School here

School here

I’ve been here a month and I must say school here is awesome. It just gives you so much more time to think and prepare your ideas then back home. It is stressed that your ideas be backed up and solid. There is always a discussion about the terms along the way.

The first week we were here, in our sponsored studio, we were given the project statement by the company itself. We were shown examples of the quality of work we were going for.

After this we went to lunch. Came back and began to discuss research that would need to be done which would be presented in two weeks. The conversation was lead by the teacher and what resulted was a list of 13 different research topics ranging from brand language to personas, to future technology. The class was then divided into groups of two or three and assigned one of the topics... before we left. One of the students opted to create a template for the research.

A week later we all came back and presented our findings in what was supposed to be 5 minute presentations (aside from Kristen and me) everyone was near 15. And that's not to say we did it incorrectly, in fact I think we had a very thorough presentation at about 22 pages. After each presentation we opened up a discussion to isolate problems, issues or areas where improvements needed to be made. At the end of this day the list was refined and re organized into 5 groups with about 3 presentations in each. We were all assigned the task of looking at our presentation and defining questions and opportunities.

5 days later we all met late at night to run through the refined presentations without the professors, all the questions and opportunities were collected. One or more of the students created 5 boards for the five groups and listed the opportunities. We were all instructed to put the questions at the end of each of our presentation.

2 days later we went to the company head quarters and presented our research. The presentation went well but it was not the only thing that happened. It was a two day event in which we learned about the company, their beliefs, technologies, engineering methods, testing methods, etc. all in house.

When we came home each of the students were given one of the actual products that we are to redesign to have and test. I can’t get into details but the products are not cheap and so it caught me off guard. From there we were to create 25 global concepts, which we presented a week later. These are concept ideas, not form ideas or ideas for how it should look. For example flip phone vs. candy bar. The concept is the flipping mechanism. The professors talked with the professors of the graphic school and had a template made in which we could present our concepts on, with inspiration.

After we presented our twenty.5 we started to create a set of categories for which the products concepts could fall under. Like mobility, cleaning, high end experience and we were asked to think about these categories and attempt to describe them, find examples, and bring them in.

What I enjoy most is the fact that each week we are able to think and refine our ideas... we have the time to really attempt to trouble shoot.