3. Ascendant Access Worked in a team with Adriana, Francis, Nikki, Daryl and team-leader Matt The project was quite wishy-washy with very little work happening in the early stages, building up to quite a lot at the finish Not so much innovation in the results – more common sense and noticing opportunities previously unexplored There was often tension in the team, some members thinking that others were not pulling their weight, but in the end we pulled it off and impressed the client with some of our ideas
5. Unilever Short project Worked with Matt Helped out during initial idea generation Helped out with image search when we had finished on the idea of ‘time’ This was a strange project in the fact that none of our ideas was developed much further than the initial idea generation and image-board stage Helped out finally with the wording of the ideas when the client said that we had not done enough. I wrote out the descriptions of a few of the ideas, explaining them further
7. Age UK Another short project Worked with Mike Developed many ideas that could help run Age UK’s befriending scheme Took what we thought to be the best of these, developed it further and presented to the client Again, little innovation in this project, more common sense and spotting an opportunity I came up with an idea for creating a book made from the stories of lonely old people, published and sold locally under the principles of corporate social responsibility, thus raising funding for the befriending service in a way that also increases awareness
9. Traffic Penalty Tribunal This was my favourite project of the year so far due to it being most closely linked to my interests in politics and law I worked on the Wylam part of the project with Adriana, Chris and Ruth I was also quite involved with the overall project, contributing plenty of relevant research and ideas to the Virtual Coffee House throughout the project I also completed some Freedom of Information Act requests, most of which were fruitful providing important data Finally, I took charge on presentation day, leading from the front and, hopefully, impressing the client and, I think, my peers – the suit helped This was the project with the most innovation for me The use of local amenities and local people, as well as brand new legislation and government guidelines led to some really good solutions
11. Conclusion There has been some innovation during the course so far, but I think that it has mostly been from the designers I see my role on the course as being the negative to others’ positives I will often find faults in their ideas that they could not see and so, stop them wasting their time developing these ideas I think that my overall work ethic is strong to begin with, wanes during the core of the projects then builds to a peak up to the presentation of the results This can often come off badly, but I do think that I contribute quite a lot to team work and am a valuable member of a multidisciplinary team
