January 06, 2025

Minor Project (X-board Idea Space): Task 4/Self Reflection

25/9/2024 - 7/1/2025 / Week 11 - Week 15
Janice Marie Eng Chia Hui /0361521
Minor Project/Bachelor of Design in Creative Media / Taylor's University
Minor Project

Instructions

Reflective Writing

To-Do list:

Proposal

Key Deliverables research
Assign people to do the contextual research
Contextual research
Client Interview Questions
Data Collection Interview Questions
Generating ideas (key themes/how might we)
Make proposal slides

Final Project

Create Gantt chart
Create a user journey map
Refine the Advertising & Promotion Plan
Determine art direction and brand guidelines
Assign people to do work
Create website prototype

Part 1: Research & Data Collection

Contextual Research

The entire group put in the effort to perform the contextual research. It was quite straightforward as it was just research. I split up the research into sections and assigned a group member to each section.

I, myself, was also doing the research. Mine was on the market growth and trend within the current traditional whiteboard community. I was doing this along with Caitlin. My focus was on agile workspaces and corporate decision-makers. There was a lack of data on the whiteboard used by these groups of people. So I did the next best thing, visual analysis of office tours. I screenshotted the whiteboards used in the tours and tried to deduce what type it was. Not very accurate, but it's the next best thing. The videos I used are listed in the document below.

Market Research by Janice Eng

From there I managed to draw the conclusions below:

The market for whiteboards is growing. However, the current trend seems to be for interactive or smart whiteboards rather than traditional whiteboards.
The corporate decision-makers market segment seems to favour using MOUNTED GLASS whiteboards or INTERACTIVE WHITEBOARDS in their briefing, meeting or conference rooms.
In the agile workspaces market segment, MOBILE WHITEBOARDS seem to be increasingly popular, with the whiteboards mainly being used to jot ideas down and delegate tasks or to-do lists. (helpful for visualisation of their ideas)
Whiteboards in agile workspaces are usually placed close to fixed desks rather than in open workspaces or lounges.
Most whiteboards in the office seem to feature a stationary holder for convenience.

Following that, we had an interview session with our client, Toru, about what they had in mind when it came to the designs.

Figure 1.1 The entirety of our research (6/1/25)

Figure 1.2 Client Interview Notes and summary (6/1/25)

Data Collection

After gathering all the data we needed, we started coming up with the survey questions. You would think that having 7 people who had experience collecting data, would be smooth sailing. No, it was not. The questions were initially set by Wan Qing and Adriena, but later I had to step in to refine the questions a bit and split them into sections.

We managed to get the survey out and collected around 80 plus responses. However, we were told that our data was insufficient and we would need to do a follow-up interview, which was expected cause I had a feeling that our survey questions weren't very well designed. So following that, I involved myself more into the making of the interview questions, focusing on the gaps in our survey questions. Celeste volunteered to do the interviews due to her extensive connections (all her friends are working adults).

Once those were done, all the survey and interview data was analysed by me, Adriena and Wan Qing. After everything was analysed, I updated the user personas and gave them attributes based on our analysis.

(Minor) Survey Questions + Interview Questions by Janice Eng

Figure 1.3 Interview Analysis (left) and Survey Analysis Summary (right) (6/1/25)

user persona by Janice Eng

Part 2: Ideas & Conclusions

This part involved use putting whatever ideas we had down on paper and grouping them into categories. The ideas must be based on the data collected. The entire contributed to this section. Some of the ideas that I recommended and really liked were to :

Use AR to visualise the X-board in your own space
Reusable packaging: Putting the pattern on how to make a cardboard stationary holder on the packaging so that consumers can cut it up and use it as a temporary stationary holder for the X-board

Honestly looking back, I should have been more confident with my ideas, as I decided not to include them as I thought they would be unnecessary. Anyways, moving forward, we placed all our ideas down and generated our insights statements and positioning statements. Our key themes ended up being:

Affordability
Assecibility
Value for money

And our insight statements were:

Many respondents face challenges with collaboration and whiteboard use, highlighting an opportunity to showcase how the X-board can effectively address these issues.
Users prioritize accessibility and express a strong preference for trying the X-board before purchase, especially given its high price, emphasizing the need to make accessibility a key theme.
Price is a crucial factor for respondents considering the X-board, with many feeling it exceeds their expectations, underscoring an opportunity to emphasize its extensive features, potential add-ons, and value-boosting deals to justify the cost.

Figure 2.1 Our lump sum of ideas (6/1/25)

Figure 2.2 Our How Might We Statements and Potential Solutions (6/1/25)

Part 3: Proposal

For this part of the task, I had the group members look for visual references on how they would like the website, email and social media to look. This was to ensure that we had a reference when generating the output.

However, it turned out we all had vastly different ideas of how we wanted the final designs to look. Which I should have expected, I don't know why I did not expect this. After a bit of back and forth with the group members, I decided to ask one person to decide on the colours and typography (Adriena), one person to come up with the logo design (Caitlin) and one person to come up with our graphical elements (Jordan).

From there we found the respective reference images needed. Moving forward, I wanted to get the members to start on the design but was informed by Mike that we would not need the design anything for now. Instead, we should focus on drawing from the brand's past work as a reference and mention our plan going forward.

So me and Wan Qing looked for examples of brands that had done websites, social media, email and blog strategies. In the end, I put everything into the slides. Mike asked us to call it our Advertising and Promotion (A&P) plan, so I did.

Moving on with designing the proposal slide, Celeste had volunteered early on to do the slide design, so we all placed our content in there. The slides were made and designed by the entire group.

Social Media & Blog Case Studies by Janice Eng

Minor Project Presentation by Celeste Low

Following that we had the presentation. Me and Celeste volunteered to present (as no one else wanted to do it -_-). We practice once 2 days before the presentation date and once on the day before the presentation. It went smoothly.

Part 4: The Design Process

And so comes the time for the actual designing.

Gannt Chart & Group Management

The group leaders were asked to come up with a Gannt Chart. This is my first time hearing about this chart and I had no idea how to do it. So I just duplicated the file Mike sent to us lmao. Before I wrote anything into the chart, I decided to assign members to teams (social media, website and email).

After deciding on who should be in which team, I started planning out the timeline. It went as follows:

Get everyone to find visual references for their designs
Get everyone to sketch out and draft the content in their designs
Get everyone to work on one of their designs to see how it would look like
Get them to finalise their designs.

I checked up on the team every Monday, Thursday and Friday, just to make sure they were progressing well.

Figure 4.1 Group 5 Gannt Chart (6/1/25)

The Advertising & Promotion Plan (A&P)

Following that we had the A&P plan. To do this, my group first filled out the customer journey map. That map was basically just touchpoints through 4 phases, the discovery, registration, onboarding and sharing phases. I put what info we had from our proposal into the customer journey map first. Then, during an online meeting, the entire group decided on the rest of the touchpoints and content.

So once we settled on our A&P plan, I started doubting the plan and what was arranged, so I started planning a new plan. And from that plan, I took out the content that I thought was most related to our key themes.

Only then did I finalize the list of things that needed to be created by the group members.

So our finalised A&P plan will be focused on our key themes from our data analysis. which are:

Assecebility
Affordability
Educate

For the final products that will be produced in our A&P plan, I tried to make sure that they were closely related to our key themes (getting the feedback from Mike that it looks like we are struggling for content really traumatised me lmao).

Figure 4.2 Our A&P timeline(6/1/25)

Our Art Direction/Brand Guidelines

Before starting on any designs, we had to come up with the art directions. However, in my group's case I had made the stupid mistake of asking them to do the sketches first instead of finishing up the brand guidelines/art direction first. But hey you live and learn.

The art direction was initially set by our sole Graphic Designer, Caitlin. However, we had gotten feedback from Mike that our Art Direction was not detailed enough. And true to that, our first wave of sketches had a lot of inconsistency in the designs. So I took what Caitlin had made and made a more detailed art direction.

Following that, we had to make a brand guideline document for our submission, so I just took what was in our miro and brought it over to canva.

Figure 5.1 Art Direction (6/1/25)

Group 5 Brand Guidelines by Janice Eng

The Designs

I put myself in the website team, but halfway I had to work on the social media as well as Adriena was having a hard time getting our art direction down.

1. Website

Things I have done:

The website flowchart
Wireframe
Design
Making the components for the prototype

Figure 6.1 Website flowchart (6/1/25)

The website had a total of 6 pages:

Homepage
Shop page
FAQ Page
Blog page
Contact us page
Showroom page

I had a lot of back and forth with the other website designer, Jordan. In the end, our final web design was given the feedback '... the other team's ones look so professional but yours is like so ...different'. Honestly, I wanted the website to look professional but it seems that I am unable to execute that properly. Designing really is not my strong suit. Maybe in the future, I will step back and let others do the designs completely.

So anyway, for the website, we just had a bit of back and forth before settling on something. Additionally, Jordan also did some user testing for the website but did not share the results with me, so check his blog out for more info.

Figure 6.2 Website Prototype Figma File (6/1/25)

2. Social Media Post

Originally, the social media posts were suppose to be designed by Adriena, but she was having trouble figuring out our design direction. So I had to jump in a bit and help out with the social media post designs.

The words to be placed into the designs were written by Wan Qing and I edited them a bit to fit my designs. Below are the designs I made.

IG POSTS by Janice Eng

3. Managing group members' work

As mentioned, we had meetings every Monday, Thursday and Friday. During the meeting,s I just looked over what they had done so far and made sure that it was consistent with our art direction. However, I still feel like there are some inconsistencies in our designs but did not have the time to go back and correct it.

Part 5 Final Presentation

WOOOO the last push. We got the slides done (me, Wan Qing, Adriena & Caitlin). After that, me and Celeste volunteered (not, no one wanted to do it again -_-) to present.

On our first check of our presentation slides, Mike mentioned that we should focus less on the design and more on the content of our final designs. What he meant was that he wanted the images to be extremely big so that the smallest text could be seen. Which sucks cause I spent a lot of time on the design of the slide.

However, since he was marking us, I listened to his advice and changed the slides accordingly. The presentation went well (I hope).

After that, I just completed the submission file and got those who dint present to fill up our project tracking document.

Final Submission

Final Google Drive Link:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-uR28Tlz5qHcpSw5-6QaeIq_ZqpSLtRi?usp=drive_link

Final Social Media Designs:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Vdik_n83wGf6oojnjgttrJVNO5khHa4_?usp=sharing

Final Proposal Slides

Minor Project Presentation by Celeste Low

Final Presentation Slides

G5 (Expedio) Final Presentation by Janice Eng

Final Website prototype

Final Email Designs (Please view in fullscreen)

Reflection

Week 14:

This week was way too hectic again. I checked on the slides made by my teammates and added in the rest of the content that was needed. Honestly, I’m not too satisfied with our final designs as I feel like there could have been more consistency among them. But seeing as I had multiple projects due at once, I did not have time to go in and change it. Anyway, back to the slides, with the help from the seniors slide, I managed to formulate something decent for our execution content.

However, after showing the slides to Mike, he mentioned to not focus too much on the slide designs and instead focus on zooming in on our final designs to showcase them properly. After that, I went back home again and redid the slide and changed the flow a bit as Mike seemed a bit confused when he was reading it. Following that me an Celeste prepared for our presentation for the final project.

From this module, I managed to learn a lot about branding and graphic designing. For example, about the brand guidelines and art direction. There is a lot of attention to detail needed, but I fear that that is not my strong suit. Additionally, I would also need to work on improving my communication with my groupmates as I felt that they did not understand what was being planned. So in future I will keep these topics in mind.

Week 13:

Honestly, this week was hectic. It was quite last minute, but I had to work on the social media designs to ensure that it aligns with our current design direction. On top of that. I had to make the remaining components for the website. It kind of funny how we are all designers here but each have very different design directions (cries). Other than that, I also started planning how to design and what to put into the slide. After getting the slides example from Mike (whice he said he told us about but he did not). Honestly, from this experience, I learnt that having a strong art direction and brand guideline is extremely important if you want your designs to be consistent. However, it seems that we did not have a strong one for either. In the future, I will make sure that the art direction and brand guidelines are thoroughly discussed with my groupmates and that it is confirmed before the design starts.

Week 12:

Major bout of self doubt this week again. I did not feel like our current A&P plan did not really hit portray our key themes properly and Mikes feedback of ‘you look like you are struggling for content’ really hit me hard. So I focused on redoing the A&P plan. This time, I decided to put whatever I wanted into the plan, and then from there I cherry picked ones that hit most of our key themes. I showed this to my team and the comment I got is ‘it looks like we don’t know what we are doing’. Which is true, so I asked them for help but they decided to do with what I had.

Class this week was focused on getting our art direction set fully as it seems that the one we had before was lacking. This module is really making me doubt my capabilities, but I feel like I should focus more on the progress that we are making.

Week 11:

I got the members to start on the sketches (except WanQing, she doing reels and copywriting). I was also working on the website wireframe on the side. I learned that when assigning the roles for the work, it is important to consider each of my members strengths and assing them work accordingly to ensure a smooth working process.

Week 10:

I placed the members into their respective teams based on the Gantt chart set. From there, I asked them to find some visual references for their designs. However, we realised that some of us still were not clear with the art direction, so I got Caitlin to come up with the art direction/visual references. There was no online meeting held this week as I still did not know what I was doing. This part of the task was really challenging for me as I did not know what I was doing and was constantly doubting myself. Additionally, I think because I did all the planning for the A&P plan mostly by myself, my groupmates did not know what we were doing and could not contribute to the planning phase much. I will work on involving people more in the future.

Week 9:

After getting feedback from Mike after our proposal presentation, he asked us to come up with our customer journey maps based on our existing advertising and promotional plan (A&P). Additionally, I was also tasked with coming up with the Gantt Chart. I first started working on the pains, needs and wants of our customers. Then, I arranged a meeting with the team on Monday to discuss what to put into the opportunity section. Additionally, I also made the Gantt Chart. No class this week as well.

Week 8:

Independent learning week, we did not get much done this week. We actually got nothing done lmao.

Week 7:

This week I had my group start coming up with ideas on the designs. However, after consulting with Mike, we were told that we were not supposed to design with anything yet and to just propose ideas. This really interfered with the timeline that I had set. But after hearing this news, our group got together to carry out the research still needed for the proposal. A simple Advertising and Promotion plan was made for the proposal and we had the proposal checked by the lecturer. After all the required contents were changed, we practised for our presentation. I learned that it is important to be ahead of your schedule just in case there is any last-minute changes.

Week 6:

In week 6, after Celeste had finished up the interviews, I carried out the data analysis on the interviews. From there, I also updated the user personas and decided to summarise it into 3 persona groups. This week as well we had a meeting to brush up on the key insights. Initially, we were confused on the direction we should have been heading, but after much thought we managed to finish up the 5 ideas and key themes section. After that, I sent a message to Mike to have him check our progress. After getting his approval, we carried out the problem statements, how might we’s and ideas/action plan. I also had the members start looking for visual inspiration on how they would like the branding to look like. Additionally, we started putting our content into the slides (designed by Celeste). From this experience, I have learned that I should stop doubting myself and to be confident in the decisions I make.

Week 5:

In week 5, we were told by Mike that it would be advisable for us to carry out interviews to gather follow-up information on our survey data (and to think when I brought this up with one of my groupmates they said its fine). Our group sat down in class and came up with a list of questions. In the end, it was decided that Celeste would carry out the interviews due to her extensive connections. From this experience, I have learned that in the future it would be better to either come up with a comprehensive and completed questionnaire initially or to just carry out interviews from the start.

Week 4:

In week 4 we met up to finalise the survey questions. After that, I came up with a small table to chart out how many people each group member should send out the survey link to. This was to ensure that we were able to collect enough responses. I noticed that some of my group members had a larger and more varied friend group. In future, I may change tactics a bit and ask members who know more people to collect more responses. I also assigned people to do the data analysis along with me.

Week 3:

In week 3, we had an interview session with Mr. Taro, a representative from Expedia Design Studios. Many of our questions ended up being similar to those from other groups, which made me realise the importance of coordinating with other teams to avoid repeating questions and inconveniencing the client. On Friday, we had a session on user personas and were tasked with developing survey questions. I contributed by creating two of the user personas for our project.

Week 2:

In week 2, I assigned tasks for contextual research to the group members and ensured that everyone submitted their findings by Thursday,so we would be prepared for class on Friday. I learned the importance of regularly checking in with the team to ensure they are progressing with their assigned tasks. Moving forward, I plan to follow up more consistently to keep everyone on track. Following that, we came up with the client interview questions. On Friday, the lecturer provided us with a briefing on contextual research, further guiding our approach.

Week 1:

This week, we had a module briefing where we were introduced to potential clients we could collaborate with. After the briefing, we formed groups, with each group consisting of 6 to 8 members. Our group is a diverse mix of Graphic Designers, Digital Animators, Entertainment Designers, and UI/UX Designers. Together, we chose Expedio Designs Group as our client, focusing on their mobile whiteboard product. This class has already highlighted the importance of strong project management skills, which will be essential for the success of this project.

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Janice Marie Eng Chia Hui (0361521)