Finding ‘a way in’

Last week we met with Eugenia and she gave us an overview of understanding and designing the product experience for our users. We each brought in some visual criteria that we thought captured the words..

– Sassy

– Nostalgia

– Unique

– High Fashion

– Gossip/Scandal

– Celebrate

– Celebrity

These are a few of the images that were generated. The visual criteria is to help establish an emotional criteria and over all feeling of our design intention. It is a great visual tool for visually communicating with the client and teammates.

Personalities @ the Pacific Centre

Last sunday we acted out what we think the shoppers are like at the Pacific Centre.

Creative Problem Solving

Checking our storage space

Professional measurement devices: the human body, and a piece of cardboard.

Creativity comes in bursts of coffee

Okay, so maybe I haven’t been good this year. Santa, close your ears.

It’s not that I haven’t been thinking about it – trust me, this is all I think about, every day, all day; it may have something to do with the fact that my thirteen year old laptop (which took, literally, 20 minutes just to load this page) gets in the way of my short temper and hinders my creative ability to write. Maybe it’s just that I’ve never tried blogging before. Who knows? Anyhow, I had written this short representation of my previous experience with this project, but chickened out in the last minute and went with the safe side. Enough hiding from myself! Last term, I was working with five others on another version for the client – so maybe if I post it, you’ll read it. (Nose knows. Or nose knows?) So here goes:

JANUARY 6, 2011: A time for firsts – and what I worry most about is that I’ve never written a blog. So open your eyes and ears to the ramblings of a somewhat nervous and rather excited design student. Monday morning, 8:30, Exhibit Design. Fourteen weeks, we were given to work on a project with Cadillac Fairview. We went to a kick-off client meeting (another first) in a fancy and slightly intimidating office room overlooking downtown Vancouver. We spent weeks on ideations, perfection, demolition, and pretty much always ended up hitting the ol’ white board all over again. Working loosely with the client, we established boundaries, set perimeters, and decided on three winning project concepts for the students to work on. More. Ideations. Perfection. Demolition. White board. Three weeks left, two new group mates; we worked hard to recreate an idea from an idea of an idea way back when; we even succeeded in creating a presentable project the week before the due date (somehow!). Procrastination isn’t much of a word heard of here, surprisingly – we were all working at least twelve hour days at school. I had had four hours of sleep on Saturday night, the last wink of sleep that I would have aside from a hurried car ride to Richmond (the one back left me wide eyed and queasy.) I wasn’t expecting this, seeing as we had expected everything to continue to go smoothly. Everything, of course, did not. Last minute shopping, detail tweaking, rearranging – needless to say, emotions were running high. On Sunday night, the guards had turned off the lights and already given out two unheeded end-of-the-day warnings before students began hurriedly tossing supplies into bags and congregating in small groups in the parking lot to migrate to the next location. My group and I – to Richmond. One rather unlucky McDonald’s and energy drink fueled all-nighter and two speedy car-rides later, we somehow managed to make it to the front door an hour before the presentation. Emotions – still running high. We stood cross-armed for a couple of chilly minutes. And then – we pulled ourselves together, and rocked the presentation (before I fell dead asleep in my next class, and consequently had to go home.) Am I worried? Yes! Yes, I am worried, and petrified, that this seemingly larger part of the project is not behind me yet. In the end, the White Elephant was chosen, from Desmond and Michael’s group, and I am ready to give my 100% as I did my fourteen-week precursor. Looking forward to a couple more all-nighters.

Anastasia (hereby known as Aska)

So where am I now? Tired. Creativity comes in bursts of coffee, and my cup is almost empty – the remains, cold. Eurgh. Cold coffee and fuzzy brain do not make for a good combination. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun; I’m just feeling a little lost in the desert right now, clinging on to housekeeping and brainstorming like a madwoman pulling out hair! Elephant, where are you? If you’re by the water, man, lead me to it.

Aska

Square One

We’re back at square one with the Elephant Project… in fact, I am not sure if this will be an “elephant” project anymore.  Sometimes, it feels discouraging to scrap the concept we worked on since last semester.  Nonetheless, this is a new opportunity for something new and exciting.  How do we move forward with optimism and new energy?

A day in the life of design (or Desmond slays Chewbacca)

We don’t really get paid.

It’s okay to be an “error-er”

I was a fearful child growing up and this made me into a perfectionistic person (until recently).  Being a perfectionist sounds great on resume, but that makes me very hard to live with as many of my previous roommates attested.  The trouble with being a perfectionist is that nothing, absolutely nothing, is good enough.  This makes starting and finishing projects a problem as I often procrastinate till the 11.5 hour before finishing anything.  Procrastination is a sign of a perfectionist, and I might have perfected it.  Nonetheless, this is a very stressful way to live life.  I am learning that what I do, or did, does not make who I am.  CBC’s Mary Hynes recently interviewed Canadian designer Bruce Mau on Tapestry where he insightfully stressed the “importance of making friends with failure.” The iterative and prototyping process in industrial design is a testament to Mau’s statement.

Timeline + Tasks

This week we needed to get down to business and outline in detail the tasks that need to be accomplished, how were going to accomplish them and their deadlines.
As well to enjoy each others company over some beer and sushi! Yummy 🙂

White Elephant Presentation

This is our final presentation of our concept.