31st August - 14th December 2023 / Week 1 - 16
Alana Sofia Othman / 0353451 / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Minor Project
Final Compilation
*Note: Since there is an NDA to this project, no images or works are shown. I will also not be explaining in depth on our project and what we worked on, only the surface level things on what the entire workflow was like.
The Brief
We recieved the brief from our client, Continental (Mr. Jonathan as their representative) and worked alongside the engineering school. The project was to come up with an interactive model display to explain/introduce low rolling resistance to customers easily.
Key takeaways from the brief was:
- Interactive model display
- Educational and easy to understand for an average driver that does not know what LRR is
- Easy set up and repeatability
Collaborating with the Engineering School
There was 2 engineering teams from the beginning to work with and we were informed to choose one during the later weeks of the semester. It was a weird process as there was a obvious unfriendly competitive feeling between both groups that put us, the design team, in a weird position.
Aside from personal feelings though, the ideas both teams came up with were not something that interested me at first, both teams felt a little uncertain about a lot of things. I also couldn't really wrap my head around the fact that they did not need or care for the research we were doing on user personas and target audience. It was also fascinating to see how technical and nerdy these people are as when they spoke about LRR and tyres.
It took us quite a long time to decided which groups idea to go with as both groups were quite slow and had a lot of pros and cons in their idea. Once we finally chose one, it was quite late in the semester and we had a lot of work to catch up on to keep up with our own deadlines. However, the group we chose did make things easier for us as there was more open communication and friendliness between us.
Working with Daniel's group was a fun and interesting experience as they were always willing to listen and take in some ideas. During our first meeting together, we were going back and fourth on ideas and trying to figure out together how we could improve their model to integrate more of the digital aspect as well as enhance their user flow and user understanding on LRR. As they discussed amongst themselves on how the technical aspects of making it happen, Mel and I dicussed the design/user experience part of it. Eventually we were able to come up with a solution together.
Working together after that became much easier and faster as we had landed on a solid idea that both teams, along with Mr Douglas and Mr Jonathan liked. I found working with the engineering team a really interesting experience, especially since Daniel's group was really willing to listen and collaborate with us instead of just expecting work from us.
Our Work Progress
The Beginning Stage - Research
We were quite lost in the beginning since our work seemed to heavily rely on the engineering team to see their ideas. However, we started with what we knew how to do, the researching, something I am extremely familiar with and mostly enjoy.
We began with our contextual research, I listed a few of the basic questions to research on for any project during our group meeting and we landed with:
- SWOT? and history (values, usp, positioning) (company deep dive)
[Dhanveer]
- Competitor analysis (Brands, similar tyres) [Wang Zi Long]
- Old campaigns [Fadil]
- Their usual target market (Who, where, what & why) (company deep dive)
[Mel]
- Understanding their product (why this over other products/competitors)
[Sofia]
- Understanding Tyres [Azriq]
While doing the research, some of my research accidentally overlapped Azriqs, so I ended up adding some stuff to his research board too. Once we completed that, the next step we took was to create the user personas, which Mel handled, and draft up some questions for the engineering teams as we had our first meeting with both the engineering teams as well.
After the user personas and guidance from our lecturer, we were able to move on to drafting our survey. We worked on it together as a group after class and had a first draft. When we asked the engineering team if there was anything specific they wished to know from the target audience, they gave Mel and I a funny confused look, which meant they clearly never thought about target audiences. Thankfully, after feedback from Mr Mike, we were able to take that and continue to work on the survey, we pushed the group to come up with more questions that really dug deep into understanding the purchase habits of our users. During consultation, Mr Mike further encouraged us to ask more questions into the digital/interactive aspect as well, so we worked on that together as a group, and Mel and I had to clean it up again after more feedback from Mr Mike before we finally got the green light to send it out.
The Middle Stage - Insights
About a week later, we closed off the survey and started out our data analysis, I separated it between all 5 of us, giving the easier questions to Zi Long and Dhanveer (since they seemed blur most of the time):
- Zi long
- Questions 1-6
- Last question is "How many days do you drive per week?"
- Dhanveer
- Questions 7-13
- Last question is "Please rank your priorities when buying new tyres"
- Azriq
- Questions 14-20
- Last question is "Low rolling resistance also means the tyre is less safe"
- Sofia
- Questions 21-26
- Until "Have you faced any challenges or frustrations you encountered while interacting with the display models in Figure 2 above"
- Mel
- Questions 27-31/32
- Until end of survey
Once we completed our data analysis, our work slowed down as we were still waiting to see what the engineering teams would show before we made our decision on which group to work with. It took quite awhile for us to make a final decision (which later, unfortunately, created a backlog for us). Our insight discovery also led us to our problem statement. While working on that, we also finally made the decision to work with Daniel's team as there was more opportunity for us to work on compared to the other team which would only be branding & collateral. From finalising which team's idea to work with and our problem statement, we were able to progress to coming up with a draft idea of what we could do for our final submission.
Mel and I together came up with an idea that consisted of 2 parts for the user journey. After consultation, sir suggested combining it and working out the technical details with the engineering team. So we asked Daniel's group for a meeting the next day, and together with them, we were able to go back and fourth and bounce ideas off each other. For it being our first official meeting of working together, it was a really eventful meeting as we were able to listen to each other's input and find the best solution that both engineering and design side could produce. From that though, we had to work on a proposal for the engineering team to re-pitch to their lecturer and Mr Jonathan, so Mel and I worked on the user journey and wireframes together.
Mel and I were confident with what we had worked on and went to consultation with sir all proud and happy of what we had to show, for him to tell us that we still needed more details from the engineering team. So we asked them for a meeting for the next day again and we showed them what we had and funny enough, turns out Mel and I got the mechanical part wrong. The engineering team helped us clear that up and agreed to pass on the details we needed. Again though, while I was trying to fix the user journey, I was still confused on some of the technical things and when I asked Mel for help, she was just as unsure. It was 12am and she ended up asking her dad for help and we were on discord till 2am trying to settle the user journey once and for all. Finally, we were able to get it (we had hoped so atleast) and asked the engineering team to confirm it for us, which they did, yay! From that, we were finally able to move onto actually working on the final product.
The Final Stage - Tyre Mania & RR3-D3
The engineering team was still having a little bit of difficulty with getting a greenlight on the idea for their side due to their own module requirements and so on. Due to that, there was still a few more details and gaps in our storyboard that sir had pointed out during consultation. He advised us to not bother waiting for the engineering team and follow our own timeline and fill in the gaps ourselves with what we believe should be how it will work.
So we reworked the storyboard a little more and began working on the final items. Mel and I tried to figure out how we could come up with a way to 3d our game proposal and we were on discord together trying out a few different softwares to see which we could work most easily in. Eventually Mel decided that it would be easier for her to just work in Unity and solo the 3d and game items herself while the rest of us work on collateral items. I was able to find Continental's brand guidelines online and I compiled the important guidelines into a board in our miro to go off of for our collateral.
Mel seperated the work as:
1. Game Part [Mel + anyone who can help when needed]
- Game UI
- Game Design
- 3D rendering of it
2. Collaterals - Stuff to put for the booth it self
- Posters [sofia]
- Brochures [sofia]
- Leaflet [azriq]
- boards [azriq]
- buntings/banners [dhanveer]
- print ads [dhanveer]
We had part of the work done for consultation the next week but were advised by sir to work on key visuals first. After discussing with Mel, I suggested that we let Azriq take the lead with designing as he I feel he is the best designer in the group, so we got him to work on the Key Visual while I "assisted" (to be honest, I did not do much to help with the Key Visual other than find free tyre vectors for him).
We separated the new list of work as:
1. Game things [Mel + any helper when needed]
- Game Key Visual
- 3D Space Car
- Video of Game Play
- Booth Exhibition Rendering
2. Collaterals:
- Key Visual [Azriq] *turned into flyer after seeing dhanveer's work
- Standee Board (A2) - for Details of the model [Azriq]
- Design of the Pedestal (4ft) [Azriq]
- Brochure [Azriq]
- Bunting (2 versions) [Sofia]
- Stickers on the floor [Sofia]
- Sticker on the machine itself [Dhanveer]
- Flyer [Dhanveer] *turned into poster after seeing his work as it was more fit to be a poster instead
3. Other items for submission [Sofia]
- Slides
- Group Document (because we completely neglected it the entire semester
Once Azriq finished with the Key Visual, we continued on with the other collaterals and used his work as a basis. Most work was then pretty straight forward and we moved on to working on the final items for our submission. Since Mr Jonathan was on leave, we recorded our final presentation for him. Azriq then helped with the editing of our presentation recording (since there were a few messups we had while presenting because for some reason we could not keep a straight face when trying to say "low rolling resistance"), inserting sound effects into the gameplay video and fixing dhanveer's flyers (that became posters). And with that, we were able to claim ourselves done with the project and submit our final submission.
REFLECTION
Experience
noot
Observations
noot
Findings
noot
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