Speaking from experience problems & Personal brief

Speaking from experience problems & personal brief

Narrowing down from my list of experiences and problems I came across in my first year I selected 5 basic points that had underlying points (highlighted in brackets) within them that could provide for a substantial problem that could result in an array of problem solving solutions in the later stages. 

Initial rough thoughts

To defined thoughts

Typography principles (Design, anatomy, readability & legibility)

Color theory (Theory, explanation, terminology, practical side of things)

Time management (Work performance/quality, lack of sleep, stress, motivation, high workload)

Budgetting (Food, Clothes, Projects, Books & Equipment) 

Meeting new people (Nervousness, Dealing with different personalities in group work, embarrassment and confidence in your work compared to peers work.)

Rewording these points into "problems"

Students often struggle to understand basic typographic principles.

Students tend to have limited or no knowledge of color theory.

Students struggle to manage there time well resulting in stress.

Students have trouble budgeting money for essential things.

Joining a university establishment students meet lots of new people with different personalities & interests to them.

Turning one of these problems into a personal brief. 
I chose to turn the problem of students managing there time.

Feedback on brief

Before going forward with producing ideas for the brief I sent off the brief to fellow students to see what they though of the basic idea of the brief and if it made sense and had potential to produce work from.

Brief change

Feedback suggested that the brief made sense in its wording and had lots of design potential, but I had already decided and narrowed down on a specific problem already. This problem been "time management" the ideal situation would have been to narrow down to the problem of "time management" through idea generation stages from analyzing and carrying out my personal brief.

I have re-wrote the briefs problem more based on students struggling with high workloads, the underlying problems from this struggle would be stress, poor work performance, illness, lack of sleep etc. These all have much more potential to work from in terms of me carrying out the brief and creating a solution to solve these problems. 

The brief now derives from the problem "Students can often struggle with high workloads when coming from further education courses that have much more relaxed expectations in terms of amount/quality of work to be produced in given time scales"

Areas that can be explored 

There are a selection of areas that can be explored to aid students in this transition and avoid the pitfalls of work overload. These areas will then be investigated on to see what design solutions can be derived from them.

Time management

Tips on how to break down a higher education brief. 

Guides to follow on terminology of design so they don't have to spend more time on finding out themselves

Time schedules. 

Tips & keyboard shortcuts for design programs to save time. 

Color pallete examples or a color guide to work from when making design developments. This will aid faster design ideas and development.

A guide on concise ideas generation so less time is wasted on overthinking ideas. Overthinking things kills creativity aswell as time. 

Time scale breakdown for a brief. A rough guide for students to follow highlighting how much times should be spend on each stage of a brief and the design process. This will also aid them into help onto how to undertake a higher education creative brief.

Highlight mistakes I made that wasted me time, e.g. spending too much time blogging irrelevant things.

Don't be afraid to scrap an idea, a lot of time can be wasted overthinking and working out an idea or concept that has no potential. 

How to tackle a brief, quickly, efficiently and to the best of your ability. Create a guide for this.

Project management.

Balance, create a balance of your free time & university work time.

Organisation, been organized saves time in the long run. Have a plan of action.

Create a mock up plan of action for students to work too.

Create blank checklists for students to create and work too.

A summary of every important thing I learnt this year so students don't have to find out the hard way and are a step in front of there peers.