were stuck with the strict art direction. However, in the end, I managed to change 3 of the social media ads and sir has approved them as well. As for the rest of the week, I uploaded all of my work in Miro, created the flat lay for the merchandise, finalized the microsite, and also made the video walkthrough.

Week 15:

For the final week, I just helped fill up the slides for the presentation and practiced the script. We had a meeting on Thursday and we didn’t get to practice much since everyone was so busy with their own submission. We just hoped that we all could do the presentation properly and on time. After I was done with my script, I immediately put it in the Google form. The next day, we did the presentation and thankfully everything went on great. We all did well! The client didn’t really have any feedbacks or criticism either so we were so relieved. For the final stretch, we just had to put everything in google docs, miro, and Blog. I was so happy after the presentation because that means one piece of work is done. Overall, I think we all did great. I am especially grateful to have Yiyun as my leader. She is a wonderful, patient yet critical leader. She always helps everyone when they’re in need and she is always responsible. I was also able to learn how to work with clients.