Page 68 - Eve McCabe

CO-DESIGN PROJECT

REFLECTION

From the last project I made sure to organise and rank my findings. This way I knew where to base further research and
development, this helped me to stay focused.

Referring to the co-design participant throughout the project was a new experience. Making sure to get the go ahead before
you moved onto further development was new. It reminded me of the work experience in second year and where the
power for decisions is mostly not up to me. In this instance the second and third time I spoke to my participant they became

very vague in their answers. So it was hard for me to develop off of the original idea they liked. My leadership skills were lacking,
as I did not know how to steer the participant into choosing a design concept they wanted to pursue. So the final proposal was
a jumble of ideas for two products that had potential. I need to improve on this.

I feel like the unstructured interview is a very effective way to extract information about a situation. Having the participant be

very general at first help me understand the situation and to ask leading questions afterwards. I feel I was very professional in
my unstructured interview and how I went about this project. I made the conscious choice not to choose a family member
and to choose a friend so I could keep the interview more structured.

The engagement with decision making was not like I have experienced before. I kept having to remind myself to not choose
the concepts by myself and to make sure the key issue areas I developed into was a priority for my participant, and not my
assumption. Collaborating and getting opinions throughout process made sure the decisions made are based in evidence.

My presentation and sketching style for the project was cartoon and very innocent to suit the theme of the project. Overall,
I liked the visuals for this project.

Planning skills were good in this project, to make sure I had time to meet the participant and develop the project. Talking to
a participant with first-hand experience with the situation is so insightful. I will be continuing to find ‘expert users’ to gather
invaluable information. Prioritizing issues with the participant in this process really helped to keep the project focused.
Prioritizing should be in every project I do, like ranking findings and personal motivations for the project.

For the future I need to make sure to fully develop out an issue and its solutions. In this project I found it was very based on the
original idea we had in the first interview. I do think it is a good solution, but in future to make sure to develop more broad ideas
at the start of the project.

My oral presentation was good for this project. I practiced it out loud before and it was a big improvement from the
last project, I feel.