The Big Feed
This week we had the honour of getting feedback from our tutors. My group had decided on an idea with hide and seek – a sort of gamification of campus tours. We had gone with our small group and met with our tutor to discuss what we had thus far, and get the big feedback we needed for our Charrette.
What we had presented was such;
Our idea was basically a workshop for making a cute mascot head in groups, where you would connect with people and do a light-hearted, creative activity whilst making friends. We were inspired by our recent design camp for the DEB101 unit for Introducing Design, where we went on camp and essentially built structures to solve some problems as a group. I (as well as another girl in my group) felt that it was a great activity for building connections with people, having one central object for all of you to work on as a united group, all having something in common to work on as you built your bonds with one another. We felt like doing something light-hearted would lighten the mood as well as the atmosphere, and allow them all to discover more of each other as they worked.
We had also wanted the event to occur in orientation week, as we felt that building these bonds would be most effective before the critical period where they decided if they were to stay or leave – the academic and the census dates.
After the workshop, we had decided on hide and seek– except with the use of mascots. After we encouraged them to have lunch together before returning, we, the mentors, would essentially hide their mascots, like it was a sneaky attack that they did not foresee beforehand. We would hide them  and give them hints as to where to find the next clue that would then lead them to another clue, and another clue, before reaching their mascot heads, giving them plenty of time to do so, to promote a relaxed environment. They would be instructed to take pictures before heading back with their mascot and prizes would be held at the end for the top three groups that returned first– an initiative to have the students stay until the end of the day.
Our tutor received our information well, and then it came – The Slaughter of 2016.
Okay, maybe not, but she did give some pretty good criticisms, mostly stemming from our lack of research and audience. At that point, we had not explained our inspirations, and once we had, she began to understand where our idea was coming from, but highlighted that we should most definitely look more into research and audience, as well as keep iterating our work.
I had understood her meaning, however I was still quite lost on the whole aspect of “forward-thinking” that she had described earlier.
I think Gen understood how lost all of us were, so she tried to explain it the best she could – and it was essentially, “What makes QUT different?”
We identified that QUT made us feel like a community and that it had a stronger sense of friendliness and understood the important of connections in industries, as well as with peers. She clicked on to our view rather quickly, and explained that was exactly it – or at least that was what I understood.
Having a clearer idea of where we were headed and what we wanted, we left the session feeling slightly lost, if I was honest. Sure, we had a clear idea of what we were supposed to do, but we felt as if our idea was shot down, and we had immense trouble trying to think of another. With one of our members in an entirely different state, we were left leaving it until the last moment where we began to become incredibly confused and increasingly panicked.
We had decided to stay with the idea – but improve on it. We felt like it was the best decision to move forward, so we had tried to improve what we could on the design.
First, we identified an audience – People wanting to find friends and connect with people of similar mindsets who were also school leavers entering university for the very first time – people unsure of their course, essentially.
Then, we had done research, and extensive amounts of it. We created a survey online, and distributed it to people in the Creative Industries Faculty, and focused and honed in on the idea of a community in QUT. Apart from that, we had also gone through Dr Ruth Bridgstock’s Lecture and identified key problems she had identified and shown us in the lecture that had specific connotations and connections with community. We used that information and applied it to our design, thinking specifically of ways we could improve it and allow for a better design.
The session with our tutor allowed us to think of certain ways we could change or improve on our idea, and I felt it was beneficial for the whole group, however with a person missing during it, we felt that it could not have been as effective as it could have. We felt that with a person missing, they couldn’t realise the same problems and eventually lead to miscommunication.
Although we weren’t sure if it would hinder us that badly, we tried our best to communicate the session we had with our tutor to the member who was not present for the session or most of the work we had done directly after the session with our tutor.
Generally, the experience led us to some problems within our group idea, and it definitely helped us in the long run, however I felt like we could have used more of her insight and her criticisms better, as I felt we had not used up all our potential. However, not having all of our group present I feel hindered us in our progress, and I’ve come to realise that having people around and meeting with people in person is a definite easier and more successful option than speaking online.
If everything failed me, this one feedback did tell me one thing; every single detail is important.
