WEEK 4: A SEASONALITY PROJECT

09/05/22 - 13/05/22

This week was the concept development week for my latest project that not only pushed me to work with clients, but also tested my ability to appeal to the mass by working with seasonality.

Working with a Client:

Having brought my first project to a close last week, it was time to get stuck in to another one! Working with a new supervisor I was shown the ins and outs of the to gain a better understanding as to how the work we do really impacts our customers as well as seeing the nitty gritty of the job that comes from looking after our work on a daily basis! This new project however was exciting for me as it pushed me to work more individually with my newly learnt skills after the first project but also to gain more skills by working with clients. Having organised the first client meeting with my connections within IKEA, I prepped concept boards and potential products as well as gathering information from the company and graphics to create three routes for my client to choose to go down. This allowed me to work quicker after the meeting as I had given options rather than creating a free for all as there are deadlines to follow!

The meeting itself was rather frightening at first but I had to remind myself that I am the designer and they are coming to me for this project which put myself a bit more at ease. One thing I definitely learnt from this experience was how to lead a meeting. It is very easy for a client as it is for us at the start of projects to get excited and have loads of ideas, but in this scenario it was up to me to keep some sort of control over the situation - once again why I created initial concepts to bring to the meeting rather than bringing a blank canvas.

Overall the new skills gained from having a real life client will be incredibly useful in not only further projects, but also in the final year of the course. It's helped me to work in a more structured way that my client will be able to understand, and helped me overcome a large issue I have had in the past that is trying to put my ideas from my head on to a page. Not only is it important for us as a designer to work with a client to produce ideas but also go to the client with ideas so that there can be a similar understanding of what level is achievable in the given time as well as planting a little seed for the client which can help keep the project on a steady path.

Working as a team:

Following on from my project working with seasonality it's important to understand the process behind which it is done. In order to produce and develop new seasonality and launches into a commercial setting, it is more than important to work as a team to see the different design opportunities as well as being able to produce something that is manageable in time for the launch. This follows one of the IKEA values of "togetherness" which encourages us to put our heads together to create something that will appeal to the mass by considering different backgrounds, ages, genders etc. that allows IKEA to be as inclusive as possible. This week gave me the opportunity to walk around the store with the Interior Design team to understand how customers not only interact with the various amount of spaces, but also allowing me to hear and discuss the different ideas everybody had by the knowledge they had and how everybody individually felt from the spaces. In some situations, I was the target market which helped to give first hand examples of what needed to be considered when designing for someone like me.

Working as a team also relates back to my seasonality project in that I cannot do absolutely everything in such a large company, this means working with specialists to bring the final project together. Having discussed the next steps and the ideal outcome with my client, I could then turn my focus to how it would be implemented which meant meeting with graphics to figure out and understand how this project would be able to communicate to the customers. Meetings are unfortunately only one step of the process and next week will be about ensuring everything happens and is ready for implementation!