Ok.. SO we had made a video on Wednesday to get ahead as we all had work commitments . Featured Rolen as our star as he has just got back from South Africa and so now our whole team is here. About an hour after posting it and thinking sweet we’re done we got the email from Tim saying that there were 6 specific things to put in the vid!.. So we wanted to detail them here and gonna put a very brief vid to go over them too.
To date, how many hours have you spent working on your project?
Really hard to say. We’ve spent time every day on it whether it be corresponding emails, skype meeting, actual meetings, design etc
Took a while to feel like we were working on something good - long brainstorm sessions before our idea had legs. There have been days we have spent an hour working on it and days we have spent up to 12 hours working on it.
What are you enjoying the most about the yMedia Challenge?
We got thrown with an awesome company which was so great. I think in retrospect we had come to ymedia with some preconceived ideas about what we were going to do but we actually got a really challenging problem to solve that has required us to think really out of the box and comfort zone and it’s these challenges that are proving to be really rewarding.
What has been the hardest thing so far?
Hands down it has been really hard getting going and maintaining momentum and having faith in your ideas. Having idea is the easy part but making it work is the hard part.
How have you utilised your Mentor through out the challenge?
Lots of communication and skyping, not a huge amount of physical meetings. Sometimes we feel like we have nothing to show her but she is always there with pragmatic advice and is so supportive. I think she sleeps less than we do
What have you learnt though the challenge?
Things we never learnt in our degree!! Communication skills, marketing strategy planning, long distance communications, dealing with people and dealing with creative people. A huge thing we’ve learnt is being realistic about timeframes; doing what you can do now but seeing the greater importance in long term planning so it is not just a quick fix that has no longevity - designing systems that will grow and be far more beneficial as structures for the future. The real test is if your ideas still work once you have gone. Before this challenge I think we both thought that if you can come up with a good visual design that is good enough but the reality is that there needs to be systematic planning and so that the success of something does not rely on being purely aesthetic.
What are your next steps from here?
Lots to do, it will be a busy couple of weeks. The main thing we need to tackle now is the video - we are set with an idea for this that we are really excited about and a theme that is carried throughout our design. Gotta finalise our committee related promotion and logistics but these have really taken form in the last few days.
