LO4

Description:

During the Branding project for OSFAST, my group had to create a brand guide for the client. In doing so, as this was my first time creating a brand guide, I went to research existing ones for analysis and inspiration for the pages I created. To do this, I specifically looked for brands that closely matched elements of how Oscar wanted to present himself, and that were adjacent is some ways business wise (within the tech field). The guide I was drawn to the most, was the Nintendo Switch brand guide, for their brand image is largely perceived to be friendly and open, while maintaining a sleek and professional aesthetic.

Feelings:

I felt that the research I had done helped me in creating a guide that had complete information, as without it, I would have been lost on what information to include. The team I worked with at the time was quite disjointed, and I felt that this brand guide took much longer to make than it could have, due waiting for other group members to complete their work, for it to be incorporated in the guide. This project also helped me to realize that branding is not the part of ICT & media that I want to work in in the future, as I found myself getting creatively and emotionally drained.

Evaluation:

The brand guide took far too long to create due to some group dysfunction and waiting on crucial pieces for the project, for example, the file with the logo that a group member had finished but took days to give to me to put in the document. However, in the end, the product was complete and well made. The client seemed very pleased and impressed with the results and was receptive to all advice given in the brand guide.

Reflection:

I am pleased that the client was receptive and appreciative of mine and my group’s professional advice and if implemented, I believe his brand image would be vastly improved. For a project felt uninspired by, in the end, I believe I created a well-made and thoughtful deliverable here.

Action Plan/Feedforward:

If I were to make more brand guides in the future, I would likely research even more brand guides for inspiration and test the guides to ensure the information being conveyed was easy to understand. I also hope to, not necessarily take on a leadership role, but definitely be firmer and clearer about the importance of communication when collaborating, so team dysfunction is mitigated. Utilizing a well thought out Trello (or similar), and actually sticking to it would help with these issues.

Next Learning Outcome

Description:

At the end of the project for OSFAST, I and one of my groupmates; Tina, created and presented the final presentation for Oscar. In this, we reported all the group’s deliverables to the stakeholder, teachers, and our fellow classmates.

Feelings:

The day before this, my group had met up with the stakeholder, that still had high hopes and was in good spirits. I struggle with a lot of anxiety often, and presenting will always heighten that, however that interaction with the stakeholder, where he expressed genuine interest, had calmed my nerves, even if only minutely.

Evaluation:

When creating the presentation, we had a very clear structure, so it was easy to understand exactly what deliverables we had made, and their value to the client. The presentation went well, and the stakeholder expressed that he was impressed and satisfied with the deliverables we had to offer. The feedback I received to improve on my presentation skills, was that I could have matched my co-presenter’s pace better. I talked a bit too slow, as a way of trying to present myself more relaxed, however this effected the pace of the presentation to be a bit awkward, as my co-presenter talked much faster.

Reflection:

I would like to have more confidence in myself and my work, especially when I believe I have good deliverables, though this is something that effects all aspects of my life, not just when presenting, focusing on managing anxiety is how to work on this.

Action Plan/Feedforward:

I need to allocate more practice time before presentations, to try and quell the anxiety and awkwardness, even if I know it will not completely solve the stress. This would also help with pacing if I were practicing with someone that will be presenting with me.

Next Learning Outcome

Description:

For the UI half of the BELCO Project, I created a MS Teams, with the intention of hosting files, having a formal platform for more formal communication via team meetings, as well as hosting a Trello board for project organisation. This was utilized multiple times, albeit less than I ideally would have liked to keep to a proper schedule.

Feelings:

I feel as though MS Teams, and absolutely Trello are wonderful tools for organization and planning, and I was looking forward to utilizing them, and I was disheartened when it went largely annoyed. When they did go utilized (largely at the beginning... and once again in the end when the group realized we needed to be more serious), I was grateful for them

Evaluation:

The utilization of this Trello really fell off unfortunately, and though initially I feel I was doing a decent job at trying to remind my group to keep it updated, eventually I also began to forget keeping it updated. The same could be said for the Teams as a whole. I originally wanted it to host files, such as interview transcripts, surveys, team charter, etc., and actually came across an issue where I had lost access to certain files, as they were casually sent in WhatsApp instead, and as I switched to a “dumbphone” that could not import old conversations, I could not see these messages anymore, leading to a few days of repeatedly asking the group to utilize the Teams. Once usage of these tools picked up again towards the end of the project, this is when we saw that our work was being completed more efficiently, which is, at least in part, the reason for a successful deliverable in the end. For example, we held a team meeting during the weekend for nearly 2 hours, working on our designs to get back on track.

Reflection:

Being stricter with the planning on the Trello I believe would have mitigated a lot of the issues my group had with falling behind at times. I’m glad that in the end that I had this experience of falling behind though, as it really showed the importance of properly utilizing these tools, and in the development half of the BELCO project, they were much better utilized.

screenshots of the Trello and MS Teams for the BELCO UI group

Action Plan/Feedforward:

Going forward I will not only utilize Trello in future group projects, but I have also taken to utilizing it for personal work as well. I will put my foot down in group projects, and be firm about sticking to the planning, as I know the crunch that happens when it goes ignored.

Next Learning Outcome

Description:

I was not the main presenter for this presentation (though I did aid in some of the slide creation), but this was an opportunity still to hear stakeholder feedback and their general impressions of our work at this point, which largely consisted of a brainstorm and early concepts of designs, and very little user research.

Feelings:

I was taken off guard at this meeting, as, while I knew we had some issues with planning, in general it felt as though our group was in roughly the same spot as other groups, and yet it was made clear that we were behind and needed to catch up and do better. This, anxious as I am, of course led me to stress. However, I believe in this scenario, it was healthy to stress, as I had control of this situation. It jump-started me and I began working with more efficiency and care from this point, as did my group.

Evaluation:

Clearly, this presentation did not go as I anticipated and expected. That being said, I would not say it went poorly. This instance with the stakeholders was crucial to realign and realize where my priorities should lie, to, in the end, deliver a well-designed, substantiated product.

Reflection:

Looking back, the poor planning up until this point should have been an indicator that things weren’t going well, and that we needed to pick up the pace. Unfortunately, that wasn’t so obvious at the time. If it were, I could have saved loads of stress (and hair follicles). But I digress, this meeting set me on the right track to try harder.

Link to the First Sprint Presentation

Image of the first sprint presentation for BELCO

Action Plan/Feedforward:

As written above, the latter half of this project saw an increase in usage of project organization tools like Trello and MS Teams, and this is something I plan to continue utilizing both personally, and in my groups, to prevent stress moments like this from occurring as frequently.

Next Learning Outcome

Description:

After that presentation moment with the stakeholders, it became evident that my group was lacking in user research. To rectify this, in the same week I scheduled and conducted an interview and user test with a potential user in the target audience, to collect data on BELCO’s existing website, how it was perceived, and what were important points to touch on.

Feelings:

This interview helped me to feel like the project was starting to get back on track. The person I interviewed was someone I knew already, though they knew nothing about the project, and they fit the intended target audience, so this went smoothly with limited awkwardness. I feel this interview was helpful, especially as it was the first one my group had done, so it gave us a solid base to work with, to keep moving instead of idly waiting for more of the scheduled interviews to happen.

Evaluation:

This interview yielded a lot of important data, as well as some data that I felt was out of my range to address. BELCO hosts exchange programs for students wanting to study abroad. So as the user navigated the website and answered my questions, it became evident that information was very unclear and confusing, which was the biggest overarching issue with BELCO’s website. There was an entire page that they did not explore, that could have held important information for them, simply because it was not listed as “for students”. On the other hand, they complained that there was not a large variety of programs, and that the courses seemed largely directed towards business students, with a lack of other types of classes. This is an important thing to note, but as I would have no rule over what courses BELCO offers, there is not much I could do with this.

Reflection:

I wish I would have done this interview sooner, as if I had done so, perhaps there would have been more time for me to conduct even more. This interview, in conjunction with other exploratory research from my team, ended up being sufficient to create an effective design.

screenshots of the UI Trello and MS Teams

Action Plan/Feedforward:

I will allocate more time to testing and research in upcoming research, and take more initiative to conduct it myself, to avoid waiting on other members to take charge of it, even if it is not a part of my designated roles in a group.

Next Learning Outcome

Description:

For the development project with BELCO, I created a new Trello and Teams for my new group. Here we clearly listed out each task and utilized checklists to add subtasks to larger tasks. For example, different elements that would take up some time on one page.

Feelings:

The experience with this Trello has been night and day compared to the last one. Planning was taken more seriously, which led to a project that went smoothly throughout, despite sometimes finding it hard to implement features that we lacked experience in coding.

Evaluation:

This Trello served our group perfectly, especially so, as our overall communication was stellar. Attendance was taken far more seriously. When someone did have to miss a day or two, our planning and workflow was good enough, that it did not affect efficiency.
Upon feedback from Paul, our Trello was broken down into the following lists:
Tasks: This was a long list of absolutely everything that needed done.
To-Do: Tasks that required the most attention at a given time were put under this category
In Progress: Self explanatory, these are tasks someone is actively working on
Done: a place to hold all cards once a task was finished. This gave us a nice visual of our progress
By the end of course, everything thankfully landed in the done column.

Reflection:

As I would consider myself an amateur developer, and most likely my groupmates would say the same for themselves, I was impressed to see how smoothly this project turned out. I believe this is thanks to proper project planning, as this is what made this project stand out from the others this semester.

Action Plan/Feedforward:

Upon more feedback given at the end of this project, it was noticed that no one in our group assigned their names to tasks in the Trello. This was because each group member verbally agreed upon their tasks, but I agree that going forward, it would be clearer for security, reflection and assessment purposes to assign names to tasks at the beginning, to show clearer task division.

Next Learning Outcome

Description:

In seeing how well Trello has worked for the Development group, I have decided to implement a Trello for myself as well. Here is where I list each topic I want to write about and categorize them by learning outcome. I also include a colour-coded key.
Red: Not started
Yellow: in progress
Purple: has content, but needs rewritten
Green: Done
This organization style has been very helpful to visualize exactly what still needs to be done and allows me to estimate how much time everything will take, based off how long one cycle generally takes me to write (roughly an hour).

Feelings:

I feel like I am far more productive than I was before with this system, and that simultaneously makes me incredibly happy, as well as frustrates me that I did not do this before. As of me writing this cycle, I have a lot left to document, and that simply wouldn’t be the case if I had incorporated this sooner.

Evaluation:

The visual of each topic being listed separately is a good way for my brain to comprehend what is still needed of me, and since implementing it, I find myself less prone to procrastination. That being said, I procrastinated so much before using this method, that the backlog of work has become immense.

Reflection:

It goes without saying that I should’ve used Trello for myself sooner for planning my work. If I did, the workload I would have in the latter half of this semester would be more manageable. Using it now, I am seeing the effects of greatly. It helps me keep my thoughts more organized, helping me to finish roughly 6 topics per day on a free weekend day, and visually keep track of that progress.

Action Plan/Feedforward:

My next project is Project X, the personal project. There I will continue with this documentation Trello for writing about the learning outcomes, while creating a separate Trello for in-depth project organization.

Next Learning Outcome

Description:

As you might have noticed, I have been utilizing the Gibb’s reflection method throughout the entirety of my portfolio (which is a change from how I have started), to document the work I have done this semester. I have rewritten old work, and have continued writing new content with this method, as suggested to give a more structured reporting of all my work.

Feelings:

I have found this method to be a lifesaver for documenting and reporting, and I have decided to link this to professional standard, as I believe it brings the professionalism I was lacking in earlier assessments to my writing. Like the personal Trello, I only wish I knew of this style of reflection sooner, so that I would not be rewriting content now.

Evaluation:

I find that this style of writing works well for me. I struggle with writing formally, and documenting has always been my least favourite part of learning. This system gives me a very clear template that allows me to write, without feeling like I am missing something crucial, or getting scrambled with my thoughts. Having to go back and rewrite the majority of my documentation has been a hassle, but it did show that I really was doing it poorly before, and that the quality of my writing has significantly improved since switching to this method.

Reflection:

It’s no surprise that I would love to go back and time to the start of this semester, perhaps even semester one, and inform a more confused version of myself of this style of documenting. Unfortunately, life isn’t science-fiction, and I am not The Doctor, so the best I can do now, is correct my mistakes to the best of my ability.

screenshot of the Gibb's Template I used

Action Plan/Feedforward:

I will continue to write in this style (unless directed otherwise) for the foreseeable future, continuing to do so in my next semesters as well. Of course, my goal for next semester, and all those that follow, is to never create this backlog of work to do again, and to stay consistent with my project organisation and my reporting.

Next Learning Outcome