Final Year preparations

Through out the past few months I have began preparation for my final year to begin (scary how time fly's). I have been completing research that I suggested I would complete in my enterprise proposal - I have wrote a blog post explaining it a bit further : http://emmahegarty.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/enterprise-proposal.html

The enterprise proposal which I completed in last semester is to develop into a 7,000 word report which will be completed during the first semester of level four. I chose for mine to an analysis of a particular business market.  
              *This report is an alternative to a dissertation, this was one of the options given due to  
              reconstruction of the course/modules this year. 

With this being a new module and having no previous examples/templates I am finding it difficult to understand what the structure of a report it meant to be. With the research I have completed I have began trying to plan out the sections that will be with my report. At this time I am currently using the template of a dissertation to roughly mark out the things I still need to research. Although this could be incorrect! I feel we should have been given some form of indication as to what was expected from the report at the end of last semester. Hopefully we get more/better guidance in the early stages of semester one. 

Final third year interiors project

Over the past few months unfortunately my blog has got a bit of neglecting, from completing my final third year projects, moving back home, reconnecting with friends and beginning research for fourth year it has been a busy summer so far. 

For my final project in third year I created a separate blog documenting each step of the process which I completed to achieve the final outcome. I have attached the link below: 

http://emmahegartyinteriors.wordpress.com/

For this project I designed a centre called Marina for the Marine Conservation Society, the propose for the centre is to bring in children and educate them on marine wildlife through workshops. I have attached the two main renders that showcase how the surroundings would look on the site.  

Look out Point - at the back of the building

Building at night time

Enterprise Proposal - Companies

In a previous post 'Enterprise Proposal' I spoke about how I was going to research into two design companies in the area of environmental design, an international and a smaller scale company. Over the past number of weeks I have been researching into a lot of different design companies that I would want to work on, I have now decided on the two I hope to use. 


My smaller scale local architect company is:
Gaia Group in Edinburgh (http://gaiagroup.org/)


My larger international architect company is:
White Design in Bristol and San Francisco (http://white-design.com/)

TED talks 'William McDonough on Cradle to Cradle design'

I was guided towards looking at a TED talks video 'William McDonough on cradle to cradle design'. William is an american architect who believes that green design can prevent environmental disaster and drive economic growth. He champions 'cradle to cradle' design - it considers a product's full life cycle from creation with sustainable materials to a recycled afterlife. 

It was really interesting listening to him talk about design as a whole rather than just about architecture - it gave a better indication what believes to be bad designing. 

He speaks a lot about the environment and what it should be like, during the video he said "cradle to cradles goal is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy and just world, with clean air, water, soil and power - ecologically and elegantly enjoyed, period! What don't you like about this" -  I thought it was a very powerful statement. 

I would recommend anyone going and watching this video as it does make you think about the things you do and use in your life - how easily you could do things differently to make a massive difference. You can find the video through the link below. 

http://www.ted.com/talks/william_mcdonough_on_cradle_to_cradle_design.html

I have taken the book 'Cradle to Cradle' by William McDonough & Michael Braungart out on loan from my library, from the video above it has intrigued me to find out more about the things he was talking about. I also think it will help me with my enterprise proposal. 

Enterprise Proposal

Over the last few weeks I have been thinking about the personal enterprise proposal (that is due after Easter) and what I want to base it on. There were a few types of options of different routes you could go down but I have decided to go down the research into a type of market/model route. From this I have come up with the basis for my proposal which is, 'To research into two different architecture/interior design companies in the same market area of environmental design. I will pick two companies an international and a smaller scale company. I want to investigate how they work in different ways to achieve the same goal - if there is a difference!'


After going to speak to Mike Press during the week to discuss this idea he made me think about the types of things I want to find out from the companies, here are a few examples of what I came up with.
- Progress and growth into a large business
- How did you make the transition from small to large
- Marketing 
- Advertising 
- Maintenance during the economic climate 
- Types of clients they get
- Problems + benefits of working in the environmental design side


This morning we had our last mentoring session which was good talking about my idea and hearing about other peoples as it gives you new ideas that you may have not have thought about. Getting feedback and advice from my mentor Andy Milligan was great as he was able to help me think of people and architecture companies that may be good to use/look into. After researching some of his suggestion I have an idea of the companies that I wish to work with - it is now a case of making contact to see if they are willing to speak to me. 

NESTA Workshop 4

On Friday we had our final NESTA workshop session with Mike Press where we used toolkit 5 to work through things about money. From the last workshop I had not been looking forward to this as although I am good with mathematics I find it hard thinking about money/a business when it does not exist. I soon found out that it was not as bad as I thought it was going to be, although I could not answer some of the finical questions - I was in the same boat as most of the people in the room (a slight relief). 


To me Mike summed up how important money is for a business in a short sentence perfectly, 'If you don't make money then you don't have a business, you just have an expensive hobby'. 


We were given the finance sheet to work through the green section - it was about identify things about yourself such as how much you would like to earn a year, how hard would you work and would you work with a partner/employees, with a few others. You can see my answers in the image below.

Green section

We then quickly moved through the next three sections of the sheet, the blue part I personally did not have a clue what to put for most of them - the questions where about annual turnover, competitor prices etc something I do not no anything about. The next part was the orange area which asked questions that I found a little easier as they wanted to find out about what costs will have to be incurred for the business to run. You can see my answers for this in the images below. 

Blue and Orange sections

The last part of the sheet was about asking questions to get you thinking about the kinds of way you could get finance to set up your business and how long would they be able to cover you for. My answers are seen in the image below.

Pink section

Types of costs:

Direct - making a product or selling a service (materials, labor, advertising)

Indirect - running a business even if you sell nothing (salary, rent, insurance, lawyers)

These two types of costs form a big part in your cash flow along with other factors like the money you take in and dividends etc. You can see from my drawing below how a cash flow works. 

Cash Flow Diagram 

The workshop then moved onto Crowd Funding - describes the collective, cooperation, attention and trust by people who network + pool their money together usually via the internet, to support efforts initiated  by people or organisations. This first time I have heard of this type of funding, it seems to be an easy and straight forward way to try to gain finance for a project. The good things about it is that it will secure funding and word of mouth of your product/service etc but the bad thing is that your idea/design is on the internet so anyone could steal it. We were given a KickStarter pitch sheet to fill in on something that we would want to gain money for right now. The image below shows the idea of my pitch - it was to get enough funding to travel to London to show my work. 

KickStarter - Pitch Sheet 

As this was our last NESTA workshop we have been taught as much about business that we need to know at this stage, we should be able to take it forward to help us through our Personal Enterprise Proposal. 

Press Release - Fake Evidence

At the last NESTA workshop we had spoke about press releases and how important they were as they created a good source of advertisement and news coverage. With this in mind we were asked to complete a press release for the business we had been looking at for all of the workshop tasks. 

I began research the internet to find how a press release is wrote, how long it should be and what information should you incorporate into. I completed my own press release which you can see below. 

For immediate release 

Headline:

Marine Workshop Launched to help Broughty Ferry

Paragraph 1:

The Marine Conservation Society have teamed up with the local Broughty Ferry Development Trust and a student interior design currently studying at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design to create a centre. The centre will used by a team from the Marine Conservation Society to hold workshops for children from schools and community groups around the Angus area. It has been set up to help educate the children about the marine wildlife in our seas and to get them and there parents evolved to help save our seas and the wildlife in them. It will be officially opened for there first workshop on the 1st April 2012. 

Paragraph 2:

In the centre the workshops will be held though out the week, depending on the interest there will 4 workshops a week. There will be all different ages groups of children taking part, each workshop will be catered to the age and needs of the children participating. Student design Emma Hegarty, through her individual university project has helped come up with the design for the centre. She has worked on it for the past number of months with both groups to come up with a design that everyone was happy with. 

Paragraph 3:

Ruth from Broughty Ferry Development Trust, “It will be a great opportunity to get the children involved in the marine environment.” “..also help the parents understand more about the sea.”

Ann from Marine Conservation Society, “This is exactly the type of thing needed for this area, to get the children and parents involved, and to generate interest in the beaches and dolphin sightings.” 

Notes for Editors:

- Pictures of the new centre

- Interviews available with the marine conservation society team

- Beach beside centre not up to standards and dolphins sightings in the area 

Contact Details

Name: Emma Hegarty 

Telephone Number: 01234567898

Name: Ann 

Telephone Number: 09874561231

Whitespace

On Friday afternoon we had a talk from a guy called Iain Valentine who is the creative director of Whitespace a digital design company based in Edinburgh. He spoke about how he graduated from DJCAD as a graphic designer, got a placement (moved to London), how it wasn't for him so moved back to Edinburgh and many doors opened up to him. 

Iain spoke about the company and how it has grown over the years - by the end of the month they will have 41 people working there, interesting to me that only 8 of them are creators. Even though the company has now got to the size that it is they still have to turn down work/jobs so that they do not provide poor quality products. When he spoke about the way to work and how to think about it a couple of phrases stuck out to me:

- Good things come to those who work their asses off

- Make work play and play work 

- Love what you do or move on

- Good success comes best if there are mistakes learnt along the way

It was an interesting lecture in terms of thinking about it from the business point of view which is great for what we are currently doing in this module but I felt like I couldn't get into it properly due to it being a graphic design background. I think if there was a lecture from someone that relates back to my discipline (architecture, interior design, furniture design, exhibition design to name a few areas) I would be able to understand the business process better and be able to ask questions that would help me gain a better insight into how that specific industry works. 

NESTA Workshop 3

Last Friday we had our third workshop with Mike Press using the NESTA toolkit 4 - on Marketing.

- Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customers requirements profitably.  

We looked at marketing mix 7 p's:

Product - Is there a market/demand/desire for your product/service? Does it have a USP (Unique Selling Proposition)?

Place - Where is it sold? How is it distributed - impact on cost?

Price - What price can you change in that market? Profit= price-costs (if too expensive - won't sell, but if too cheap - no profit + infer poor quality)

Promotion - Appropriate method to make people aware of what your offering - know who your customers are and how you can reach them

Types of Marketing + Promotion Tools

- PR (Public Relation) - creates and maintains image, press release

- Advertising - awareness, persuade the customer 

- Internet + Online Marketing - website, blog, social media

- Direct Marketing - Mail listings, telemarketing etc

- Sales Promotion - price reduction (can damage image), money off vouchers, multi-buy

- Personal Selling - face to face marketing

People - Your staff/representatives - can be your biggest asset

Process - the procedures you take to deliver the product/service/brand

Physical Environment - the impression of your business (workplace, retail presence, online image)

Task 04a) As individuals we worked out the 7p's for our own business idea. After working alone for so long we got into groups of threes to get feedback from others - see if they could some up with something I could not see myself. You can see from the images below the outcomes that I suggested/created. 

For us being students and some of which may want to go straight from graduation into setting up there own business or even to help gain employment - the best way to us these tools is to focus on your PR and online profile. A person should be able to answer these lists of questions from looking about you online: who am I? How can I help you? How did I get here? Why can you trust me? What do we have in common?

The Marketing Plan

1. Mission Statement

2. SWOT Analysis

3. Marketing Objective - definite, quantifiable, achievable, realistic, time sensitive 

4. Marketing Strategy 

5. Implementing the plan - intentions, how achieved objectives, by what means

6. Measuring + Controlling the plan - monitor + review progress

Task 04b) With this worksheet we had to apply it to our business idea, we narrowed it down to doing it for our social media strategies. This beneficial to find out what ways would be best to get your name and brand out there into the public eye via the internet. We worked the same way again, as individuals first and then into the same groups of threes. You can see my outcome in the images below. 

Our last workshop next week is on money - this could be interesting/difficult for me as when it comes to the tasks/worksheets that ask you to answer about money I always find it hard to think of it terms of a real life business as it is only a proposed idea. 

NESTA Workshop 2

This morning we had our second workshop with Mike Press, we worked through new exercises that helped us try and understand the market and customers we would be working with. The first task was 3a 'Your Customers' - we started by talking through the types of customers we could have and how to we define them. Through values, gender, sexuality, age, location and culture were some of the ones we came up with. We had to them come up with the customer that would buy our product or use that service - my customer would be children (schools + community groups) in Scotland mainly Tayside area. I then came up with some ideas that slot into the different sections, what are their needs? what are you offering them? how many are there? how many of those will you reach? how frequently? how much will they pay? potential total income. Working out how much they would pay and total income was hard for me as it is not a profitable idea/business that I have come up with.

Creating a sustainable business you have to: 

Have a clear idea of what your business will do (about your values) - you

Know there is an audience/market for what you are offering - people who will use it

Develop a business process that allows you to offer it to a customer and sell if for more than it costs to produce. - system/business 

Activity 3b 'Blueprint Modelling' - plans out the three operational stages that all businesses need/go through. 

Engagement stage - the time that it takes to plan who your prospective customer are and how to persuade them to buy from you.  

Development stage - the time that it takes to design and create your offer.

Delivery stage - the time it takes to get your product or service to your customer. 

From the images below you can see the things that i have put into each section, this helped get a clearer understanding of the process that I would have to go through to make it a real life centre. 

After this I quickly drew up a flow diagram of the structure that the things from the blueprint modelling would take along side each other. This is an image of it below. 

At the end of the workshop we quickly spoke and worked through activity 3c 'Relationship Modelling'. There are four categories in this activity, they are: 

Generator - yourself                                   - 

Realiser - maybe yourself, other people    - the first three are critical 

Distributor - retailer                                   -  

Customer 

Defining the relationships you need to ask some important questions.

Who do you need to build with for them to cover all areas?

Who is giving or receiving the money in each of these relationships?

Implications of theses - how much to charge and when?

Something you can manage? - if not what other resources are needed? 

These workshop really start to get you thinking about each aspect of your business in different ways and also in a lot of depth. 

Fake Evidence

After the workshop last Friday I started thinking about fake evidence further for the project I am currently doing. I took an image from the Woodland Trust's website and created a mock up article for them that would appear after the opening of the centre.  

NESTA Workshop 1

On Friday past (2nd March) we had our first NESTA workshop with Mike Press, we completed and explored some of the activities from the toolkit. Evidence modelling was the first exercise -  it is a way of articulating your business vision, giving both good and bad view points. It has four different sections with your business idea in the centre of the four points. In the images below you cane see my business idea and what I put into each of the four sections.  

Enhance - what does it bring a new value to

Replace - what does it make less desirable

Revive - what does it bring back that was redundant 

Backlash - what are the effects when it is pushed to the extremes

From this we went on to writing up fake evidence - this is a good way to get a business idea down visually, what the design idea might look like. This makes it easier for you to talk about your idea and show others what it will look like. It can be anything from an advertisement, film, website or a feature article. 

The fake evidence for my project idea was an article on the organisations website, it was to show case the opening of the centre. The image below shows my sketch of this idea.

The last activity of the day was to complete a SWOT analysis, we had to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of our business ideas. Some of these areas were easier to cover than others as it is easier to see the positives in your business that the negatives, I felt when talking to others it helped you understand/realise some of the potential problems.

From completing these tasks I feel that when I come up with my business report idea I will use them again to help we find out as much strengths and weaknesses etc that it will have. 

Personal Brief

From my last post I had narrowed down my ideas to two concepts, it was then brought down and I picked one of those ideas. After speaking to my tutor my mind has opened up and I am looking at two ways of taking my concept further. It is mainly about the two organisations that I would like to work with that is making my idea follow two different directions. These two organisations are: Marine Conservation Society (Scotland) and The Woodland Trust (Scotland). I have started mind mapping what each organisation are about and came up with a sort of brief for each of them.  

Marine Conservation Society  

To create a center that will help educate people on the natural environment and the things we can do to help - in this space there would be an informative section and space for a workshop as a means to help educate people through doing things. This center would be located within a forest near to where I live in Dundee.

Woodland Trust 

To create a center that will help educate people on the natural sea life environment and the things we can do to help it make these natural places the best they can be- in this space there would be an informative section and space for a workshop as a means to help educate people through doing things. This center would be located near a beach front where I live in Dundee.

From doing this I went on and contacted each of the organisations to find out more if this would be beneficial to them and there work. I then went to the library in search for some book that could give me some inspiration  on wood structures/green architecture and structures built with water. 

 

I have taken a lot of inspiration from these books, and also got an email back from a woman that works for Marine Conservation Society (Scotland), she was very positive about my idea and was very willing to help me with any questions I had/have in future. I am still waiting on a response from the Woodland Trust (Scotland) - I would like to wait to hear from them before I decide which route I am going to take. So at the minute I am continuing to research into both areas further.   

SIE - Scottish Institute for Enterprise

SIE Logo

This morning we had a lecture from a woman called Dawn Shand, she is the regional business advisor for this side of Scotland.

Although I have not considered setting up my own business as that is not necessarily the route I want to take when I leave university. I found it interesting that there are companies/organisations set up to help those people/students to get advice on an idea and how to get the ball rolling to start up there own business.

They are there to help turn students into entrepreneurs, support, inspire and encourage them to make that step to getting there business idea going. 

She gave everyone in the room an old, out of date news paper article and told us to make something out of it to give it value. My initial idea was to make a picture frame out of it as the newspaper I got has a nice beach image on it - it did not turn out beautiful as the paper kept unfolding. The purpose of this exercise was for us to think about what setting up a business can be about - I took from this that if you find something, a product/service that can have a value added to it then it can be turned into a business. I had never thought of a business idea like that before. 

I will now consider my options, do I have any ideas/thought that can be turned into a business? I will think more about what is available out there for me before ruling things out like setting up my own business.  

Mentoring Group - Design and the Market

Today we had our first group mentoring session with Andy Milligan, before this we were asked to complete a couple of things. The first being ‘02a Your Values’ NESTA work sheet, write a mission statement and read NESTA book 01 and 02 up till page 16. 

I started of by completing my work sheet, this was interesting as it did really make you think about what is important to you when working on a project / in a business / in future life. My top five always important values are: work/life balance, self respect, honesty, be positive and excitement. And for my never important values I chose: status/fame and wealth.

02a Your Values

When asked in a previous lecture from Christina Hurst to write a mission statement I found it difficult to understand how it was possible to write one on yourself as I would always link it with a business/organisation. So I started to look at a few examples of what a personal mission statement looks like for other people - this in a way was not that helpful. Those that I seen were talking about religious beliefs and not about there aims/goals. From my values list I used a few words to help we create my own mission statement - this took me a long time to figure out what is was I wanted to say. In the end I came up with this:   

I will strike to achieve a good work/life balance - In work my mission is to be creative, learn and understand my clients’ needs to create the best spatial design solution for them. In life I will aim high and be an optimist as I believe everything happens for a reason. 

From the mentoring session I am not sure if this is what they were looking for as a lot of other students spoke more about a business/project concept mission statement. Personally for me I find if hard to understand how you can come up with a mission statement for a business/research project which you do not no what it will be about yet. My next step is to make my personal mission statement more focused on my discipline and what I aim to achieve through it. I will also begin thinking about my personal enterprise proposal, work out what it will be about so that I can then write a mission statement for it. 

When reading the NESTA books ‘Arrivals and Destinations’ and ‘Getting off the Ground’ I thought that the best way for me to remember what they talked about was to make a mind map whilst reading it. 

NESTA - Book 1

NESTA - Book 2

I found it helpful making the mind maps as it was easier to look back for something and find out the details of it again, in comparison to a list of bullet points - for me a mind map works best. 

NESTA - Book 1 Mind Map

NESTA - Book 2 Mind Map

New Project

At the end of last week we were given a form to fill in defining what our new 'Personal Project' would be about and to create a brief. Initially I had a few ideas floating about my head so today I sat down and started figuring out what direction I wanted to take this project down. This was not an easy task!

Personal Project form

Two concepts

Through out the day I narrowed my thoughts down to two potential concepts. They both are aimed to work with the same organisation but at the same time they would create totally different outcomes. I hope by tomorrow afternoon I will have picked from the two briefs which one I feel will create the best project for me so that I can get started on it - I am excited to be getting stuck into something new. 

 

International GIDE Workshop

From Tuesday 14th - Thursday 16th February, we in Dundee were the hosts of the International GIDE Workshop 2012 - Group of International Design Education. 


The seven colleges join together for the few days to work together on a number of different bomb projects to exchange design ideas and cultural experiences. The seven colleges are:

- Leeds College of Art 

- University of Primorska - The Academy of Design in Ljubljana 

- University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland 

- University of Applied Science - Magderburg 

- Lessius Mechelen University College - Design & Technology Department 

- Politecnico di Milano 

- Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design - Dundee


There are groups created with a mixture of people from all the different colleges - they are then given an individual bomb project. My groups brief was to 'Develop a concept proposal for a portable chair for gallery vistors, talks and events at DCA - Dundee Contemporary Arts. Design this to reflect previous exhibiton event at DCA. Produce a full scale 1:1 rough mock up/prototype using basic materials.' 


From this we went to DCA to look around the gallery spaces, from this we seen that storage is a major problem as they basically do not have any. We took this to be a big influence is our design, as it was a large team not just one design could be agreed on so we decided to design and produce two prototypes. Below is shown to presentation and our outcomes. 

We as a team I feel were happy with the outcomes for it being a three day project and hopefully the people from DCA will also like our designs.


GIDE as a whole for me was a great experience, and I would love to go and experience it in a different country. Fingers crossed I get to go to Slovenia next year!