Second Year First Project - My experience

Wow! First off, I want to say sorry for the prolonged silence! I started back at University in October and since then, it's been none-stop work! I finally got my results for the first project last week and I wanted to take the time to reflect on this project and where I feel I was strong but also where I went wrong.

The first project for this year was to design using stainless steel sheet in only 3 weeks.

At first impressions, this project made me nervous. I have never worked with metals before and if I'm honest, in the past, I have tended to avoid metals, meaning this was new to me. However, what is the point of learning if I always avoid new things? I really wanted to go into my second year with a positive mindset and improve from last year!

Fortunately, my University managed to get the Adobe suite free to all design students, meaning the layout of my work was much better with the use of InDesign. This also posed new problems though as InDesign was still fairly new to me in October. 2 months ahead now and I wondered how I found it so hard to use! Anyway, having professional software to present my research and even make CAD renders was a positive.

Throughout this project, I tried to focus on a young family as my user as I enjoy designing products that children interact with and so my whole focus was on a family product. With my persona in mind, I chose to focus on the problem of lack of storage in small apartment homes. However, looking back now, my designs and focus bounced around quite a bit. At first I was focused on generic living room storage, then moved to shoe storage and ultimately design coat storage. The fact that my original focus was on the living room and I ended up designing a product that could be used in a bedroom or entryway more than a living room posed a continuity issue. This is something I didn't notice until reflection when I stepped away from the project and saw the mistake I made. It's safe to say, I'm now printing off key points of my research such as persona boards and room inspiration to ensure my focus is on the right path throughout the project.

Another major area of this project was my sketch work. Sketching seems to always be my biggest weakness, despite making large improvements recently and was the part that brought my grade down for this project. When first seeing that feedback, I cried if I'm being honest. My sketch work is something I've been trying hard to improve and seeing that it was my weakness was not nice. However, this project has been over for 5 weeks now and looking back at my sketch work, I can clearly see where the feedback was coming from and I agree, the work was not my best. I personally feel that I can do so much better than I did in that project and I let myself down majorly. My sketches in some places didn't look 3D, rendering was limited and I didn't use any line weights except in my final design. Due to this feedback and realisation that I can do so much better, I put 110% into the next project and I hope that my feedback will reflect that.

Another downfall of this project was the fact that my product had the word "colourful" in the name and my final renders were grey cardboard. For this project I 'attempted' to use photoshop on the photos of my models to create realistic final images. Unfortunately, having rarely used photoshop in the past, I had no idea how to make the model colourful and so once again the continuity was poor. I wholeheartedly agree that this let the work down as it broke the idea of the product being colourful. I made it my mission in the next project to understand how to use photoshop and although I still have a long way to go, I now have a better understanding of how to colour and render images to make them more realistic and true.

Overall, I am disappointed in myself for this project but mistakes are made to teach us new things and I can confidently say that I took the feedback on board and improved upon my weaknesses in the next project. I worked 9am until 10pm for 10 days of the next project to ensure my sketch work was up to a higher standard!

The stainless steel project may not have been my best and may have upset me but that was only temporary, and I have learnt from my mistake and intend on improving more and more throughout this year. After all, this grade was only a guide, I have time to improve it before I get my final grade, meaning I can take the feedback and run with it!

This has been a learning curve for me and I'm very grateful!