Minor Project - Projects
14.04.20 - 16.04.20 (Week 1 - Week 14)
Tamara Audrey Saputra (0335846)
Minor Project
Projects
Instruction
Projects
Design Innovation & Disruptors | Week 1
1. Please describe what is Design Innovation based on the article "What is Design Innovation? by Alex Obenauer". Please cite some examples to elaborate your observations.
Design innovation focuses on improving the design aspect of products that might seem that it has reached its maximum potential or too mundane to even be cared about. To be able to create innovation through design, one must acquire a great sense of taste, creativity and most importantly empathy. "Good design innovation is deeply empathetic". Being able to emphasize allows us to see through the perspective of our users and understand what may have been their problems when faced with products. This is crucial in identifying what to solve, as innovations are born from unarticulated needs. "Good design innovation progresses people or organizations towards a goal, or works to solve some specific problem(s)". And last but not least, good innovations are never completed. It will always find room for further improvement.
2. Please watch this documentary about Design Disruptors and write a short essay about what are Design Disruptors with cited examples.
In this documentary made by InVision, Design Disruptors highlights the importance and significance of design in enhancing a business's growth. Interviews featuring the head of designers of companies like Google, Facebook, Salesforce, Airbnb, Netflix, Dropbox, Pinterest, etc have shown how their successful product that we use in our day-to-day lives are results of countless design iterations and empathizing with users.
Design Disruptors are those who can identify daily problems or poor UX that we have become so accustomed to and creatively solve it that it seems like an obvious solution to many others. An analogy of "The Pike and The Minnow" was given as an example to explain our lack of sensitivity to the daily problems that we might have overlooked. "It takes a special kind of business and a special kind of designer to keep pushing at these things". To be a good designer, at its core is to be a problem-solver as design cannot be equated to art. As design is supposed to be a bridge that could connect complexity to its user in a simple manner. "Art is about making questions – the design is about making solutions". Another point that was made clear in the difference between design and art was “Design evolves. It is not timeless. Art is timeless.” because design needs to fit in the context of its users whose needs and goal changes. A good design must be able to adapt and that is why it needs to continuously go through iterations to make the product better and better. "Design must evolve/move forward in the digital era.".
Most importantly, Design Disruptors keeps its user in mind. The devices, connections, and even the context of their users using product must all be kept in mind in order to be able to solve the pain-points that might be overlooked since users come from various contrasting backgrounds. "If we forget about the people we are designing for, we are no longer designers – we are makers of stuff."
MVP Farmers - Cyberjaya Farmer's Market
In this project, our group (Vava, Felicia, Rashah, and I) collaborated with the IT students (Ervin, Wai Hoong, and Chun Ho) to work on our chosen client's project which is Cyberjaya Farmer's Market.
Miro Board:
https://miro.com/welcomeonboard/V6i3PI9L1sdbIn6QjMp7vnmujljB9wijjwfIG6WOjOcbYhtys73MWWaQJJtxFro9
https://miro.com/welcomeonboard/V6i3PI9L1sdbIn6QjMp7vnmujljB9wijjwfIG6WOjOcbYhtys73MWWaQJJtxFro9
Week 1 - Week 2
This week we had a meeting done with our client, Ms. Athirah from Cyberjaya. The meeting highlights the current issue that they are facing and the objective behind this project. After hearing more from her, we realized that we misinterpreted the project overview that was given to us. We initially thought that the project will be a marketplace targeted for farmers to sell theirs produces to cut down the chain. Turns out, the project is about creating a vendor and management portal for Cyberjaya Farmer's Market in order to ease their lot booking workflow.
Ms. Athirah has also given us a reference for the kind of portal she wanted as well as their current website for us to refer to.
Ottawa Farmer Market: https://www.cyberjayafarmersmarket.com/
Cyberjaya Farmer's Market: https://ottawafarmersmarket.ca
Week 3
To start off, we first asked the IT students to make the information architecture for the portal in order to know what kind of content should we put inside and the information needed to be retrieved from the client. The information architecture will then need to be signed off by the client as well.
Apart from that, we also looked for other similar markets in Malaysia and other parts of the world. We researched how they usually structured their website flow as well as what kind of contents do they usually have.
Other similar market:
- https://ithacamarket.com
- https://www.portlandsaturdaymarket.com/vendors/become-a-vendor#close
- https://mfm.com.au/our-markets/
- https://dallasfarmersmarket.org
Week 4
After a while, it seems that the project workload needs to be added in order to become a proper minor project. Therefore, after seeing their website and see that improvements can be made, we offered the client a re-branding for Cyberjaya Farmer's Market as well as a promotional strategy to recruit new members. She was open to the idea and we managed to collect several keywords that she wanted the brand to convey.
Keywords:
- Rustic
- Sustainable
- Organic
- Wanderlust
From these keywords, we tried to come up with several moodboards. However, on the consultation day, Mr. Mike suggested that there should be a more distinct difference between the moodboards.
Week 5
We decided that we would use a stylescape (inspired by The Futur) instead of a moodboard when presenting the art direction of the new identity to the client. As stylescape gives a clearer feel on how the new brand identity will look as a whole.
Stylescape #1
Stylescape #2
Stylescape #3
Stylescape #4
Mr. Mike told us to opt which stylescape represents Cyberjaya Farmer's market the best based on their website that we've seen. We decided to combine stylescape 3 and 4 because they have this rustic and organic feel that the client looks for but also has modern qualities to it.
Week 6
Here is the combined version of stylescape 3 and stylescape 4:
 |
| fig 1: Combined Stylescape |
Everyone was happy with it and we decided to present this version to our client.
As for the UI design itself, the feel of the stylescape is correctly translated to the UI design. It is missing that cheerful color and warmness. Mr. Mike suggested us to include a splash of color to make it livelier.
 |
| fig 7: Initial UI Design |
Week 7
While working on the amendments, we are also waiting for the client to finalize a date where we can present her our proposed new identity as well as the wireframe that we have been working on. On the side, we also start to find the different methods of marketing for their promotional strategy.
Here are our attempts of adding a splash of colors to the UI design:
Here are our attempts of adding a splash of colors to the UI design:
 |
| fig 8: attempt 1 |
 |
| fig 9: attempt 2 |
 |
| fig 10: attempt 3 |
 |
| fig 11: attempt 4 |
Final Look:
 |
| fig 12: final attempt |
Week 8
The client responded and we had our first proposal presentation. We delivered our information architecture, UI design, as well as the new brand identity. Ms. Athirah was pleased with the overall look of our work. Although, we did have feedback for our proposed logo and UI design. Such as removing the small details on the logo, adding a statistic chart on the management's dashboard, and adding the 'additional facilities' section that the vendor can request to rent.
As we haven't presented her our complete version of the promotional strategy, we scheduled another meeting with her next week (11 June).
Here is the logo after the details are removed:
 |
| fig 13: Detailed Removed |
Here are the before after of the UI design based on listening to the client's request and needs:
 |
| fig 14: Management Portal (Before) |
 |
| fig 15: Management Portal (After) |
 |
| fig 16: Vendor's Portal (Before) |
 |
| fig 17: Management Portal (After) |
Week 9
Within one week, we managed to work on the changes that she requested as well as the promotional strategy. Overall, Ms. Athirah was happy with the result and she gave some feedback as well. She mentioned having the ads in Bahasa Melayu as well since their market is most Malays. She also mentioned about the COVID-19 and how it impacted the vendors. She said it would be nice if we could consider that into the pain points of the target audience. Moreover, she said that she will provide the analytics statistics of the vendors that they currently have. Lastly, we also have a discussion with both the IT students and the client regarding how the shared lot should be implemented in the system.
Since we realized that the vendor categories that Cyberjaya Farmer's Market are beyond farm produce products, we decided to ask Ms. Athirah if she's okay with us changing the finalized logo as we feel that it does not represent the other categories. Ms. Athirah agreed and we proceed to make revisions to our work.
Since we realized that the vendor categories that Cyberjaya Farmer's Market are beyond farm produce products, we decided to ask Ms. Athirah if she's okay with us changing the finalized logo as we feel that it does not represent the other categories. Ms. Athirah agreed and we proceed to make revisions to our work.
Week 10
We received feedback about how we should improve our EDMs and look for seasonal/annual events and CFM events that CFM usually celebrates to include in our EDMs. The EDMs should prepared as if it will be used through out the year. Mr. Mike also mentioned that our promotional strategy needs to be formulated so that it will work for the long-run.
Here are the new logo options that adopt the inclusive idea:
Here are the new logo options that adopt the inclusive idea:
 |
| fig 18: Logo Alternative 1 |
 |
| fig 19: Logo Alternative 2 |
 |
| fig 20: Logo Alternative 3 |
Week 11
At this point, everything seems to be on track and we’re only waiting for the logo to be approved so that we can change it across all of the work that we have made.
Overall, we are almost done with everything. We’ll just have to change several minor things for our promotional strategy content. As for the wireframes, we are now just waiting for the prototype done by the IT students since we have already shared it through XD with them.
Week 12
Week 13
This week we are completing our final presentation deck. It's almost done and we just need to change all of the logo to the client's chosen logo. We just need to wait for her response.
We consulted our final presentation with Mr. Mike and he told us to make the images bigger for the promotional stategy ads since we have worked so hard on it after all. He also mentioned about the great choice of photos that we have used for all of our contents and that it's really a plus point knowing that everything are free stock photos. After the consultation with Mr. Mike ended, we even double checked everything just to make sure that they are free and check the kinds of credits they needed.
Week 14
We received the confirmation of our presentation on Monday. We are scheduled to have our final presentation with Ms.Athirah on Wednesday at 4PM. At the same time, she also responded to our new logo and opted for the 3rd logo but with some notes on the 'hand' of the "C" letter.
 |
| fig 21: Client's request |
We tried to understand her request and came up with a the new revised logo. However, the logo doesn't feel right to us and it also brings us to square-one where the logo seems to be too farmers-oriented. We consulted with Mr. Mike and he agreed that the revised logo just doesn't work and it's best to stick with the orignal version of the "C" logo and explain again to Ms. Athirah regarding the rational behind it.
 |
| fig 22: Initial Logo |
 |
| fig 23: Attempt to revise logo |
On Wednesday, we presented our whole work to Ms. Athirah. That includes the new brand identity, promotional strategies, and the prototype of the portals. We are truly relieved when she said that she was really happy with our presentation and is looking forward to seeing the end product which will be continued by our IT fellows. We're proud enough as a group to have finished this project on time and smoothly without much hiccups. It's a wrap guys!
Comments
Post a Comment