I have learnt a quite of number things that are very helpful for me in reference to the future, in regards to creating a satisfactory or exceptional projects deliverable for any kind of brief that I will be working on. I have learnt more about valuing other people opinions or ideas towards better solutions and outcome, also about varied inputs from different mindsets are useful for our project.

I would like to be assessed upon all The Green Value hunters hard work put towards this project and the time and energy that we put towards meeting the projects deadline. Therefore I would like The Green Value Hunters to be assessed on meeting the deadline and the time and effort that The Green Value Hunters dedicated to this big project.

The part that I found a little bit challenging at first was about having to work in large group of people. This was simply because; we have come from different backgrounds and have a variety of mindsets that has made a difficult for us to compromise on each others ideas or qualify group member’s opinions.

If I could change anything during this project I would probably do things differently in regards to the time that went into decision making. It should involve the majority of a group agreeing on the decision made, instead of having one of a team member dictating on how the project should be. It should also included the nomination of a team leader that has the final say in regards to decision making, to keep the project moving forward. The amount of work the each member has contributes to the project should be shared evenly, and recognition of all the background work and other components that go into completing the final project should be given equal consideration. The amount of work should be equally balanced because I believe in any group environment some the team members will contribute less towards the project.

In regards to the financial component of the project at the start of the project there should be a budget set, that should take into consideration printing cost or any extras that needed to purchases. The idea of each member contributing a set amount at the start of the project, to set a budget is essential, and if any money is left or more required it should be divided evenly. I believe this should be taken into consideration as it is very important to understand about budgets and how they factor into the professional work place and will give a better understanding of how a project really works. If we have more time to work on this project I would probably have liked to do some extra time and peace of mind.

From the design point of view, the black and white represent the good and bad like yin and yang.  The design of the ad also gives the audience the feeling of coldness due to the message conveyed showing the ugly side of discrimination and racism, which work very well in the black and white context.

Moving onto the our project, the positive implications of the Bargain Buddy application is  how Green Value Hunters have aimed to create an application that would save time and also save some money for the target audience. It is practical application that Green Value Hunters will launch to help the target audience, gain access to savings from different retailers.

The negative implications that may occur during the Bargain Buddy trial may vary from such minor problems as consumers thinking the website is just another scam, to major ones such as consumers not having the technological understanding to use the website or handsets that it works on.

Green Value Hunters are currently working towards our final video presentation. We are hoping that we can reach our target audience by creating a video or ad that would have a positive impact on our target audience. That it would engage our target audience by showing what benefits they could gain by utilising the application and website, and hopefully to get the target audience to directly interact with the website.

We are aiming for direct interaction from our target audience to ensure that it provides a longer recall memory period of the website and application so we can successfully complete our brief for a satisfactory result and a happy ending .

The panel members other than Will Anderson, come from several of the leading creative agencies from around Australia. How I viewed the discussions of the ads shown on The Gruen Transfer and if I agree with the view point the member of the panel. In regards to the first ad about a gay pride festival that was happening in Norway, it was very funny. From a creative point of view, it actually worked in the manner of the lost sperm that got confused and lost. I as the audience was also confused, until the gay pride poster came up, which added to the humour and the shock content of the ad.

The second ad that was shown was one from MacDonald’s. I was quite amazed at the quantity and variety of the advertisements produced on yearly bases by MacDonald’s. The discussion by the panel was about pester power that is utilised by ads targeted towards children. It is the parent’s decision to buy the product not children’s, so I agreed with Russel Howcroft.

The third part of the show was the discussion about whether sex sells. I agreed with the most of the panel members that sex does sell. Because men and women do admire attractive members of the opposite sex or of the same sex if that is the case.

In conclusion, I believe The Gruen Transfer to be a very good show as it explains how advertising works in simple terms to understand, in a funny context.

In addition to our Bargain Buddy project, the Green Value Hunters were hoping that we could deliver the right message that our target audience would receive and would also sell our product to the market audience.

The design of the Bargain Buddy application is very straightforward, also very simple to utilise. Green Value Hunters are trying to create the essence of being bold in design to attract the target audience, with the benefit for the consumer of being able to find the best bargain at their fingertips.  Green Value Hunters used the warm colour in design to create a welcome feeling within the target audience, along with the environmental aspect of being paperless.

After the lecture last week, I am now able to understand how it is crucially important to develop a working prototype in a project to be able to understand its many aspects. Thus being able to create a satisfactory feeling towards the achievement of the project goals. We are now working towards completing our storyboard. Today is prototyping day, versus real audience and this will show how Bargain Buddy will interact with the public within our target audience.

We were running a prototype test on a real target audience, our goal was to try to and obtain a selection of people within our target market. We were quite surprised about how people were willing to help us with our testing, and also they were happy for us to take their photograph.

This is our first mock-up application for a regular phone, such as a Nokia. Unlike the iPhone application, Bargain Buddy has a fairly basic functionality for regular phones. A user will simply receive an sms from Bargain Buddy, when the user opens it the message will contain information in regards to a specific sale or a number of different sales in the area they are located.

The first user found it a fraction difficult to understand the concept about the iPhone application; this was because they didn’t own an iPhone. We also did not have an iPhone so we could not demonstrate this physically to be able to make them understand how the iPhone functioned.

They also suggested that we should have not printed the prototype, and we should have presented it in a slide show presentation on a laptop to make it easier to understand. With this we could have simply guided them through how the iPhone and the application worked, and shown them how to find their way through on how to utilise the phone application.

The second user also found the prototype a bit challenging, because she didn’t quite understand how it worked, again as she hasn’t used an iPhone. After we explained it briefly to her she slowly understood how the application would work and could be used by her in a beneficial manner.

I really like Mariana’s website mock-up, it was very simple, attractive and to the point according to the research she had conducted along with her studies. Mariana and Lillian had been very descriptive and had described the use of the website and mocked it up for our tester.

I quite liked the presentation board that Lillian had come up with, when I look at it I felt bubbly and happy and also the green used represented several emotions within our group. In regards to our ‘Bargain Buddy’ application the green represented the environmental and economical aspects of the application and service provided, as it is all about being green for the bargain hunters.

Kate and I had worked over night towards this brutal death line. Being a very bubbly person, Kate had come up with a very simple and full of personality phone application mock-up and the description of how to use the application, along with our groups design layouts. Also during this I had been putting all our group work together to make the final mock-up report.

Finally at 4am we wrapped up the work and went to bed.  We set our alarms for 8.30, in the morning.The time just flew past; I felt that just five minutes had gone by. I had my blanket wrapped around me, than I heard this noise coming from next to my bed, I rolled over and turned the alarm off. I had to stumble out of my bed and start kicking Kate so she can get up to, we than and had to wait our turns to have a shower. Being brain dead I had to make the toast for a quick breakfast, while Kate got ready first, than it my turn to get ready.

We had a panic attack when we received a text message from one of our group members that she had left the work on the train accidentally. I felt very terrible for her, because I knew deep down she had worked very hard toward what she had contributed and also towards the prototyping day.

Then the happy news came along everything had been sorted out according to the plan. But the bad news was, we had missed our train so we are going to be late.

It was on the Wednesday morning at 10.30am, we were supposed to have our first tester come along. We had waited ten minutes, than Tania came along to inform us that she regretted that the first tester group had an issue with their set-up for their prototyping. So Tania had arranged 2 + 2 + 1 group to replace our potential first tester.The moment had come and we could see in the distance, there were two people coming towards us.

They asked several question about the general background of the ‘bargain buddy’, they also offered several suggestions to us, which we thought were good ideas and we thought they may be very helpful.

]]> http://arimayya.wordpress.com/2009/04/25/the-week-of-prototyping/feed/ 0 Day Dreamer 220420090051 220420090091 22042009001 http://arimayya.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/high-technology/ http://arimayya.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/high-technology/#comments Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:54:47 +0000 Day Dreamer http://arimayya.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/high-technology/ ]]> I feel very lucky to be living and also be a part of high technology in today’s world. High technology has changed our attitude towards today’s modern living. I don’t know where to start, but there are so many cool gadgets that are available. Where you can simply go out and purchase something today to entertain you, for example when they invented MP3 players, although I still remember the days when the “CD WALKMAN” was one of the cool gadgets, you could have.

As time passes, with other new technologies being invented, for instance the new MP3 player. Companies and individuals are creating something new and improved every single year, I can never keep up.  I have highlighted these items as being part of high technology, because of how music interacts with the wider market. However imagine your life today without music, I personally listen every day to a bit of dance music, something hardcore to get me out of bed or to wake my brain completely, then I am ready for a new day.

Moving on, I will now talk about being very lucky to have such easy access to the internet. I am seriously glad as you can do so much and it also makes everything so much easier to gain access to information and keep you informed of what is going on in the world. In the past we were all depending on TV, radio, or newspapers to be able to keep us informed and up to date with what was going on in the world, and these were usually restricted to a specific geographic region or just one country. The internet does not just tell us about the world, it can be about the simple stuff, for instance what the weather will be for the day, or what movies are playing at the cinema. I am as much a user of the high technology today as I was in the past.

Also the increase of high technology in communication has been both a positive and negative aspect. I am very glad that people invented Skype, this application makes it much easier for me to keep in touch with my family overseas or even close friends. I cannot imagine actually living in 1945, where there was only very limited communication options that were readily available. I mean for instance the postman and the telephone were probably one of the hits of the time, I wasn’t to sure about it. But I could never thank those geniuses enough, who come up with these amazing inventions, I envy them.

Now I would like to mention about how our project can really help people like me to keep up with interactive world. I would like if in the future there is actually an application similar to the bargain buddy. It could be something completely different, and would be even more beneficial if there is an application or a piece of technology that could be installed into every car or phone in the future that can help people find things much easier. For example for your car, you can now purchase a GPS to help get you to places, imagine if you could have a chip installed in your car to help you find a parking spot, still would not help you at Christmas time. Or an application that you can install or subscribe to for your phone, which informs you about sales or bargains that are happening around you.

When issues or problems arise in a group project, what I have found is that the best way to deal with them is to discuss them with the whole group. This way everybody can understand where each member stands on the issue, and if there are any external problems outside the project, they can be taken into consideration. As everybody has things going on in there lives that affect them.

On the brighter side, the values of teamwork are essential in these situations, the value of working in a creative team environment allows all members to grow and develop important skills that can be utilized later in the work place.

As a mature age  student and learning from my experience working professionally in a family business that specializes in Media Planning in Jakarta. I worked in media planning representing the agency in meetings with the potential clients or current clients internationally and locally.

Quite often I found there is a wide variety of mindsets or personalities out there that sometimes we just have to take any negative aspects and turn them into positive benefits for the business. At the end of the day the whole reason behind teamwork within university, is to prepare us mentally and professionally for the work force. Where you will deal with a wide variety of people, that you may find challenging to deal with. The main thing is that business is business and not to be taken personally.

Through the interviews we were able to see that even with the current state of the economy people are still continuing to spend money. They are not waiting for sales, they just spend on a daily basis. Also through our research we discovered that there are already a number of existing applications for various devises to help customers save money. Regardless of our finding that people aren’t waiting for sales, these applications still exist which is a positive and negative sign in a way for us.

There is also a number of existing websites with the same goal, to help customers save money on items. Through looking through these websites we could easily see that they were fairly plain and unattractive, they did not really promote sale items as being cool, and the user may feel more negative using them rather then positive as the websites do not promote the items in a proper light, they promote them in a cheap manner.

Based on my experiences when shopping, I sometimes have wondered if I can have access to a website that has information on hot sale items or bargains that are occurring on a weekly basis. So as a group we are going to try and create a handy website and application that will hopefully help people like me in finding good sales and save money and most importantly time, as I won’t have to tramp all over the place looking into different stores for bargains.

Oh my, I’m so tired of having to search through so many lists of items each week to find the cheapest one. I need to save money but I have so much work to do and this just wastes my time. It takes so long, when I could be out relaxing with friends or getting on top of all my work. I wonder if I can go on the Internet and download some kind of application for my I-phone that will make this task quicker and easier for me.

Oh, what’s this? ‘Bargain Buddy’, “It saves you time and money, I will alert you to sales and even let you search out specific items”, Omg this looks so handy and its free. Wow I like this website its very thoughtful, I can search for items and it finds the cheapest one, not only that it contains heaps of sale items.