Union Loop – Charette Reflection

Jack Ratterree

I feel like the time constraint was mainly an issue for my group because we didn’t start with the topic given to us, but, instead, developed a topic on our own to be addressed. This lead to a lot of conceptual work which I really like to do. I have a problem where I need to fully understand a concept and play around and research it before making anything. With a two week timeline, this wasn’t really possible but I still found myself getting lost in analysis paralysis. I think that the constraint of working with my classmates wasn’t in their performance or even that it was a group project. But, rather, I feel like the constraint was that we had too many people per group. At any given time, it felt like three people were really working hard on the project when two others weren’t. This isn’t specific to certain people; even I found myself with nothing to do while my team was busy because the work was hard to pass off to other people. I really think this project should have been three people per group rather than five. Then everyone could have worked efficiently the entire time.

In the future I will be more reliant on the others in my group to pull me out of my analysis paralysis and get me working on actual deliverables. I will also be more careful to work smarter rather than harder especially when the deliverable isn’t necessarily the graphic design examples, but a poster presenting them.

Working in a group definitely helped motivate me to work more on the project. Instead of relying on others to come up with ideas, I felt more excited and more open to discussing an iffy idea and seeing different perspectives on it (versus tossing it out right off the bat). I don’t think working in a group effected my focus or productivity because we worked well individually and weren’t reliant on each other. However, it was definitely more difficult to make a cohesive final deliverable within the group because everyone had a different take on the brand and project itself.

For my group, I developed our project conceptually through research of the areas and proposing a topic beyond Riverwalk and ideated for actual deliverables. I made mockups of the user interface and defined the features and task flow of the app. I animated sections for the final video. I also collated the work of the group and designed the final poster.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2nFSH7Ul_DDMGtMTE5uMjB0TW8

Charette Reflection-Julia Paret

Union Loop 

It was challenging to consolidate our ideas into something cohesive, fully formulated and well articulated during the short timeframe. The short time frame forced us to begin creating physical things right away, which is something I struggle with. I have issues with “analysis paralysis” even when topics are provided for me.  This felt no different in that regard. However, being forced to make things straight off while the idea and concept were still forming helped push and clarify the concept. Sometimes I need to get out of my head and just make things to see what happens. I get hung up in the planning phase otherwise. I usually work well in a group that has at least one person who “just wants to make stuff” because it helps me visualize and clarify what direction to head in from the 5,000,000 possibilities when I get caught up in my head.

Part of our issue was that we didn’t start with the original idea of the Riverwalk. So we had to also set up our own scenario to turn it into a cohesive story. This wasn’t immediately apparent to me. I had a hard time understanding what points the instructors were trying to point out because I was too close to the topic. Also, in the end, I burnt out a little.

I think we may have some time management problems. We needed to make things right away instead of conceptualizing. Sometimes I forget that those things go hand in hand. Also, figure out each others working styles faster. Not only do I need to recognize other peoples’ workflow, but I have to adjust my own to create a new system that compliments instead of assuming what works for me, works for everyone. I need to have a balance of both group discussion, time to reflect and ideate or question further and then collaborate in person again so I can synthesize what my partners’ perspectives.

I tend to rely heavily on the critique of my instructors because, in my mind, they have seen and done a lot more than I have. While this is true, I also need to have confidence in my own perspectives. I have to remember that sometimes an opinion given (from anyone) is from a unique perspective that I should take into account and look at objectively but that doesn’t make my own thoughts “wrong”. Things aren’t black and white and rather than assuming the concept is invalid, realize I just need to be more convincing or make adjustments to parts but not necessarily scrap everything and start over.

I felt exhausted trying to envision a cohesive story to multiple moving parts, particularly how they fit into a bigger system together. Parts of this had to do with the timeframe, I had to figure out what was being made before the ideas were fully formulated as we worked out flaws in the logic during the process of making. Or if a process wasn’t ever articulated explicitly, reading between the lines because video production needed to be started before all of the assets were finished. Stay flexible.

I wrote the video script and information displayed on the poster (except for the application walkthrough), provided the background research and framed our design problem for the final presentation, recorded the video footage with Megan, created mock-ups of our designs in context for the video and poster, drew out the path of the trail, and used the brand Ashley created to show how it was generative through wayfinding.

Union Loop_Collaborative Folder

• Wayfinding Process
• and more…

Design Charrette Reflection – Logan LaBo

My Part

The deliverable that I was responsible for was the video for the presentation. Our group deemed the poster and video as important as the rest of the deliverables. Although I did make the video almost entirely myself I did have a big role in our branding and in developing most of the other concepts that became of other deliverables as well as making the first set of mock ups for the AR experience.

Constraints

My design process for completing the “Design Charrette” project was greatly affected by several different constraints. The first of these constraints was the smaller time frame we had two complete the project, two weeks. The smaller time frame forced me to rush my design process. I don’t think that I forfeited any of my usual steps in my design process. I simply did not spend as much time on each of the steps of my design process and thought much more critically about what I was doing at every step, to be as productive as possible and save time. The next constraint I dealt with was having a topic provided to me, instead of developing my own topic. I didn’t find this nearly as challenging of a constraint as the time factor was. In fact, the structure of having a topic assigned to me kept me on topic and was most useful. Although early in the design process we did find that being able to focus some of our work beyond the Durham Beltline area would have been helpful. The final constraint I dealt with was having to work with classmates on the project. While I do believe the sum of our work is much greater than anything I could have accomplished on my own, it was very challenging to work with other classmates. I believe at this point in our design education each of my classmates and I have developed our own style, workflow, schedule and design language. Each of these traits clashes when working with others, and getting everyone on the same page was extremely difficult.

 

 

Opportunity

 

I envision this experience of a group design project will inform my future design work in several ways. The first way I envision my future design work is influenced by the experiences I’ve had in this design project is how I work in groups. When working in groups in the future I will push the importance of everyone being responsible for certain deliverables. While I believe that outcome of the deliverables will be better if everyone works collaboratively, I think that if everyone is not responsible for one deliverable from the start, that work will be delayed. To that end, if those who are not good at pacing themselves are not forced by someone to do so i.e. goals or milestones are not set, the final product will be affected. Therefore, I would plan to do those things in future group projects. The second thing I’m taking from this experience is that a Charrette-style project can be very helpful but also very stressful. If I had the opportunity to participate in a focused charrette in the future I would likely do so, but I would prefer them to be much shorter and with much less expectation, to still feel the rush and fast ideation but not feel so stressed to produce so much. Finally, I learned that when approaching a new way of working or group of co-workers, the best possible thing I can do is keep an open yet ready to work mindset. By doing this I can be free of prejudices and biases and be as productive as possible.

 

Application

 

When doing the group work for the team I felt responsible for the work of the entire group and not just my own. I knew that if I didn’t finish the work on time that I was responsible, then I knew that I would be letting the whole group down. So, I was constantly motivated to work harder to have what I was responsible for on time for everyone to move forward. I could stay motivated simply because of the stress of the reasons I just stated. I did feel that sometimes the constrictions of the project and the opinions of my professors of the path to move forward became so constricting that it felt impossible to find a path forward and this often became very frustrating and often broke my focus and concentration. But I usually just had to take a step back and brainstorm to work around these barriers. I do believe that the end quality of our designs was much better because of the crossing of ideas and opinions between our group. We developed a series of checks and balances, which I believe led to an overall better product. Although I do believe some of my group members contributed to this product less than others.

The following link shows our design process, deliverables, and reflection:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0Bx8W79xGq1vCYkFzeWpYclJmd1U?usp=sharing

 

Proposition

My proposition for future students participating in this Design Charrette would be to work hard and work fast.

Me: Logan LaBo

My Group: Logan, Conor, Allison, Ari, Sam

Charette Reflection

Over the past two weeks I really enjoyed collaborating with my group members to develop of final branding project of The Kit and Tidings at The Kit. However having only two weeks did put constraints on our project. We tried to cover all of our bases — the logo, brand colors, general feel, idea, and concepts, and visuals for our event — but we could not experiment as much as we wanted with our ideas. I felt like we didn’t have time to figure out the logistics of how the paper boat would go down the river or the animation with the logo that was discussed during our critique.The two weeks forced us to graze the surface of our brand, but it did not give us time to dive deep into how it would all work and true make a brand that was completely faithful to our ideas. If we had more time we could have tested our idea on waterproof paper to see if it would work and maybe even float it in a body of water.
Having a topic assigned to our group narrowed down what we could do and how far out we could go with it because we had to stay with the idea and feel of “Raleigh Riverwalk.” I felt like because the title we were given had “river” in it, it had to be about the water, but when I visited the site I got more confused because it was just a tiny, dirty stream on the side of the road, not a grand riverwalk. However, I think this was needed because of the time constraint. Having a topic assigned to us allowed us to dive straight into the area instead of brainstorming different ideas of what we could do for hours.
I think working with people made the project a little more difficult. Everyone has their personal preferences, opinions, and styles. Normally this would cause a lot of issues and debates about where we should go with the project, however, I think my group had the same vision of our project from the start and I think our different styles complimented each other. However, I will say that working with people who all have different schedules does make it difficult to find times to meet and work on the project.
This project definitely helped me grow as a collaborator. It made me feel more comfortable sharing my ideas without feeling self conscious and worried that people will think it is a horrible idea. It also made me feel more confident when I back up the reasons for my ideas, because I do have good ideas. Paired with this, it has helped me be able to give and receive criticism without attaching emotions to it because I know it is not personal and people want to help me be the best that I can be. It has also showed me my strengths as a collaborator: I think I am good at conveying ideas in a way that makes sense, compromising, as well as immediately going with an idea once it is decided on.
This project has taught me how to make quick and sure decisions while still having enough research to back them up. As well as being able to orally back it up when people as why these were the decisions. It taught me how to better use my imagination during a project and showed me that it is okay to let your imagination run wild; if we did not imagine that a beautiful and popular Riverwalk was already set up and thriving, we would not have been as successful. It also taught me that my final idea can completely stray from my first impressions, which how it should be. It taught me how to look further than just the dirty stream and see potential in a forgotten area.
Because of this project, I know that in the future when I approach a new design experience I need to keep an open mind, not ruling anything out until I finally see potential or a direction to go in. I will go in with a knowledge that my idea will stray from the first ones that come to mind, as well as the importance for researching the background information of my beginning ideas, as well as different aspects of my projects that I come up with.
I think working in a group made me more motivated to do my work because I knew that others were counting on me to do my work and have it ready for our next check in during class because I did not want them to suffer because of me. Sometimes when I work alone on projects I get distracted, however, I feel like I was a lot more focused and productive during this project, I think this is because the motivation and productivity of other members of my group rubbed off on me and made me want to be focused and productive as well. I also like that since there were five people in my group there were five peoples’ minds continuously turning out new ideas, which kept us imagining and excited when working on the project.
I think working with people elevates the level and quality of the end design deliverable. Everyone is their own expert. Each group member has a different specialty that they worked on in the project so it could be the best that it could be. For example, we all worked on the brainstorming, and since we are all different people we developed different ideas. After we decide on what we needed to do we broke up the project between each of us.
Sarah and I co-designed most of our contribution to the project because we know we work well together and have similar ideas and styles. We worked on wayfinding: deciding where we needed wayfinding points, the style of the wayfinding system, and the look of this system. I also designed the stationary that would be used to write the tidings on and then Sarah and I made mock ups by going through the process for writing the tidings, folding the boats, unfolding the boats, responding to each other’s messages, and then pinning them up in an installation. Sarah and I also co-managed the instagram account Tidings_at_the_Kit that would advertise for the event as well as update followers with new information about the event as well developed the hashtags #shipoutgoodtidings so that we can further advertise for the event through other people’s instagrams and their followers. All in all I think the stress that came with a two week project was definitely worth it because everything I gained from this experience.