The final major project has been the most intense undertaking of the course for me. However, a lot of the intense pressure has been allayed by having complete control over the design brief itself, and as such the work has been deeply interesting and rewarding.
Working in a pair
Working with Cristele has been a very easy process. The combination of working with a friend and working in a much smaller team than previous projects has meant that we moved quickly through discussion processes and were able to more quickly move on to physical testing and construction stages of the design.
Additionally, the two of us know each other well enough that we’ve been open with criticism of ideas that we’re not 100% sure on. This has meant that we’ve moved through ideas and low-fidelity prototypes very rapidly, and so we didn’t have to settle in late stages of the project for a design we were unhappy with.
Process and testing
The biggest issue we encountered in the process was finding participants who were willing to devote time in person to aiding our project. Gathering content was the biggest obstacle here, as the few people we spoke to were unwilling to be recorded for the project. Our other potential sources of participants were very slow to respond, and unwilling to work around our schedule (particularly at late stages when we were pressed for time). We heard these concerns early on in the process, but dismissed them due to feedback from Tower Hamlets Council – looking back, we should have been quicker to verify this. The counterpoint here is that industrial contacts were remarkably quick to respond when we reached out – I’m very grateful to those that jumped at the chance to share feedback with us, and am glad that we have been able to use the project as an opportunity to begin building our professional networks.
Additionally, as large parts of our project were digital or graphic design based, we didn’t create too many physical prototypes to be tested. If the technology build process had gone more smoothly, we could have tested the compass itself at an earlier date, but unfortunately we were required to sacrifice the testing process to which I’d become accustomed in previous briefs.
Time management
We built a schedule at the start of Summer that included two weeks of buffer and essay time at the end of the project. Looking back, we were less than two weeks off of our initial schedule, which shows remarkable time control over a several months’ long project. Considering we avoided some of the more stressful final weeks that we have seen in other members of the cohort (as well as ourselves in previous briefs), this is an aspect I’m particularly proud of.
This also reiterates the importance of building in allowance for roadblocks as early as possible. If we had changed our initial schedule in order to just about finish the project by the hand-in date, we would have struggled severely in the last fortnight or so. By being sufficiently realistic and allowing for these potential stumbling blocks back in Summer, we’ve saved ourselves a significant amount of panic and anxiety.
Harry Solomons 