Charette Reflection

Constraints:

While time was a pretty major issue, the fact that we had a pre-picked topic and a group of fellow designers was a huge help. The topic at hand was broad enough that we still had plenty of wiggle room regarding the way we approached the project, and having each other to l immediately bounce ideas off of helped us come up with a plan that was both viable and conceptually interesting.

Opportunity:

I think that working in this team was really nice! I enjoyed working with this particular group of people quite a bit. The level of communication was just enough that I feel like everyone was contributing their fair share of work, working off each other’s strengths to complete the charrette on time. However, unless I’m taking little to no other classes then I wouldn’t want to take a two-week design challenge ever again. The time constraint was so stressful, and a good number of the people in my group and in this class (myself included) spent several days staying up very late working on it. This doesn’t mean that I’d be repelled by new ways of approaching design problems, of course, but when me and my peers still have other courses, design and otherwise, pushing ourselves to this limit is awfully detrimental to our health and grades.

Application:

One of the biggest things I think this project helped with is motivation to work. When you’re working with a group of people on a shared goal, oftentimes their portions rely on your own contribution, and vice-versa. Having other people who rely on you really helps the ol’ motivation, because if you fall behind everyone else in the group also falls behind and disappointing people really sucks. Being able to focus, be productive, and concentrate on the project was boosted by this extra level of motivation. On top of all of that, the quality of our final product was enhanced by the fact that we were all there for each other for proofreading and improving our individual creations.

Presentation:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B30lw1n9HFbzeE9rQUNBakRRcms?usp=sharing

Future Recommendations:

I think overall this was a successful project that I enjoyed and learned from. However, as I mentioned earlier I think that only having two weeks was stressful, and adding an extra class or two just to give a bit more time to polish and wrap things up would have been a godsend. I also did not like being singled out to talk when we had already covered everything we needed to cover. It had nothing to do with my group’s project and crossed a line I didn’t appreciate being crossed. If you have concerns about me vocalizing, please speak to me personally about them instead, please. In conclusion, I think that the Charette project was interesting and educational to participate in and was a different and neat way of working in a group project. I give it an 8/10.

Reflection Charette

Reflecting on my experience for this design charette, I feel like my group did well in meeting deadlines and providing an exciting and innovative solution to our problem. The two-week period was nice because it allowed us to come up with a lofty and extensive solution but kept us on track to produce material with little time for major adjustments. It was stressful that our final deliveries involved a giant poster and a video. Both things weighed heavily on myself and my team as the deadline approached, as we had to finish all our content to have things to put in the final deliverables. So, there was a lot of stress and I think my heart rate and mood went crazy as well as neglect for my other classes, but a rude awakening to the Junior year may pay off going into this next 10-week project. I really enjoyed working with my classmates this time around because through interaction with the professors and the ideation process, we were all very enthusiastic about our vision and were easily motivated to collaborate. We could see how much work needed to happen for this to be successful so having a large group was a welcome sight. We all got along very well and there weren’t any interpersonal issues. Everyone had clear roles and work established for them and we all helped curate each other’s work to keep it all “on brand”.

In the future, I will use this experience to choose my team members strategically and try to understand what it is that each member can contribute and wants to contribute. I felt like I always feel going into a group project, and that is that I need to become a leader of some sort. I see the deadlines and the big picture constantly and have no problem telling others what I feel they should do to help the project move towards the goal the quickest. I have tried in the past to take on a more passive follower role and it has been stressful for me because I want to critique and direct other people’s work and not focus on producing content in a silo. In this project I helped art direct, I wrote our directive statements and all the content for the audio, I storyboarded the video so that our group saw what assets the video needed, and laid out the final poster and wrote its text content. My goal was always to design a system that was critically robust and relevant so I needed to hold the reigns and let the creative talent of the group flourish while I nudged people in certain directions.

Design Charrettes are somewhat new to me. I like the idea of a refreshingly quick expression of problem solving. When the problem was presented to us I welcomed not having to look for the problem. I do well reacting to design problems, I feel like it is more aligned with my personality to come up with solutions to given problems rather than seeking out problems that aren’t presented to me. I think this experience will help me problem solve in the future because now I know that a solution with multiple touchpoints needs to operate as a system and not just a collection of pieces. Each touchpoint is an opportunity to integrate functionality and problem solving that is inherent to that medium, so choosing the right touchpoints is key to realizing a design system and vice versa.

Going into the next project I hope I can find a team that accepts my direction and understands that I want the group to function as a team all on the same page. I support as well as lead, so I go where I am needed and understand the strengths of members and let the group know who I think would be best suited for a certain task. It doesn’t mean that I dictate the direction that our group is headed creatively, just that I try get us to that destination as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Working with groups always has me performing and listening the sharpest. I think the social aspect of group projects causes me to produce better work because of social stressors, ego, and artistic integrity. So, I was very motivated to produce good work. The scope of our project meant a lot of work which meant a high level of productivity. Obviously, a group needs to be organized to operate efficiently and get the most out of its people power. So, having individuals focused on certain tasks or having time to work collaboratively and bounce ideas off each other was important. I thought the quality of our end deliverables was great considering the stress we were under. There was a lot of inter group critique and collaboration for everyone’s design implements and a lot of excitement and encouragement. Everyone worked hard.

Overall, I had a lot of fun being presented a complex problem and meeting it with a complex solution. This project redefined the role of graphic designer for me and the importance and reach of branding solutions as well as, restoring my faith in collaboration.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B30lw1n9HFbzeE9rQUNBakRRcms

Charette | Reflection – Nick Hyde

This design charette experience was definitely different from our usual projects and workflow. Having only two weeks to work through an entire design intervention had both positive and negative impacts on our process. It greatly accelerated the rate at which we ideated and made decisions on things, having to commit to our best idea so that we would have enough time to be able to create all of the individual parts and pieces of our solution. I was really surprised by how much we’re all capable of producing in this amount of time that actually has substance to it. This condensed design method seems like it could be a useful tool in the future in some ways. By having the topic provided to us, I think it helped us hone in on where we needed to be a lot sooner, significantly cutting down our period of ideation. However, it also made it seem like we were all trying to avoid having similar solutions as other groups which may have pushed us in unintended directions. The group aspect of this project was possibly the most complicated part of it all. I for one, enjoy working with other passionate designers, it allows us to reach heights that would be unattainable working on our own. The downside is trying to coordinate our work schedules, especially when we have different groups for two other classes going on simultaneously. This really complicated things when we would try to equally distribute work and move forward in the design process.

I think this experience will inform my future endeavors in several ways. When it comes to working in teams, I think it’s critically important to be upfront about how much time should be set aside for a specific project and make sure every member is committed to doing just that. Assessing every member’s varying strengths and weaknesses is also an important aspect and can lead to better distribution of roles and workload. When it comes to focused design challenges like this, I think the greatest future advice would be to constantly recenter and reassess yourselves. It seems easy to quickly become overwhelmed or sidetracked when working on a project of this scale in such a short amount of time. By continually reevaluating the goals and core concepts of a project it could prevent these things form happening. So just remember to take a step back and intermittently notice the overall form your solutions start to take.

Collaborating as a team definitely keeps you motivated and focused. You feel obligated to work as hard as possible so that you don’t let your team down, especially when specific tasks are assigned to you. It also allows for a more diverse selection of ideas and access to varied ways of thinking, however, this can be a double-edged sword. It is crucial to “trim the fat” when it comes to narrowing down these ideas as it is possible to have too many parts or variations. This can end up making your design intervention more convoluted than focused. However, I think we still did a great job when it came to synthesizing our ideas to reach a plausible solution. I think we may have ended up a little astray when it came to the order in which we presented all of the components of our solution, but I still think the substance was there. I think if the final presentation was simply a mid-critique and we had more time to work on this, we would reevaluate how our current solution aligned with that of the original prompt and reordered how we presented everything. By reiterating how everything would start at the trail with the way finding system and then radiate outwards into these future possibilities, our intervention would appear much more appropriate.

For this project I was responsible for the website mockup, producing the video, and creating the core brand identity. I also did my best to keep the group on task and organized in order to keep us moving forward, ensuring everyone had a part to play. I wanted to make sure everyone felt engaged and was contributing as equally as possible.

 

Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B1ybPggY3GIYX3BXbF9UU3lWR1E

“I DEFINE DURHAM” Reflection – Jasmine Lang (Group D)

Having these constraints hindered and benefited my workflow at the same time. Because we only had two weeks to research and make, I couldn’t let myself get stuck and dwell on ideas too long (as I tend to do). I had to make sure I made a good amount of progress each time we met. Since I had a topic provided to me, it meant I spent a lot less time trying to find the “perfect” idea to tackle. However, that also meant I didn’t feel as invested into the project. It didn’t feel as unique, especially when other groups were developing similar interventions for the same place. And having to collaborate with classmates was definitely a struggle, even though we all got along well. It was nice to have others to generate ideas, bounce ideas around, and take up some of the workload. However, I feel that having more people also limited our productivity. Our schedules were really different and it was hard for us to find times to meet in-person that weren’t late at night. There were times where we all had to wait for each other to complete their part of the project before we could move on, so we each experienced periods of stagnation. The fact that our (Adobe) software didn’t allow real-time remote collaboration like Google Drive also didn’t help. Actually, having more ideas wasn’t always a good thing. At times, we struggled to pick one concept to focus on and go with because we liked all the ideas we came up with!

This wasn’t the first time I had done design group work, but it was the first time I had such a short time frame to work in. Even though it was a very stressful and exhausting experience, I think working in a charrette was a necessary experience for me. It’ll help me prepare for the fast-paced collaborative work in the real world. I still have a hard time not getting stuck on minute details, and this project forced me to move on quickly. Sometimes, I felt that even two weeks was too long for a project. So perhaps I’d want to try shorter charrettes/challenges in the future (not now though because I’m still recovering!).

Obviously working with others meant that I worked harder and longer. I didn’t want to let my teammates down. And I didn’t want them to shoulder too much of the workload. When I was working with my group in-person, I tended to get more done because I could easily get feedback along the way. It was much easier to ask for help and explain what I was doing though visuals and speech instead of text messages. Seeing them working hard also motivated me to work hard. When I wasn’t with my group, I had a harder time focusing on the project because of other duties. Perhaps there were times where we ended up distracting one another because our brains began to fizzle out, but those distractions helped lighten the mood and relieve stress. I’d say our final design intervention turned out pretty well since we had more than one person working and good group dynamics. Not only did we each do what we were assigned, we would share ideas for, give feedback on, and help out with other members’ portions. We were all involved in each part.

My takeaways: Plan ahead when you make site visits so you don’t end up driving around aimlessly and wasting time. Foster an open environment where everyone can contribute an equal amount. Don’t be afraid to share ideas with your groupmates, even if you think they sound dumb. They might lead to ideas you’d never thought of otherwise (or at least evoke laughter and lower stress a little). And try not to procrastinate, even if you don’t feel very motivated to do the project. You’ll regret it when you’re stuck in studio at 1am, starving and working feverishly the last few days.

GO TEAM! Thanks for all your hard work!

Link to our project:

• https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B1ybPggY3GIYX3BXbF9UU3lWR1E

(Group D: Jasmine, Sydney, Madi, Nick)

 

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

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