8. Group Project Reflection
Ear Scooping — A spa for your ears
Coming to the end of the whole module, we are all assigned to reframe a chosen brand essence by applying all the learning methodologies to create a strategic proposal for the final presentation.
In general daily work life, I believe we are all required to collaborate with a diverse team on different projects to achieve a shared goal. And this time, back to school in Research & Communication module, my one and only teammate, Henry, is indeed a wonderful teammate.
He is a great communicator and a self-motivated person, also very responsible for letting me know his plan and ideas. Even though we are from different backgrounds and design industries (he is a skilful fashion designer). But, these factors did not stop us from working well together. I believe it might be due to Henry and me are both practical people, as we shared the same goal and value, eager to achieve rebranding the traditional ear scooping to the public again, which made our project on the right track.
Work Together
Henry is more familiar with this industry due to his personal background. He is more focusing on the research findings, providing valid sources by studying the market environment. He becomes the most reliable “data centre” in our group.
And I focus more on building up a unique brand image and the execution part. Since I have some experience in graphic and persona designing, I have taken up parts related to visualising & promotion; such as designing our brand logo; store design (to create the atmosphere to attract our persona); the campaign, etc.
Project management
1- Define the Scope
The first step for every project is to define the scope of works, which typically includes the goals, objectives (promoting ear scooping), searching for case references (supporting data) and planing the action plan (e.g. design campaigns), etc.
If you are still wondering how to define the scope? The answer would be our learning in lesson 1 : From Communication to Design
Communication is always the key to any type of project management. Especially under the Covid-19 pandemic, having the group project can be particularly challenging through Zoom meetings when we are all geographically separated and not able to have direct face-to-face communication. I once mentioned that face-to-face meetings could benefit a lot rather than indirect communication. Nevertheless, a variety of communication tools are available nowadays with modern technologies, allowing us to overcome this special period of time.
Thus, for this project, our group had applied Google Docs to start sharing our secondary research data, also with regular phone meetings and chat texting to keep each other updated along with our insights after studying the information. Meanwhile, we had assigned both of ourselves with different parts of the covered topic, through applying the Google slides to prepare the PowerPoint presentation.
Moreover, I found a free online tool that I strongly recommended to everyone for collaborating on a project: Miro
Personally, I always apply mind-mapping by drawing a brief WBS (work breakdown structure) for myself or my teammates. In fact, it only takes you around 10mins to draft a simple plan, and it will really reduce the noise and improve the group performance to keep every teammate on the same page.
2- Measuring the progress
To ensure the project's success, setting a deadline and milestone would be another key.
Why do we need to set a deadline? To provide a concept of prioritizing
As the workload of being an interior designer does not allow me to have much personal time. During our first discussion, Henry and I both agreed to set up key milestones for ourselves to further scheduling. From my point of view, having a deadline could provide a solid time frame, allow me to stay focus to complete the tasks under (good) pressure. In fact, we did proceed with an effective outcome in our whole project management this time.
If we did not control the project well, we might create a big loss of the most available resource: our precious time.
3- Rehearsal for the presentation
During our internal rehearsal, it is an act of testing our plan through execution. This process helped us to notice some of our speeches shall add more explanations, and some shall be cut off. From both sender and receiver points of view, we gave each other our most sincere opinions.
During our internal rehearsal, also is an act of testing our plan through execution. The rehearsal helped us to notice which parts of our speech shall add on more explanations, and which part shall be cut off, from both sender and receiver points of view, we gave each other sincere opinions.
Conclusion
Working in a group is definitely beneficial for us, by sharing diverse perspectives, pooling knowledge and learning new skills. I have refined all the understandings of this module through the days and nights discussion with Henry. I’m really grateful to have him in the same group as he is definitely a wonderful teammate to work with.
