Design Studio (2A)

Tuesday and Thursday, 9am-1pm

week 1

Lesson 1 - 8 August 2023

In today's class we were introduced to our lecturers Xin and Wen, and also to each other as it was our first physical class. This lesson was mostly about collaborative learning-- namely things like how working in teams is important for us, strategies on how to work together effectively, and how to know ourselves and how we and our teammates work.

How we went about doing that was that our lecturer tasked us to fill up a template on a Miro board. In the template we needed to identify the values, behaviours and norms we wanted to cultivate as a team— something I felt was an incredibly good note to start off a very groupwork-based module with, considering past experiences where my groupmates were not really on the same page as me when it came to how we should be working together.

My teammate Harshi and I were discussing the values we felt we would want our group to have, such as a sense of responsibility and respect for each others opinions and views.

We as a class also had to best identify how we ourselves work in teams through a system called the IDEO 10 faces of innovation.

Of the ten personas, we were told to figure out which we felt was most dominant and two sub-personas we also identified with. For myself I felt I was mostly a cross-pollinator, which was a member who would be able to draw conclusions and connections through very varied concepts and help to break new ground in our ideas.

For my sub-personas I saw myself fitting the director’s description very well too, as I have often had to be the one delegating tasks and in charge of producing and overseeing projects in the past. I also saw myself in the set designer persona, as while in previous projects I was very much a director, I also have had to raise morale and keep my groupmates’ spirits lifted and motivated so we can get the best results possible.

After filling up the template, we were also tasked to then make a 1-minute long video with our teams introducing what we came up with in our template with, in their terms, “the most creative way possible”.

My team and I decided to use canva to make a presentation-cum-video with its handy animations and because it was something we’re familiar with.

The other teams all used very different formats to make their videos though and it really made me appreciate how in a course full of creatives like BADP, you could see how everyone thinks differently in what they create— some made videos full of memes, some were in the style of a fast-paced Tiktok video, and some did videos akin to a comedy skit on Youtube. It was very entertaining and helped me feel like I got to know my classmates a little better.

I came out of this lesson feeling like I learnt how I work in groups a little better, as before I would simply do what I can to contribute to my team and do what needs to be done. Coming up with ground rules of what we as team members expect from each other is also a very good habit I hope to cultivate as I progress in NAFA and even in my working life.

Lesson 2 - 10 August 2023

Today’s lecture started with our lecturer asking us about what we did in our previous lesson with the question: “What have you discovered and how can you use it to your advantage?”

Naturally I believe that consciously putting a name to one’s habits when they work is a good thing and will benefit us in to letting the person notice the work they are putting in and how they are contributing to a group. That is always a useful skill to have, especially during occasions like when one needs to share their strengths and weaknesses during an interview for example.

Our lecturer also mentioned that he noticed that a lot of our groups had many members with the cross-pollinator IDEO persona, and to consider what our thoughts on having multiple people with the same persona in the same group were. This was a case that did happen to be relevant to my own group, with Harshi and I both indicating a cross-pollinator persona and angel and i both indicating a set designer persona.

He also brought up the point about how our own perspectives are always different based on our practice or even just how we ourselves do things. Thus in a similar vein I felt that even if two people were to be of the same IDEO persona, the way they would approach things would be different. I think it will be fascinating to find out how my classmates broach topics differently from how i would do it, so I never saw it as an issue. Besides, we were told to pick three personas, and usually there was only overlap in one of the three personas anyway.

Today’s lecture touched on the context of our current design climate and shown many different diagrams of the design thinking process from different schools and organisations — which were not necessarily all design organisations too, notably.

We then looked at the diagram that Rotman, a business school, utilised. Notably, design thinking is also being used and practiced in business and in looking at their diagram we could see how different it is from the designer’s perspective, with how the ideas diverge and converge at different points. To be honest, this did not surprise me as I do feel like business and design go hand in hand nowadays, with aspects such as marketing and branding having a lot of overlap. What our lecturer Wen found interesting though was the specific vocabulary they used. Where Rotman used terms like ‘need finding’, ‘problem framing’ and ‘problem solving’, design school uses terms like ‘empathise’ and ‘ideate’.

He continued to further break down some of the other schools and organisations’ diagrams with explanations of why they had changed their diagram the way they did, and it was fascinating to see how such changes most of us would see as minor could say so much about their intentions.

Something that stuck out to me during this lecture was that, after Wen went through some of the other school’s diagrams and thinking processes, he said that if we were to be cynical about it we could say all these design thinking models are fibbing to have their own identity when actually the design thinking process is used similarly across all of them. But he then followed up with saying that we need to consider why they have those differences in the first place, because it is also their own perspective and interpretation. This specifically stuck out to me because I felt that this was indicative of what this class is about— I should question and consider the reasonings for why things are the way they are because those were not done thoughtlessly. They were done because it was what worked for them (the user in this case) and it just helped me to give me more insight on how even the wording used by differing industries can be something to be analysed.

We were tasked with doing a case study for either AirBNB and UberEATS as well and below was my case study for UberEATS.

week 2

Lesson 3 - 15 August 2023

My group writing our findings in

our group Miro board

Today’s lecture started with us given 10 minutes to write our insights about two articles (Quiet Mode and Mass Movement).

After the 10 minutes were up, Wen asked us if we considered what the objectives of the two articles we had to study were even written for — questions we generally neglected so we could do what we were told to right in front of us. What was important for us to take away from it though was to note how the articles framed the same issue in two different ways, because both mass movement and quiet mode were technically about the same thing, they just had different outcomes. This helped to give me more insight into how we should be looking at our project and that we did not just need to find our users and figure out what they need but we need to figure out how to frame it and which aspect of what they need to focus on.

Xin then continued our lecture, starting off with breaking down what product-dominant thinking vs service-dominant design thinking is. This lecture helped me to understand how to define service design better and what we should be looking at to do in our project. After this class I realise that I actually was feeling quite lost about what exactly to do, but now it is clearer to me what exactly we should be working on and what questions we should be asking when we proceed with our research. As communication designers I feel like we often end up doing product-dominant thinking when we work on projects like a product design or graphic design where what matters is the interaction with what has been designed and not much else. Hence, working on projects here in NAFA which require us to do service-dominant thinking is very fresh and though it is also very new to me, it helps me to understand better the entire package of what I should be designing for as opposed to finishing work on one singular part of the process and calling it a day.

She also gave us an introduction to tools in service design such as diagrams like the customer journey map, personas, empathy map, etc. Perhaps I have too technical a viewpoint when it comes to this but I felt like learning all these helps me to realise the more tangible steps of what we should do for our project to further understand and track our progress.

During today’s class, my group proceeded to finalise the survey we made for students to give their thoughts on lockers in tertiary institutions, and when we asked our lecturers if they had any pointers for our progress they gave us some really helpful pointers about understanding the perspective of the other stakeholders first before going too in-depth into students’ perspectives. They mentioned too that while we also scope out student’s thoughts on lockers, we should also narrow it down to NAFA students alone— which would also be easier to work with on our end.

We took this advice to heart and decided to set up a survey specifically for NAFA students’ usage of lockers so we could get both more general information and suggestions from locker users in Singapore, and also what students from NAFA specifically want from the lockers we have at school. In the case of looking at other stakeholder POVs as well, we started narrowing down who the other stakeholders are (in which case would be the Office of Student Care for NAFA, the locker rental service staff, and the school cleaners) and writing out questions for when we interview these relevant stakeholders. As our topic is hard to do secondary research on, our main source of information was the primary research and asking the relevant stakeholders about lockers so we could properly identify the pain points that the relevant stakeholders would have in order to identify a service opportunity.

Lesson 4 - 17 August 2023

In today’s lesson we were being introduced to the concept of design research — the act of familiarising yourself with the subject matter and letting yourself step away from your own established routines and assumptions, to truly learn about your users.

The questions to ask when performing such research would be queries like:

Who are your users?
What are their pain points?
What do they value?
How do they interact with your service?

I feel as though this would be something most of us would have roughly figured we should do, but having it explained to us technically and what the exact questions we should be asking when doing so was very helpful. Xin also explained to us what market research vs design research was, which helped to let us understand what kind of research we have to perform and what we should be trying to get from them.

We also learnt more qualitative methods of research such as:

User interviews
Shadowing
Role playing
Fly on the wall observation

After the lecture was over, my group and I decided to work on the case study for Singapore Airlines we were told to tackle on Tuesday, as a sort of warm-up to understanding the service design tools we were going to have to use for our own project later on. Because the service blueprint looked too convoluted at first glance to start off with, we decided to come up with the user journey map first. Working on these as a group helped a lot with familiarising us with how to utilise these design thinking diagrams, so it will help us better understand how to make use of them effectively with our own project.

Screenshot 2023-08-17 at 11.37.12 AM.png

My group tackling the service blueprint on Miro

So far with our project we had progressed to already having sent out our surveys for NAFA students and some non-NAFA students to share their concerns and thoughts on lockers in Singapore tertiary institutions, so we were just waiting on receiving more responses to better compile what concerns they would have. We were still working on the questions for the locker service staff side, but had just sent an email with our queries to the NAFA Office of Student Care.

week 3

Lesson 5 - 22 August 2023

As we had done our week 3 lecture in advance last Thursday, today ended up becoming a consultation day, so we did not have any lecture to start with and thus I have no notes or learnings to share from one. Hence my group went straight to discussing our project further while waiting for our consultation slot.

During our consultation, we updated the lecturers with our findings of the locker manufacturers and the questions and progress we had made with the surveys we had sent out a week ago. We also showed them our case study for Singapore Airlines as well to check if we are going in a right direction when it came to utilising the user journey map and service blueprint. Their response was generally positive and they told us we were in the right direction but that we should expand our range into looking at public lockers and if there was anything we could learn from it as well. To put into context with the Design Council’s Double Diamond, I suppose this is where we have to diverge into looking at lockers of all kinds after converging with the focus of understanding school lockers.

After the consultation we continued to write our interview questions. Later we called and contacted the locker manufacturing company, and then sent them an email with our questions but they also have yet to reply.

After class was dismissed and my group and I had lunch, we went to do some reconnaissance with the lockers in NAFA hoping to find a cleaner we could interview or students who used lockers so we could get them to do our survey. As it turned out, our timing was really good and there were a lot of students using their lockers just before their class started at 2pm, so we managed to ask a few of them to scan our QR code for the survey and do it later when they had time. We also did manage to find a cleaner to ask about the lockers, however he let us know that he and the other cleaners did not deal with anything related to the lockers, they only sweep the floor around it. So that was one less relevant stakeholder to our project, as they do not handle it. That also gave us some insight that we would need to confirm — were the lockers maintained or cleaned in any way?

Since we were already at it, my group and I went around all 3 campuses of NAFA looking at the lockers and if there were any differences between the lockers within the 3 campuses and what the situation around the lockers were like. E.g whether it was near any study areas, how inconvenient were they to get to before or after a class, how many lockers were there per floor, and etc.

We made some interesting findings, such as noting that Campus 3 had lockers that instrumentalist students are allowed to use for free (only requiring a deposit) for their instruments, Campus 2 did not have a lot of lockers compared to Campus 1 and some instances of Campus 1 lockers getting jammed repeatedly.

Going around the school and around the lockers also helped us find more people to take our survey who actually use lockers, so all results that stem from that are useful as well — since most of the results we had gained before were from people who did not use lockers (because the students we are in proximity to are BADP students, who don’t need it as much as students from the Diplomas or other courses like 3DD or fine arts).

Us taking a commemorative picture for e-journal

At Campus 3

At Campus 3

Lesson 6 - 24 August 2023

Today we had consultations as well, but my group was last so we used the time to work on a persona, user journey map and service map for what our current locker booking process would be about. While we were still waiting on a lot of information to be received from the survey and our interviews, we wanted to familiarise ourself with the process further so we could identify the pain points and see what opportunities that could give us.

During the consultation we shared our project with our lecturers and another group as well because today’s consultations were done in a double consultation style. We started first, giving context to our project and the lockers for the other team to follow along. Then we shared what we had found so far with our survey and the user journey map and service map we made to share what the pain points of our target audience currently are. Our feedback received was that we needed to see what other pain points there could be than the price of the lockers (a major concern for most students).

The other team shared about their project as well which was based around pearls and they shared the background and cultural significance of pearls in society, and then the two angles they were considering to do their project with (a customer/ retail angle or a manufacturing angle). They also presented the opportunities they had come up with for their service to be from the service map they had developed and it was very impressive. My group and I later came out of the consultation with the idea of doing something similar too to confirm what sort of service we could do, since though our project is on lockers, it is not like we will be reinventing lockers but we want to see how we can improve the existing service.

We had an interview at 3pm with a staff from Rent-a-locker too, who during the interview we found out was actually the founder of the entire service! He was a very friendly old man who shared with us many stories about lockers from when he founded it to now, as he answered our interview questions. Listening to his view as the manufacturer of the lockers and how the process works from his end however, we got many new insights on how we can approach our project, now that we understand the point of view from the locker rental’s service side. We recorded the interview and then transcribed it later and keyed in the main takeaways we got from it into our Creative Process Journal here.

Outside the Rent-a-Locker office

week 4

Lesson 7 - 29 August 2023

This lesson started with a lecture on the presentation structure, as we were to present what we had for our service design so far to the rest of our class at 11am. A lot of us were blindsided by this but regardless, below are the notes I took from the lecture.

The main pointers I took away from it was:

To not show the entire research process too much but to make it concise and have a point telling the audience what we got from the research
We need to develop a presentation narrative via our persona
Use service design tools as a means to tell our story, not to show off our research
We need to zoom into the pain points we aim to solve because sometimes we can't solve everything

For the next hour and a half or so we had to make our presentation, which luckily was meant to just be 7-8 minutes long so my group did not want to throw in too much content but make it more concise and to the point so we could get the key sections in.

In order to do this we consciously did not show too much of our research so we could cut quickly to explaining our customer journey map and how that led us to our solution.

Later during the presentations I noticed a lot of groups over-explained their research to the point some groups had overshot, but by their 7th or 8th minute they still had not told us what their service design was supposed to be yet. Some of them included a lot of case studies, which I noted because I think that would be something my group should expand upon more in our CPJ. However, for a 7-8 minute presentation for the class I feel including it was a bit unnecessary. Though I do understand the time constraints that came with having to whip up our presentations this class because most of us were blindsided by it, thinking it would be a regular lecture and consultation class like other weeks.

For my group's presentation, though we received feedback that we were pretty clear and concise, we still did overshoot as I was explaining the solutions and so we are going back to the drawing board to see how we can break things down in an even simpler to digest way. We were also told we should add more context to the background of what we were doing and why we had done our research and what we aimed to get out of it, all of which we are now working on to incorporate into our cross-class presentation for next week.

Lesson 8 - 31 August 2023

This lesson was mostly for consultations but before we jumped into that we were given a short lecture about how our CPJs (Creative Process Journal) should be done and how we can improve it for our grades.

Key takeaways I got from this lecture was

Rather than letting them be text walls that are hard to digest, letting them see how we visualise our data is very important because it shows them how we understand and see the world
They want to see our sketches, processes and creation — text walls are not insightful because they speak of things that have little to do with our process
There are different modes of thinking and writing that we can use such as reflective writing, reflexive writing, documentative writing, and annotative and descriptive.
Our CPJs have to reflect our joy in the learning process too

week 5

Lesson 9 - 5 September 2023

Today we had to do cross-class presentations where the lecturers from the other class would comment on my class’ work and vice versa. My group rehearsed for this presentation a ton last week so we could ensure that we were not overshooting beyond 8 minutes like last time.

The Microsoft Teams experience.

Although today’s class was online on MSteams, my group and i came to school anyway as we wanted to continue working on our project after the class.

We were the second group up to present, which I felt was a blessing in disguise as we got to get feedback early on and work on what we can do to help someone new to our project understand our project better. Considering how much we rehearsed too, we went into the presentation pretty confident, if only just tired because of how early it was. So now that it was finally over we were pretty happy.

The feedback were mostly about how the other class’ lecturers wanted more clarity on the relevance of lockers in the first place, and suggestions on things we could do (ie. change the lockers sizes or locations). These actually are questioned answered by the results of the surveys we have done, so we decided we should develop our persona more rigidly and their needs and desires so the rest of our project makes more sense in context.

Considering we only have 2 weeks left before submission as well, we wanted to finish up more of our project deliverables such as our service blueprint and storyboards. I was working on the rough storyboard draft for the user journey (not to be confused with the service journey map storyboard— i am doing two storyboards) as can be seen below. Harshi and Angel in the meantime were working on the service blueprint. To be honest I really feel like I lucked out with this group because we’re really on the ball. I feel like every week we are always making lots of progress and getting things done, which is very reassuring especially because our deadline is just in two weeks but I feel like we are quite set.

By Thursday, we aim to get the storyboards and service blueprint done so we can start to work on our prototype. Harshi and I are particularly excited to work on the prototype and finally give our creative braincells a stretch designing the brand identity and app interface!

Us all alone in the classroom working on the service blueprint and user journey map storyboards

The storyboard drafts I made for the user experience journey with our service

Lesson 10 - 7 September 2023

We continued the cross-class presentations today, and I really found it very interesting how both classes’ presentations were done because I feel like we had very different focuses in mind.

A lot of the Group 1 presentations focused a lot on persona and storytelling their journey, which helps us understand the problem and narrative better. But I felt sometimes their products and solutions weren’t developed enough that it tackles all the pain points they have pointed out to us, so I get the idea that their class was told to focus more on the persona planning because that section was very detailed in comparison. Meanwhile I felt like a lot of presentations from my class wanted to include as much research as they could but the research was not framed in a way that justified the persona as well as the Group 1 presentations did. However I feel like the solutions on our end do tend to be more well developed, so likely that was an area that we all have been focusing on too much? Regardless, it was great food for thought.

My group, too, received feedback asking us to develop our customer further such as describing the specific items our persona needs to bring to school that makes her want to use a locker. As such, we are working on elaborating further on our persona's needs in our slides for the next presentation so those unfamiliar with our project can better understand the stakeholder's pain points and specific struggles.

Other than that, before today my group was working on the service blueprint and user journey map as I had mentioned in Tuesday's entry. So today we are aiming to develop our prototype further and work on the branding and app interface wireframes.

Me working on the branding of the locker system at home

week 6

Lesson 11 - 12 September 2023

Today we had consultation with our lecturers pretty early in the morning. as we usually do. We presented all the work we have done since then — our edited slides in lieu with the feedback we received the week before, the user journey map storyboards, the app interface we made, the service blueprint, etc.

I would say we were all quite on track with our deliverables and getting things done but we were just needing some affirmation if we were going in the right direction, especially in regards to how we explain our service and the context in the presentation. We wanted to avoid a situation like the week before’s when we were asked more about our context because we skimped on explaining it in favour of explaining our solution more indepth.

Their feedback was as follows (that I typed down in my sticky notes as the honorary scribe of the group because of my rabid typing speed)

As they could see we were getting fairly wrapped up in the prototyping and creation of the service, they emphasised to us that what they are looking for is how we frame the problem, the painful journey and show how our service resolves the pain points that the user is facing. They also told us to rethink the tools that we use for communicating our points across during the presentation. For example, do we need storyboards and detailed app interface screenshots to help one to understand our project, or perhaps a video? It was much for us to consider.

Later that day and on Wednesday as well I was busy working on the website where we will be compiling all our work.

Lesson 12 - 14 September 2023

For this lesson we also just had consultations and we took into account the lecturer’s feedback from the previous consultation and revamped our presentation flow, because we were confused on how to introduce one to our project — should we start from the persona or the context introducing the problems we have identified?

Our lecturers gave us their recommendations thereafter, which included suggestions such as the below:

We should make a slide to show what objectives our solution is meant to accomplish
Show context to the problem because currently we stress a lot on the solution
Emphasise who the users are and an overview of the locker system

For the rest of the class we were mostly working on the deliverables and restructuring our slides accordingly, with the help of some of our other classmates as well who we consulted to have a more objective opinion on what flow they felt would make the most sense.

I find that one thing I’ve realised as we work on this project is that though the solution of course has to be developed and airtight, we really have to focus on how to tie what we are doing to the demand of the users. Not just that as well, but even after developing it we need to figure out how to communicate our reasoning and how we came to our solution and conclusion effectively to someone who doesnt know anything about our service and context. Figuring out how to do it under 7 minute is a challenge as well but we will find a way!! ＼(≧▽≦)／

Us in class as I work on the website and they work on the slides and A2 poster. We divide work accordingly :3

week 7

Lesson 13 - 19 September 2023

Today we had our presentation. We practiced and rehearsed for this presentation a ton the day before so we rolled into it quite confident, though I always just get really nervous with presentations!! We were also told that the presentation length was now extended to 10 minutes, which is a lot more doable so we intended to be more relaxed with our delivery.

I think we did well and the lecturers from Group 1 also said our problem was clear cut and direct. We only got feedback mostly mentioning how we can frame the problem differently, which while is valid feedback, I feel is something I will just take into account for another project because we have already made such progress with our current project that it is pointless to try and frame it differently at this point when we have already identified a problem and solved it as per the brief asked.

This time the other lecturers said our problem we identified and the service we came up works well and is easy to understand, so I believe we have met our goal with this presentation.

week 9

Lesson 15 - 3 October 2023

For this lesson we were wrapping up our DS projects with a reflection and evaluation for our teams with the lecturers. During this reflection they asked us what the one thing we would have changed and improved on if we had to redo it, to which my group and I answered we felt we could have widened our net a bit more as we explored the framing of our problem.

With our Lockerly project, I believe we pinpointed the problem and then developed a solution from it too quickly thats why we got this kind of feedback. Even in the presentation, it was quite telling that the feedback we received was pushing us to be more imaginative. We were recommended to take more risks and fail with our imaginations rather than play it too safe.

We were then briefed on the assignment which is to elevate a brand of our choice to the next level, of which we can enhance the product or service through whatever means we think relevant. One thing I noted of importance was that we have to keep our audience in mind this time, which was that of investors who we are proposing this elevated brand service to.

The general gist of what we need to do is that of market research on the company we have selected and its industry, and we were tasked with choosing and researching 3 companies for this and the next lesson.

What we are doing this time is less making a brand but working on a more grounded level with an already existing brand so I am quite excited to see what we will do, especially since now I am with a new team. In my team though, since we are in the ‘brand selection’ stage, we decided to narrow down to a select few industries we felt would be more interesting and fun to work on— Lifestyle, food and wellness.

Lesson 16 - 5 October 2023

This class started with a lecture revisiting research methodologies and how to analyse them, which are as follows:

Direct observation
Participation observation
Qualitative interviews

Beyond researching however, what’s important is also how we interpret this information we have gathered. So we were reintroduced to the following methods of interpretation:

Triangulation
Literature Review

I hope to make my CPJ for this project a little more interesting than my previous one was but because I’m a chronic note taker (what with me and my 10001 sticky notes on my desktop), I’ll have to see how I can interpret my information differently to come up with different solutions.

My team had shortlisted some companies today with Cat and the Fiddle, Oasis: and Plucked being our top 3. We were deliberately picking out local SMEs too because we felt like they were a lot easier to expand on than a MNC, which was apparently contrary to the rest of my classmates’ thinking.

For Cat and the Fiddle, we chose it because we felt it had a lot of potential with its touchpoints. A base idea I had was that we could expand on its packaging and make the way it doesn’t have as much dine-in option a deliberate experience they can set up at home for customers.

For Oasis we saw potential in its efforts to promote sustainability such as its refilleries and 100% recycled packaging.

For Plucked, we were a bit on the fence with it but we liked the base idea of it and how the healthy snacking bit of it was something we could build a lifestyle on and thus a service surrounding that.

We were then tasked with making 3 slides for each brand and researching them further to then present to the lecturers.

You can view the slides below!

week 10

Lesson 17 - 10 October 2023

week 11

Lesson 18 - 17 October 2023

This class was just consultations and our consultation was later in the day, so my group and I were discussing our findings we have made over the past week and where we think the brand can go. Usually we work during the class since 4 hours is plenty of time to get our thoughts together and the rest of the time is spent doing research work

We were consolidating our information as some of us were busy during the weekend and so some of the information was new to them. Overall we decided the two main directions that the brand’s next level would be in were through (1) marketing it better to bring more publicity and (2) presenting how sustainable it is as a brand, based on our research and what we felt were unique selling points about the brand.

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Researching OASIS: and its relevant markets

We also have our eyes set on how the refilling system of theirs works because through further research we realised it is actually not a service they offer for all their products, only a select few. Thus we are hoping to gain more insights on this when we perform fieldwork on Thursday drop by the stores and/or when the founder/ staff reply our email.

During our consultation however our lecturers pointed out that a lot of what we mentioned are very marketing-related, and we need to think about how exactly the founder is interested in expanding the business — is she satisfied with the current size, is she reaching her target audience, etc.

Oasis’ founder’s story is that she had bad eczema and found natural remedies for it though and Wen and Xin said that actually they found that the most attractive part of the brand. In the skincare industry too, inclusivity of skin types has also been trending as of late so we could likely capitalise on that as a unique selling point.

Essentially we need to study the consumers and demographic that the brand aims to target the most and what kind of services would appeal to them, and then we will be able to determine if what we need to do is to help her reach said audience or help her retain them better.

Our next task is to present our next findings in slide form again, as we will be doing an in-class presentation of our progress so far next Tuesday.

Lesson 19 - 19 October 2023

At the beginning of the class we had some class-wide feedback given to us that they feel we have sourced our secondary research very well and our challenge will be how we can succinctly present it.

A question for us to ask ourselves was how we can propose the service in a way that will convince everyone it would work, and they suggested that prototyping a space or service structure could help to do so. However, while we are prototyping we should also be working on quick objectives and that the most important thing is the time restriction, which should be very fast like half an hour.

Another tool we could make use of to convince them is personas, but this time it is not as much about pain points as much as opportunities. It could be that the opportunity is a pain point, but the objective here is not to make a customer-oriented design as much as the focus is on the brand’s internal objectives.

We were also told that next Tuesday we will have to present a proposal in-class and that what is important for our presentations is our market research and knowledge of the company.

After class, my group and I went to Oasis:’ flagship store at Joo Chiat to check out the in-store experience and what they offer and chat a bit with the store staff for insights. As our email to Oasis: still had not been answered, we were still at a bit of a loss on how to approach our solution because we do not know as much about their current level, so we were hoping to see how the store was like to get a better understanding of the brand’s situation.

Us checking out the store and enjoying the experience

While we were there, it was very quiet and only 2 customers came in for about the hour we spent inside. However we noted that the experience was very pleasant and there really were a large range of products. There were some services they offered in-store too that we did not know they had despite researching them so much because it was not mentioned online at all, such as their scented oil and soap customisations. We also noticed that more items than were mentioned online could use the refillery in-store too.

The staff was also very pleasant to talk to and she gave Damien very good recommendations for his own skincare problems he was looking to alleviate, and overall we felt the in-store service was amazing and that the online service had much to catch up on in comparison. Hence now we are thinking of a solution that could help to elevate Oasis:’s online service and give it more of an online presence.

week 12

Lesson 20 - 24 October 2023

During this class we had to do presentations with what we have done so far, and so my group presented the brand overview, the brand USPs, weaknesses, threats, opportunities, current ideas.

We were praised on our flow being very clear and easy to understand, and with their issue with our project being that our current ideas on how to elevate the brand were a little too obvious or subdued. They recommended we go for a wilder, more exciting idea and so we went back to the drawing board.

Ironically the idea I had left inside the slide for more content, because I felt like it was less relevant to the specific stats I had pulled up, was the one the lecturers were most interested in. This idea was about how we could collaborate with other sustainable brands to promote sustainable living in an easier to get into way.

So to build on that, we got to brainstorming about what we could do that would expand on that experience.

The idea we came up with was something like a sustainable collective that would help ease customers into sustainable living more easily, because all the relevant lifestyle products would be available there. So we wanted to focus our research on what prevents people from living sustainably, because our statistics do show that people are environmentally conscious. However just because one is environmentally conscious, doesn’t mean that they live completely sustainably. Hence our idea is meant to help them transition into a more sustainable lifestyle more easily, as that is a vision the founder of Oasis: has indicated interest on during an interview.

Our brainstorming process for our service

Lesson 21 - 26 October 2023

From our brainstorming on Tuesday, we developed an idea incorporating the sustainable collective idea and putting it into a virtual reality setting for customers to immerse themselves in and act as a one-stop marketplace for sustainable lifestyle wares.

We also came up with a persona today based on what the staff told us so far about their demographic — the brand has not replied us with final statistics yet, so we have to take a rough stab and estimate the persona for now.

We also have to do a cross-class presentation next week so I’m quite anxious about getting all our information into order so it is easy to understand for an audience that may have never heard of this brand, and to break down our very ambitious idea into a consumable concept.

Though we also have our research and service blueprint to think about, I’m prioritising the slides first since our presentation is our next lesson.

I came up with the rough slide structure and we are planning to meet on Monday night to rehearse the slides as a bunch of us are concentrating on our Design Insights presentation for tomorrow or Monday morning. Hence Monday night was best for us to concentrate on running through the presentation together.

week 13

Lesson 22 - 31 October 2023

Our presentation was today and the feedback we received from the other class’ lecturers were as follows:

We need to understand our client better, is opening the brand to a mass market what they want? What if they want to stick to a niche, exclusive market?
What if the weaknesses we have decided on r actually their strengths? (such as the pricing being high; maybe it is intentional?)
We need to understand the customers who currently purchase from oasis better, what their spending power is and what they are looking for from oasis:, why do they buy from oasis:
We need to frame the current level better
Slide deck needs to align with what we say
Tighten our sustainability vision — we need to specify what we do and what area of sustainability we r doing eg zero-waste movements, recycling incentives, carbon-neutrality
We need to make the current level and next level very clear

Presentation timeee.

One thing I noticed through all the presentations and the feedback, however, was that, unlike our previous project where we were extremely focused on the persona and user's needs, this time the focus is on the brand and its own agenda rather than solving the user's pain point— solving the user’s problems is only something we do because it will be beneficial for the brand. This helped us figure out how we should be reframing our presentation, and how we should further emphasise the benefits of our solutions and how they will help the brand even more.

week 14

Lesson 24 - 7 November 2023

Earlier in the week on Saturday we actually finally got a response from Oasis:, which made us regroup on Sunday to discuss what we could do with the new information and the feedback we received on Tuesday.

Though what Oasis: told us was fairly vague but at least gave us an idea of what Oasis: wants better.

The email to us said as follows:

* Hildra is the name of the founder of OASIS: by the way

From this we at least could deduce that our initial idea was more on the mark and what the other class’ lecturers were concerned about, with the weaknesses maybe being their strengths, was actually not the case. However because we still do not have specific demographic information we decided it was too vague to try and pinpoint their audience’s yet and were trying to develop the solution further. However at least now we knew of the main focus the brand was keen on heading in and thus were planning the different touchpoints via Miro.

Later during our consultation with the lecturers we shared with them everything we had found so far, including the email, and how we were unsure of how to proceed because we were without solid statistics of the audience demographic.

Their feedback was very insightful and they suggested we look through Oasis:’s Instagram following to see who are the people who interact and follow their brand online, which was a huge eureka moment for us to figure out the audience even without the brand telling us directly.

Lesson 25 - 9 November 2023

For this lesson we regrouped to help Damien catch up with what we came up with on Tuesday (because he was sick) and for Manya to share with us the ideas she came up with for our solution. I also shared and confirmed our audience demographic after going through Oasis:’ Instagram and TikTok following, so we had a better idea of where to head and what this market was fond of.

Manya came up with a ton of amazing ideas and case studies to give it more legitimacy and proof of how it works but together we ironed out all the details. In doing so, I feel like we managed to go into the consultation with a lot more airtight a solution as it pieced together very well — it not only played into the founder’s vision but also met many points that our millennial audience would be fond of and enjoy, while still helping the brand gain reach and a bigger audience.

I then worked out the general deliverables we will need to get done first by the end of the next week so we would be more on track as I am honestly most worried about the video. Manya said she would work on the service blueprint so I decided I will do the storyboard for the video after she’s done so we can figure out which functions of the app and marketplace we show during as well.

hi zhijing :) also whats on my screen is me searching case studies ok dont mind me.

week 15

Lesson 26 - 14 November 2023

For this lesson we went in quite confident in our project, I got the storyboard all done up and all with the previous week’s feedback in mind too (how diegetic should the marketplace be, how it works exactly, etc.)

We had a call on Sunday to discuss further and look for references and this video Manya found was very much along the lines of what we were aiming to do which gave us more confidence.

A Metaverse Beauty store made by ByondXR that we use as reference for this concept

During the consultation though, the lecturers gave us some feedback that our game concept was a bit weak in relation to the lifestyle genre we were really leaning into, which was justified and we rectified with offering quizzes. They suggested that what the app offers could be that the profile could be gamified in a sense through progressive profile and that it would help the users to understand their life better and help them further as they get into it. In that way, we could frame it as more of a personal growth app with e-commerce features as well.

An issue they had with what we presented though was that we needed to clearly define our next level statement, mission and explain the need for the change in business model.

Other than that, it was a big day for production for us after that as we all decided on the schedule and all the deliverables we need by when, especially taking into account the prototypes we need for filming. We also ironed out our presentation structure further so we could figure out how to frame it better.

Manya worked on the design elements and I whipped up a colour scheme and made this proof of concept below for the brand identity of our marketplace.

Screenshot 2023-11-16 at 11.44.32 AM.png

Deliverables schedule and structure of storyboard and presentation

Lesson 27 - 16 November 2023

On the production end, I was also making the space meant to show the virtual marketplace of ours in Sims 4 with the help of a lot of custom content to accurately portray the atmosphere and vibe we want it to have.

Screenshot 2023-11-28 at 10.33.45 AM.png

Production screenshots

We also are planning to film on Tuesday so we had to make sure all the relevant app interfaces would be done by the time we film, so Zhijing and I had to finish all that up during the weekend. (We did it yay!)

week 16

Lesson 28 - 21 November 2023

Today was a big day because we went to film our project with the help of my friend who’s part of the audience we are targeting (millennials).

The storyboard helped a lot in informing us of what scenes to film and to get different B-rolls of our actress interacting with her phone so we could include more animations on the side and such.

ty damien for the pics uwuwu

Other than filming we didn’t do much on Tuesday, but I went to edit a rough cut to consult with on Thursday and to get a better structure for our video. While I worked on this Manya was working on the presentation board and slides so I was super thankful for her covering that part as I concentrated on the video.

Lesson 28 - 23 November 2023

On Thursday we were told we need to re-film our introduction for our video but everything else generally looked okay, so we planned to re-film on Sunday.

For the rest of the week I was mainly pushing out the production of the video as it was quite animation-heavy. Zhijing continued to help with some of the prototyping which was featured in the video, and Manya helped a lot too with helping to structure it and planning things like the narration. I left the exhibition to Damien so I didn’t really worry much about that thanks to him.

Our showcase stuff hehehe

Me going insane

week 17

Lesson 28 - 21 November 2023

Going into the presentation, I feel like we have prepared appropriately and rehearsed a good amount to be confident in it.

My concerns are mostly of fears that our video (which is the only explanation we have of the service we have come up with) does not explain the solution well enough.

presenting time... ty for harshi for the piccies :3

(Post-presentation notes)

It turns out my concerns about our solution not being clear enough were unfounded, and the issue was in fact that we should have a more solid foundation to back our research. We also received the comment that our elevation was too a bit too extreme and it was questionable why a small brand would make such a big effort to set up a marketplace like our idea has. Though to us we felt it was justified because of the results and reach it can bring Oasis:, I figure we did not communicate that effectively enough.

All things considered however, especially because we simply could barely get statistics for our brand due to its small size and the brand wanting to keep things confidential, I think we did the best we could with what we had.