Tonight on Evening standard

“What’s the point of art? Everything and nothing -Ben Lewis”

After reading this post from the Evening standard tonight I have a few thoughts and start readying Ben Lewis’s Blog again. It upsets me almost every time when I read about what he said.

Filed under: Blog, contempary art

First meeting with our Young Enterprise group!

This evening we all meet at the school library at 6pm and had our very first business meeting.

Team members included me (Wendy), Jack, Oleg, Maaten and Harry. The meeting last 2 hours and it was very productive, we came up with a lot of ideas, everyone contributed equally.

Here’s some picture for today! (I’m not on the photos because I am the camera girl)
I’ll updates the summary and agenda of the meeting later.

Filed under: MACE, Young Enterprise

Empathic Methods

In Week 2 I have concluded that one way to get to innovations is by disconstruct things. This week we continue to talk about the theme innovation and introducing Empathic Design and Empath methods. The aim of empathic design is to identify the undiscovered/ unfulfilled needs of the products/service we design. it usually yields more information compare with traditional market research because it focus very much on the consumer behavior and the users experience. In other words, based on the observation of the emotional aspects between the users and the product. However one very obvious disadvantage is that it’s more costly.

Back to the shoe business we learned about it is more beneficial to have real conversation than having a set of questions. It also applies here in empathic method, it is mostly driven by a effective communication and conversation. Instead of inquiries we watch! By observing closly we avoid the chances of shading or interferes caused from questionnaires and the possibility of off-trackings from the investigation. Conducting empathic methods also requires more skills.

Through research I found there are five steps through empathic design suggested by Leonard and Rayport in their book “Spark Innovation Through Empathic Design”.

1. Observation
2. Capturing Data
3. Reflection and Analysis
4. Brainstorming for solutions
5. Developing prototypes of possible solutions

To compare with what I did during these weeks I still have a lot of improvement to do in terms of collecting information and communication.

Filed under: Innovation, Week 3

Empathic Design

This week we are asked to bring toothpaste and toothbrush to class. By separating in groups of two and following the IDEO cards, we investigate each other through the process of brushing our teeth. The aim of this activity is to get inspired and invented a new product/way to brush our teeth, by the methods of empathic design.

I was paired with Amna, she brought a new toothbrush today since the original toothbrush she’s using at home is well kept in a case and to the thinking of getting it out from her bathroom will make the toothbrush dirty. I asked Amna to brush her teeth with no water and no toothpaste. The fact that she was only brushing with her saliva combine with the taste of new toothbrush, she tasted bitter. And less than a minutes, she asked if she can stop doing it, she feels that her teeth are actually dirtier than before.

After the experience, first of all we questioned about the hygienic of a new toothbrush or every time when we use it again. Keeping toothpaste in a covered case surely minus the germs to generate but it would not stop the gems growing. Secondly we also questioned about the real purpose of toothpaste, although there are fluoride and other chemicals to make it useful. However with one unhygienic toothpaste how much can toothpaste helped to erase germs and is there any possible way to make toothpaste taste nice itself and most importantly CLEAN as it could be by time to time.

Marketing leads perceptions to the public, in this case people believed that fluoride = foams, more foams = cleaner teeth. I want to change this perception and concentrate on the hygiene quality of  brush itself and the taste of the brush we had. I would imagine any chemicals required to kill bacteria would not taste nice (medicine like taste) and putting in a case is useless in terms of keeping it ‘clean’.

Therefore I have ideas of this products during the class.

Basically on the top drawing shows a toothbrush rank which had UV lights on the top and used to kill germs and make the surrounding area hygienically possible. And the bottom drawing is a hygienic spray for brushes and also with a little of favour to archieve both aims.

Filed under: Innovation, Week 3

Week 2: How to get to innovation?

When you get involved in a creative project or brainstorming ideas, people often gives comment like ‘Think outside of the box’. Honestly sometimes I found it difficult to think outside of the box when I was too close to the object or there is already a strong/ tradition perception built in my mind.

This week of the class we were asked to draw 25 different circular or round objects on a sheet of paper in limited time of 10 seconds. We weren’t given any clues of what we should draw except an example of drawing a Sun.

Common objects as defaults?

After sketching we gather the information, there are around 19 unique objects that we found within class considering there are more than 25 of us and each of us have 25 drawings. The number of unique objects was a but disappointing to me. This can be taken as a test and proved that under the same situation (even with no really specific examples of what we draw), there are not a lot of uniqueness. Source says out of 850 ideas only 20 are unique (3%). Therefore we can say that more common objects mean defaults. We don’t necessary want anymore ‘defaults’ in the creative industry, we want innovative idea! We discussed a few examples in class.

1. Shoebox as default image. But if we think differently…
Shoe = foot protection
Box = container

2. Sunglasses as default image. But if we think differently…
Sunglasses literally is a UV protecter, to bloke UV lights we can use materials like shades, lotion,  glass and fabrics. Maybe we can invent a new eye drops which can protect us from UV lights?

With these couple of examples we also come to the conclusion: by deconstructing things we get to innovations!

Filed under: Innovation, Week 2

The Quiet Shoes

Continue with the show business…

Working with Harry and Alice was very successful during induction week. After discussed with the class we came up  the idea to create ‘quiet shoe’, we draw attention to this very special fulfillment after conducting shoe interviews with a numbers of people on campus.

Pretending we are openiog a shoe company, we had 10 mins to think, create and present the new prototypes of shoes. The new show should be able solve the problem  (squeaky shoes) and also would sell in business terms. Two of my group members and me came up a lot of interesting ideas, I wouldn’t say it works 100% in a practical way however considering the time given and materials provided. About 11 ideas and in 3 mins time we are able to present them all, we done a very excellent job and surely one of the best groups.

Here are some of the pictures we took during the class, I think the most innovative ideas are the ear plugs for shoes and also sponge shoes.

Following discussion on Week 2, we are alert that it is more important to come up with a lot of ideas very quickly than to think of a perfect idea. By thinking and trying a lot of ideas, we found out what doesn’t work sooner and improve from there, learn from the mistakes is good way to come up to a perfect idea.

FAIL EARLY & FAIL OFTEN!

Filed under: Shoes Business, Week 2

A skillful typo/ graphic designer also draws and provides art directions.

Exactly 10 words to describe myself and explain my capabilities.

Note: I assume everyone is familiar with the definition of visual communication, for anyone who doesn’t, I found this in Wikipedia and I personally think the paragraph explains it very well.

“Visual communication as the name suggests is communication through visual aid… Primarily associated with two dimensional images, it includes: signs, typography, drawing, graphic design, illustration, colour and electronic resources. It solely relies on vision. It is form of communication with visual effect. It explores the idea that a visual message with text has a greater power to inform, educate or persuade a person…a good visual design is based on measuring comprehension by the audience, not on aesthetic or artistic preference. There are no universally agreed-upon principles of beauty and ugliness. There exists a variety of ways to present information visually, like gestures, body languages, video and TV. Here, focus is on the presentation of text, pictures, diagrams, photos, et cetera, integrated on a computer display. Recent research in the field has focused on web design and graphically oriented usability. Graphic designers use methods of visual communication in their professional practice.

Visual communication on the World Wide Web is perhaps the most important form of communication taking place when users are surfing the Internet. When experiencing the web, one uses the eyes as the primary sense and therefore the visual dísplay of a website is important for the users understanding of the communication taking place.”

Filed under: MACE

Six questions about shoes.

After doing the survey with our shoes we were asked to think of 6 most important questions about shoes and conduct a survey/interviews with people on campus around the Business School.

We also got introduce to the ideas of ‘creating vs. fulfilling’ and ‘needs vs. wants.’ The concept and the relationships between them are often controvert. Is creativity more important in terms of designing a product/service or the desire of fulfilling, vise versa? Do we owe these products because we need them or we want them?

The six questions:

1.) What is your favourite brand of shoe?

2.) What do you like about the shoes you are wearing?

3.) What do you not like about the shoes you are wearing?

4.) What is the most important thing  you look for when buying a pair of shoes?

5.) How much did your shoes cost?

6.) How long have you had them?

Favourite brand	Likes	Dislikes	Consideration of purchase	Costs	How long did you have them for?
Timberlands	The Looks	Uncomfortable	Comfort	£70	2 years
Adidas	Comfortable, made in Italy	Colour, get dirty easily	Comfort	£100	3 years
/	Sensible (repeat purchase)	/	Comfort	£35	2 years
Nike	Comfort	/	Comfort	£15	2 years
Faith, Giovanni	Color		Looks and brand	£45	2 months
Puma	Trendy	/	Fashionable	£55	3 months
Nike	Comfortable	Too hot inside	Comfort	£160	A few days
/	Soft and comfortable	/	Fits well and comfortable	£24	Couples of weeks
Miu Miu	Comfort	Ugly	Comfort and price	£135	6 months
/	Black and shiny	Squeaked	Comfort	£110	Over 1 year
Nike	Comfort	A bit heavy in weight	Make him looks taller, fashionable	£80	2-3 years
/	Pretty	Uncomfortable	Aesthetics	£5	A few days
KG	Comfort	/	Needs and wants	£35	Over a year
Church’s	Light	A bit cold	Price	£7	A few months
Red or Dead	Colors	Cold	Fashionable	£20	Over a year
Keen	Appearances	Uncomfortable	Price	£10	4 months

Filed under: Shoes Business

Induction – The jouney of the shoes.

The objective: To find different approaches in gathering information.
One basic way to obtain information when doing business research is to interview the target audiences. We can approach the audiences directly by doing interviews and ask them straightforward questions; after that we calculate the results, drawn conclusions and make statistics (e.g. average demographic). This is a very good way to do research however, surveying with an indirect approach can be more effective. Collected responses could be more reliable and less guarded.

The surveying we did at the beginning of the induction class on last Friday can be a good example. We were asked to write down the journey of our shoes, mark down different locations our shoes have been and record the time accordingly. The aim of this activity is not purely investigating anything about shoes, but by asking where our shoes have been we knew where exactly each of us were and was doing. Even more, the predictions of shoe’s location after class can tell us the lifestyle and personality of that person indirectly.

There are two important factors to bear in mind when we are doing survey indirectly.

1. Distract audience to get more reflective answers.

When we want to have an honest answer without guarded, ask around the question but lead audiences to the answer. In this shoe survey, out intention was to know each other better in terms of our lifestyles. Instead of asking ‘How are you going to spend your Friday night?’ we asked to predict where out shoe would be until the next day. From the answers we given we can figure out a little bit of that person’s lifestyles. The intention of the survey does not project to us directly until later on we all seemingly know. We give answer fairly honest in this way whereas if we were asked directly ‘How would you spend your Friday night?’ we could be more guarded and reflects bias on the answer.

2. Change targets to talk to.

If we are to improve the image of brand or to bring awareness, it’s worth to change targets to talk to despite the average group. In our shoe survey, the majority of the students started their journey at 8.30 pm, and from 9am most of our shoes were settled down and located in the same classroom. There are couple of students have a different journeys, but when we further investigate once again, we found out the other special locations of the shoes however what we truly found is how did they spend their day where supposingly they should be in the class. By talking to the odds we found out more about the respondents and the details we tends to miss. In some cases, getting information in an indirect way can achieve unexpected results.

Filed under: MACE

Hi Kingston

I am looking forward to this term, hope everything run well!

Filed under: MACE