Charette Reflection- Nicole Taylor Ferreira

Constraints

 The last two weeks were stressful, to say the least.  For my group I know that we kept getting caught up and it seemed as if we were falling behind and kept thinking too much about it, rather us starting we kept thinking about it conceptually.  We spent too much time on that and I’m not sure if we were unsure of how to approach the topic or what.  With this in mind since we had five people in our group, that was even more stressful.  Each person approaches the design process differently, which is both positive and negative.  Both aspects definitely made an appearance as well.  Considering all of this, I do believe that our project turned out well considering from where we started.  I did enjoy working with my other four group mates because three of them were in the other section last year, so I have not had the chance to actually work with them before or to really know how they approach the design process, so that was pretty informative.

Opportunity

Well, everyone knows that group work is not always the easiest.  I learned that the hard way during the cardboard project freshman year during FYE.  I definitely did learn a lot from this experience, like trying to make my ideas heard more.  I can sometimes be unsure of myself so I do not push my ideas really which also does not help the group.  I learned to be more vocal and to show more of a presence than to be timid.  In approaching focused charettes, I believe that we have to figure out what we are doing and how we are doing that early on instead of rushing to try to meet the time constraint.  Also, if we need to adjust our intervention in a way, we have to be open to that rather than pushing what we are doing, which may not be the best solution.  It is hard for every group dynamic because majority of the time there is always someone who tries to take control and if you do not know each other well, knowing each others personalities as well as process that can be difficult.

Application

Working groups definitely did motivate me, but it did sometimes do the opposite.  Working in groups, majority of the time tasks are delegated.  When we first started I was really excited about our idea and our intervention, but then we kept having miscommunication where we would not all be on the same page, which did not help.  Also, other group mates would some times try to take over what another person is doing rather than collaboratively working.  Collaboratively working makes the design stronger; that was lacking in some areas.  I was impressed with our brand; it did come together in the end.  Although, one of our critiques was that we needed one more thing to really tie it together, and we did.  It sort of felt unfinished and not as strong as it could be.

Contribution

Ideating for the app and compiling the presentation.

Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B03PGHrHU2LkSEdSMU5ielh6czQ

Charette Reflection – Megan Bonner

Constraints

It was difficult to adjust to the two week time period. To feel like we were on top of things, I feel like things had to be made right away, which didn’t give us much time for ideating and research, and that can lead to uncertainty and a lack of confidence in the overarching idea. My group didn’t really go along with the idea given to us, so that in itself is a constraint since we had to build a new idea from the ground up and we didn’t have any time for that. Working with a group for this project was difficult. I generally don’t do well in group projects anyway, but I felt that the number of people in the group affected the cohesiveness of the final deliverable. Like, it was hard for 5 people to get on the same page and organize in a way that was productive. I feel like the project would have gone smoother if there were 3, or even 4, instead of 5 people. This project overall, made me feel very exhausted.

Opportunity

For the future, I will try to be more active a group and make sure there’s an open communication between members. A lot of stress can occur when there’s not an agreement on what’s being made or even if there’s a misunderstanding of a topic. In the future, I’d like to settle on a topic at the very beginning and not waver in my confidence of that topic, instead of re-hashing the same idea over and over again. I will also allow myself to be reliant on people and trust in my group members more.

Application

Working in a group makes me feel motivated to do a project, even if it’s a stress-induced motivation. I get in a headspace where I don’t want to disappoint my group or be that person that doesn’t pull their weight. So, I tried my best in adding my contributions to a team. Focus and productivity were kind of a rollercoaster since my group spent a lot of time on the research and analysis. Sometimes I feel like my group got to a bit of a stand-still where we were just trying to figure out what we’re doing, instead of making something. To be honest, I feel like we had a hard time agreeing on things and that stagnated our process. Although I think using everyone’s different skills in the end deliverable was beneficial, because everyone had something to offer. We probably could have made something more polished if we started earlier in the charette.

Presentation & Contribution

For my group, I filmed video footage with Julia. I edited and produced the final video, including the opening animation. I provided the voice over, going off of Julia’s script. I also designed the poster series, based off of Ashley’s brand.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B03PGHrHU2LkSEdSMU5ielh6czQ?usp=sharing

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…