WEEK 3: IMPLEMENTING MY WORK AND STARTING OVER

02/05/22 - 06/05/22

This week was about bringing together the past couple weeks of concept development into a final solution and then in true commercial form, starting the design process over again with a new brief.

Implementing my design:

After two weeks of developing my brief from a concept as well as finding my feet within the company, this week was the week to implement my developed design into the store. Once again this was a process that had to be done alongside the main project of the team that is the department rebuild, which meant balancing my tasks and developing the skills of working in a team. If one person is down, there has to be someone to step up to the plate, something I figured out quite quickly when we were three people down. This however is not something to dwell on as there are deadlines to follow, and I slowly learnt how to step up and help the remaining members of my team to stay on track with the main department rebuild project.

My project also had to be completed by the end of this week and included a number of steps such as contacting furniture builders, connecting with sales, graphic communication and considerations to the health and safety of our customers. Having originally created my design in the allocated space without the guidance of my supervisor, it allowed for me to experiment with what I had seen in IKEA before, but also with what I thought would be the most intriguing for customers. My supervisor then checked the space over and taught me more about the IKEA design features and impact on customers and I was able to change the layout to create the best outcome for the space.

Overall this was quite an exciting and rewarding process to see everything come together at the end of quite an interesting two weeks of me learning my new surroundings and improving my skillset to have the ability to also take on a commercial aspect of interior design. As well as this, I have now made my presence known within the team and company and have the ability to communicate with those necessary for further advice and development within future projects. The next few weeks will be a reflection of how the final design functions within the store layout, and will be the real sign of whether or not I have been successful in my first task. This is quite a scary wait however at the end of the day, this process has introduced me into the world of commercial design quite nicely and I can say that all of it has been a learning experience for the future.

Starting Over

As mentioned previously, in a commercial environment when one project is done and you have reflected on the work, it is then on to the next brief in order to stay prepared and on top of things for the future. This upcoming project gives me an opportunity to work with a client and develop my skills at accommodating a designing for someone now that I have a clear understanding of the basics here at IKEA. This process will begin next week and I have to now begin the journey of working from an initial brief to presenting to my client next week and learning the work stages from a different aspect to before. I look forward to applying my new skills to this learning opportunity as well as using previous skills such as Revit to fully develop and design for the project and client. This will mainly test my skills in user journey and client design but I look forward to the upcoming challenges.