MOBILE SYMBIOSIS SYSTEMS

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Self-Assessment (Scott James Richardson)

Self-Assessment
In this document I’m going to evaluate my role in the mobile symbiosis

Tasks Completed
Persona
Concept Generation
Concept Selection
Film Making
User Manuel
Storyboard

Learning Goals
My personal Learning goals for this project is to develop my skills of critical evaluation and constant iteration of my concepts to gradually come to the best solution while working in good cohesion with my group.

Competencies Developed
Through the competencies I feel the most I have developed a good understanding of working within a team with different opinion on how to move the project forward, this helped me to communicate my ideas better.

Knowledge and skills integration
the knowledge and skills I feel I brought to this project was first-hand experience of using phone and know the positives and negative associated with the devices. I hoped my skills in concept generation and technical writing could be used in the project.

IP
the IP of this product rotated around the mobile phone chosen to base our product upon, in this case me and my group felt HTC would be satisfactory to work with, and the area of phone charging and emergency usage of the phone. Personally I agreed on this premise with the group and felt there plenty of gaps in the market to continue on our chosen path.

User Focus
As a group we decided on a persona of a young male who give presentation to company so work all day in which there phone would be used all day so may need an extra charge. For this I was set to make a mind map of the persona and of the initial ideas for the project which I felt quite comfortable we were on the right track. I believed what I did helped me to progress in focusing to design a concept toward to our designated persona.

Usability & Usefulness
the usability of the product was set out to achieve eco-style phone charger and felt that include changeable sockets would be the best way to keep usefulness for our product. For my part in this part I felt I contributed a lot more than previous project on improving usefulness when discussed throughout my group meetings.

Market & Business
For market and business, the only area in which was looked at the least but I did look at the current market in which researched what is on the market in UK plus other countries did me or my group delve into this particular area. Market and Business was mainly fulfilled as initial research to the whole project.

Form & Aesthetics
One of the key aspects of this project, the form and aesthetics of the product will need to fit to our chosen phone which with the colour scheme to suit the HTC logo style and body in which me and my group decided upon. This meant all concept style revolved around the curves and colour of HTC current range of phones; personally I felt it give a focus of what to design upon and was not the obvious smartphone to design so I enjoyed the opportunity to think more.

Modelling
I did not take a direct contact in the building of the modelling but did send in some of my concepts in which me and my group all took part in the decision making on the style of the model, I was happy with my impact on the functionality of the final model of the project as it derived from one of my main ideas.

Visualisation & Communication
In this I felt I have a grown the most in ability as I could show my concepts and critic it with my group while critic my group work ensuring my communication of my ideas should be clear and help to develop my ideas to be most helpful for my group to take forward with ideas of the rest of group kept our overall product at its optimal best.

Design Method & Practice
The design method and process in which our group used is a progression from concept to CAD and ends with the movies and prototype, we started from everyone pitches in concepts were an route from project chosen by the majority of the group in the meeting. With the development also spread out with each person need to come up with best extras to our product. Then we decide to give out the work to each people in the group, I was given the technical user guide and help with the movie making for our presentation I felt for my personal development the two different areas of the project with the more technical writing and being more creative in the film making which is a good blend to test my skill and develop both by combining my time on both creative and mechanical.

Self-Assessment & Criticism
Overall, I feel my performance increase improved greatly from the previous project in communication of my concepts and developing my sketches into more technically accurate so they could be useful in the thought process of the final renders.

David Millar Self-assessment

Mobile Symbiosis

Group 7

David Millar

Self Assessment

Extracurricular:
Since the last task I have been more active outside of class. I have visited both the Baltic and Laing art galleries in Newcastle. I feel this has helped to expand my perception and appreciation of alternative forms of art. I really enjoyed these visits and will definitely be going more in the New Year when they bring in new exhibits

IP:

I feel that in this project the idea we had was very good and well justified. Wireless charging is not an original idea as such, however, I feel our take on how and why it should be done had originality surrounding it and filled a gap in the existing market by taking the existing ideas and refining them down to make a much better product

Technology:

The design we chose had a lot of technology incorporated into it. The technology we wanted to use does already exist however we had a much more refined version to make our product as small and adaptable as it is. The device itself is a viable idea and prospect that I personally believe could be seen in the next few years. If we were redoing this task I think I may have pushed the group into some more extreme technologies having seen what a few other groups produced.

User focus, usefulness and Usability:

I feel that the product we have designed fits perfectly with the persona we had set out to design for. The product is something that I could actually imagine myself using as phones continue to become more powerful and therefore more demanding on battery. I feel that the usability would be increased with the final design we mocked up on CAD as the charging element was reduced to the size of a credit card, making it easier to transport by placing it into a wallet or phone case.

Market and business:
I feel that there is a constantly widening market for a product of this calibre as the amount of smart phones used is increasing daily and one of the downfalls with almost all phones is the short battery life span. This is why I feel we have designed an economically viable and desirable product.

Form and Aesthetics:
This project was designed to keep ta similar image to HTCs designs so we added slight curves and colours to tie it in. However, the final aesthetics of our model could have been better by adding paint and changing the colours from the plain colour of the foam. The final aesthetics of the modal we not exactly as I had personally hoped, however with the material being used it was the best outcome we could achieve without snapping the model over and over.

Materials and fabrication:

Our final model was made out of high density modelling foam, it was made by Mike. I feel he did an excellent job with the limited tools he was using to shape the design. If we were redoing the model I think we should have set aside a full day to book ourselves into one of the university labs to make the model. This would have allowed us time to seal and smooth the model with filler and then we could have painted it without fear of melting the models finish. I was in charge of designing the packaging for the product. I did this with plaster of paris, I used this method to experiment with a new technique as a bit of fun. I feel the finish could have been much better, although, for my first ever attempt using plaster of paris, I feel I did well to make the packaging.

Socio-cultural issues:

This is an aspect I think our product deals with tremendously well. With the ever increasing amount of people getting newer and newer smart phones, the complaints about all of these phones are the same, the battery life just doesn’t compare to older phones. This is due to the processing power and screen sizes that these phones use so much battery power a lot faster than older phones ever did. Our product helps to combat this by providing an easily transportable and widely available source of battery power.

Mixed and integrating perspectives:

I feel that in our group there were a few issues with our group in the beginning in that not everyone interpreted the brief in the same way. This lead to some initial confusion about whether we were designing a new mobile phone or just an accessory for an existing device. However, once this confusion was cleared up I feel that the individual ideas of each member of our group helped generate a wide range of ideas and methods to solve the brief. There were some problems encountered within the group with leadership and a member not pulling his weight to the same extent as the rest of the group. But we managed to pull our resources together and achieve a good final concept and design.

Modelling, Visualisation and communication:

My main inputs to this section were with concepts, the movie, the presentation and the packaging for the model. The final concept that we decided to bring to fruition was one of my concepts, as a group we further developed the style and shape to make it fit better with our HTC design. The movie again I played a large role in with regards to the concept, filming and editing. I was disappointed with the final outcome as some of the shots I had hoped to take were not viable when it came to the actual filming of the movie. The packaging was a new kind of role for me to take on and I’m glad I put myself forward to do it, especially as I wasn’t involved in the model making in this task or the previous one. It allowed me to experience new aspects or design. I would very much like to move away from filming in the new task and try to take a more active role in modelling our design, both with CAD and physically.

Design Method and Practice:

During this task our group very much aimed to please our chosen persona as best as we possibly good. By first generating a wide spectrum of problems we felt our persona would encounter on a daily basis. We then mind mapped out a variety of ways to solve this problems. Individually we generated concepts to solve these and then as a group we picked the one we thought was best. I was very pleased to have my design chosen as our final concept as there were a lot of very good concepts and ideas put forward by other members of the group.

Self-assessment and Criticism:

I was overall happy with the outcome of our group’s efforts. However, there were a few aspects I didn’t enjoy and felt could have been done better. From the beginning of the task our project leader was selected by our tutor by just picking the oldest member of the group. I don’t feel this was very fair to the other members as it didn’t even give them a chance to put themselves forward.

With regards to my personal performance in the group, I was quite pleased. I was active throughout the design process, from developing the persona to the delivery of the Presentation. I especially think I was able to have a more active role in this task compared to the previous one. One of the highlights for me in this task was having my concept selected by the other group members, letting me know they had faith in my idea and that they thought it was the best way forward.

I developed the skills I had previously been practicing including sketching (concept designs), film making (recording and editing the movie) and design illustration (illustrating storyboard and persona). I also had a chance to try to learn some new skills by designing the packaging for our product. To do this I tried to use plaster of paris. I was excited to try this as I had seen one of my flat mates last year using this method to make a model so I decided to give it a shot using plaster bandages and a card model. For my first attempt I was very pleased with the result.

I am overall fairly happy with my contributions and what I have learned by completing this project. Moving into the next project I would personally like to take no role with the movie making and editing for a while as I feel I have had too much to do with it in the last couple of projects. I would however like to become more involved with CAD modelling and physical modelling as I feel these are very wide fields which I would benefit greatly from experimenting with.

Self –assessment (Michael Groves)
Competencies involved:
Ideas & originality, technology, form & aesthetic, mixed perspective, usability & usefulness, materials and fabrication, self-assessment

Ideas & originality:

In this project I have developed my ability to generate ideas by creating group mind maps of the needs for smartphones and discussing ways in which these needs can be solved in a way that has not already been produced. Working in this manner has enabled me to think a bit more outside the box when thinking of solutions for problems.

Technology:

I have been able to take time and think about the use of renewable energy within this project as our group’s concepts became focused upon charging smartphones at home and whilst travelling.

Form & aesthetic:

Within the group we were all delegated jobs to do. My job was to produce a solidworks model of the chosen design. This job improved my thought upon form & aesthetics as needed to make the design look like it was designed and manufactured by the smartphone company that we were designing for (HTC). Because of this I had to look at the form and aesthetics of the current smartphones being produced by this company today and then apply certain features to our design.

Mixed perspective:

When rendering the solidworks model so that other members of the team could produce the advertising poster, I was able to work on the use of mixed perspectives. I needed to save different perspective screenshots of the model in order to accurately illustrate all of the designs features and the general shape of the design.

Usability & usefulness:

Because of the type of product our design would be, there would be a large variety of people that would the product. This means that the product needs to be very easy to use. With this in mind the design does not require turning on, the user would simply place their smartphone upon the device and the contact would instantly begin charging the phone. We improved the usefulness of the design by designing a small credit card sized detachment that the user can take with them whilst travelling to charge their phone.

Materials & fabrication:

As well as drawing the solidworks model of the design I also set myself the task of creating the physical prototype. The reason for this being that I had a suitable supply of modelling foam and the tools needed to craft the foam. Giving myself this task further improved my skill of model making with modelling foam. Creating the solidworks model also required me to think about the materials and finishing of the design. I had to look at what materials other products from HTC were manufactured from so that our design would blend in with and these products and accompany the form of the design that was also based around current HTC products.

Self-assessment:

My biggest contribution to the group work was the solidworks model and the prototype I created. I feel that making the solidworks model increased the speed at which I can create mock up digital 3D models, however given more time I think I could better portray that the product was designed for HTC. For example I could have made an extruded cut of the HTC logo further displaying the desired look that the group was going for. In addition a better and more accurate prototype would have been produced if more time was available. The prototype could have been improved by making a more accurate example of the charging insert.

                                                                  Mobile Phone Symbiosis
                                                                    Self-assessment form
                                                  Group no.7 – M. Farhan Muqeem (Manager)

IP:
The main aim for the project is to think about a product and a design for wireless, portable and emergency charging of the mobile phone as there is a lack of these kinds of products around us which we really need them when our battery is low or left no more and we have to make an important call or check our emails or do our work.

What I did:
I came up with:
Design concepts.
Mind mapping.
Persona contribution.
Storyboard.
Ad-poster.
Picture board.
Also updating the blog which is bit annoying when the blog doesn’t accept few formats but still i managed.

Project intro:

We 5 members in a group were engaged in a project called ‘’ Mobile Phone Symbiosis’’. A task was given in which we all have to come up with an accessory of a mobile phone. Like nowadays mobile phones are quite in demand and we normally runs out of power and finds a place to charge like car charger, friend’s house or at work/university.

We looked into a daily office routine of a ‘Pitch rep’ who’s 27 years old. He travels a lot by train around the country and he has to check his emails and do prepare his presentations like he is travelling.

Mixing all the concepts and re-search of all members of the group and we came up with one final 'Concept'.

Usability & usefulness:

The product we designed is always in need as people need there smart phones to charged properly, so they can use it as they want in any way.

Re-search/Technology:

I looked into existing products too, looked into loads of websites and also thought to produce a product with more than one working like one of my concept is solar panels plus winding and a charging dock on top of it so while you’re in your house right next to you have your smart phone charging. No need to unplug it just put it up talk and place back on the charging dock.

Modeling/Tooling:

While my group members were modeling the product in solid works I was not there but I shared my initial concepts, storyboard, persona, mind mapping, ad - poster and picture poster too.

Business and Market:

It would be a good selling product as its lightweight, portable and very handy because you can take a panel which sticks with the mobile phone while it’s in your pocket and keep charging your phone with heat and light.
A product portable, wireless, smart and easy to use wherever you are. It has solar panels as nowadays solar energy is coming up day by day.

Learning experience:

I have few things like managing, tried to good sketching, working on Photoshop building my skills and communications skills. Plus building my self-confidence too. Got few more new ideas from my group members. I really like this module as we always have a task to come up with something new, different and unique which is very good for building up the skills.

Communication:

I think communication has to be very clear so others can understand what you are talking about and what you are going to do about it. I did clear my concepts and sayings to my group. But it was hard to communicate with all at once.

Design Practice and method:

This comes from the overall concepts, thinking and meetings bit by bit of my group. Going through all the concepts and thinking about the need of the present time.

Overall outcome:

As a manger of my group I found its quite hard to communicate when you want to meet up and collecting/asking members for work as I’m a busy person to but I always try my level best to do my work in time and I do but my group members are very helpful and did what they have given to do.

Leon Pullin – Group 7

Mobile Phone Symbiosis

Self-Assessment Form

In our group of 5, we got set the challenge of creating a mobile accessory which will boost the capabilities of our phones production.

We generated a precise persona in order to make product selection easier, our persona was a young business men ‘Tyler’, who relies on his phone for his job as a main form of communication. We went through a large range of different attachment concepts that could enhance the phones capabilities. I found the best way of doing this was to look into the things that phones couldn’t instead of what already existed. This then sparked an idea of developing a portable wireless charging device, which can be used in any situation.

I really enjoyed this assignment; I felt that it increased my enthusiasm towards the design of the mobile industry, which I hadn’t really thought too much in to before. In our group I felt that I helped spark some good ideas from our original concepts up to our final design. My main input to the group would be the justification pages. I used the Adobe Photoshop software to create them; I felt I increased my skills on the program; I hadn’t used it much before, it is discovered it is great for creating poster pages.

Although it was difficult working as a set group, the members in my group made it very easy for us to communicate and I enjoyed getting to know other members of the class. But I feel it would be much easier choosing your own groups, as timing is hard to get right when we are very busy during the day.

All in all, I really enjoyed this project and I feel that we came up with a great product , that if created could penetrate the mobile charging market.

Group 7 contributions

HTC GO solar

Farhan Muqeem:

· Contributions to concept design

· Contributions to storyboard

· Contributions to persona

· Ad poster

· Picture board

David Millar:

· Persona design

· Contributions to concept design

· Contributions to storyboard

· Storyboard Design

· Film recording

· Film editing

Mike Groves:

· Contributions to concept design

· Contributions to storyboard

· Contributions to Persona

· Prototype

· Film recording

· Solidworks model

Scott Richardson:

· Contributions to concept design

· Contributions to persona

· Contributions storyboard

· Film recording

· User Manual

Leon Pullin:

· Contributions to concept design

· Contribution to persona

· Justification

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