Filed under: Meeting Summary
1st Feb 2009
Kingston Hill at 1800
This is the first meeting we had after the break, however we are missing team member Harry. We have asked Corrine to join our meeting on Skype today at about 1830 unfornately Corrine was offline so we will have to arrange it again.
The aim of this meeting is to talking about our future plan and the situation that we are one member short.
Task 1
Find a business concultant for our group which states in the YP book that it is required. We suggested to invited one of the judge from the Dragen Den challenge as we have got very positive feedback from him and he is very capable of providing us effective solutions and opinions. This hopfully could be done by getting connection from Corrine and also sending request through email.
Task 2
Now we should start our marketing appoarch and that should be lead by Maarten and Oleg, make contacts to the interested retail company such as Go-Design and Samsonite. Also resaerch for more interested organisations, shop situated around the victoria coach station etc.
Task 3
Jack should finished the design of the product in a very final state, ask feedback for professional and it should be completely ready for mock up with in end of this week or early next week.
Task 4
Hopfully Harry will be fully recovered if not, we need to asign who is going to contact to the manufacturer in order to produce a high standard mock up. 14th Feb is going to be the Chinese New Year, which means most of the company will take 2 weeks off so we might have to look for companies not in china.
Task 5
A realistic timesheet should be draft by Oleg and Maarten in compensate of Harry’s absent. We also decide to organise things backward so our schedules is more realistic since the time is running short now!
Task 6
A final logo for comma and some promotional materials are to be produce be Wendy and with the help of Jack, these is used for online/offline marketing and also if our team members are ready to talk to any producers or retail company.
Task 7
Despite writing down every summary of our meeting, we might also want to edit them to a usual format of agendas. These is not urgent task but should be done before the project is due.
Task 8
Oleg is to contact HSBC and collect the Company card.
Task 9
every one is to read the young Enterprise folder and make notes to discuss if smth is unclear
Task 10
Oleg And Wendy to finalise the project with the client and get invoice paid. And also discuss with the team remuneration strategy.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Hey everyone, this is the packaging from the travel pillow we brought from Stansted. It costs £11.99 produced by Samsnite and brought in WHSmith. I’m sorry of the size of the scan are restricted but all I want to pointed out is the product is ‘made in china’ but relocate and brand in Worcester.
The main text on the front of the packaging read as:
- Engineered for comfort
- Ergonomic shape cradles your head and neck to help prevent stiffness and pressure build-up
- Self-adjusting Polyfiber fill provides customized support in any seated position
- Fleece cover is removable and washable for easy care
- Handy spring clip lets you attach pillow to bag straps and carry-ons for easy transport
Filed under: Uncategorized
These are the link of the posts about ‘How nature does it’ and ‘how nature does sleeping?’ – our very first inspiration.
We had our new concepts after last night meeting, instead of a chair we will further develop on a existing neck-rest.
The neck rest existed now never too comfortable to sleep with because the shape is lacking good support and very weak aesthetic design.
We are aiming at create a new shape with produce very good support around the neck, and suggested new way to sleep with a neck rest! (pictures to follow)
The innovation of this product will be adding smell that encourage quality sleep with the pillow. For example lavender generate calmer moods, and it also proven that smell of freshly cut grass also help relieve stress.
We also mentioned about adding chemical warmers feature inside the neck rest. video on chemical warmer
Another concept that we came up was inspired by the shape of ‘comma’, comma has a meaning of short rest and we will further develop the shape of it as a neck shape.
Filed under: Uncategorized
So what has been going on with creativcontrol within the last couple of meetings.
On the 5th meeting we had, we manage to get Corrine to skype with in the middle part of the meeting. We had a lot of progress after talking with her. Basically there are a few things worth to make a note:
1. Think about how kids sit n a car/ or baby-chair
2. Further develop the idea of “How does nature does it?”
3. Set up a date to visit Stansted or any city airports, with new questionnaires and make new videos.
4. Before the visits contact airport and request permissions to film and take photographs.
Straight after the meeting we had, we officially start over again. Harry had his business trip to Belgium and successfully get interviews with some travelers and manage to take some pictures.
Wendy attempted to contact Stansted and Gatwick. Gatwick has not come back to us so far whereas Stansted had already rejected our request for the first time. However, further email will be sent as a follow up.
Oleg, Maarten and Harry will be responsible to finalise the feasibility report.
Jack will continue to draft some good designs.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Kingston Hill Nightingale Centre Study Room
26th Oct, 2009
18:30 – 21:30 Full attendance
Last time we figured out we go too far from where our original idea was and decided to go back to the right track. Starting of this meeting we talked about our USP again and everyone should have a very clear picture now.
Oleg presented us his research in powerpower format together with Maaten’s research everyone spoke about their very own opinion of each of the chairs. We then defined every singe USP among those chairs, there are some very interesting one as:
i. A chair provides lights without using electircity
ii. gavity chair
iii. additional storage space chair
iv. chair can recycle
v. chair folds flat
We separated the USP into three areas, Taste, Needs and Fashion.
Second part of the meeting we have to make up our samples of the persona and make videos. Harry suggested to use a animation approach. Wendy and Jack make some simple drawings after we all discussed the characters of the persona.
Persona 1 & 2 is a couple and their names is Sarah and Michael.
Sarah is 24 years old, working in the public sector. She is a local British from Sussex, earning £23,000 p.a, fancy partying and Techn music. She is described as a usual and creative girl.
Michael is 29 working in banking. He is a Bolivian, earning £40,000 p.a. He plays golf, likes to watch the F1 and his favorite band is Coldplay. He is describe as a conservative.
They’ve been going out for 3 years, living in a house in Pimlico. It is on a mortgage, they would like to do the house up and invest in their living at the moment. Possibility have their first child in a couples of year.
Persona 3 is single young professional named Cathrine. She is working as a client director in a design company, on probation for 6 months. She is half British half Polish. She is in a wealthy family with lots of connections within the industry. She has income of £40,000 p.a. and renting off her parents right now. Her view is liberal and she is very ambitious about become a entrepreneur one day.
P.S Details of the persona can be seen from our videos
Jobs were assigned as follow:
Maarten – edited and upload videos
Harry – wait for the scans from Jack and mock up prototypes
Wendy – meeting summary and upload persona infos in team blog
Jack – scans in drafts and more sketches
Oleg – upload presentation online
Filed under: Uncategorized
Kingston Hill Nightingale Centre Study Room
21th Oct, 2009
18:30 – 21:30 Full attendance
Meeting started at 18:45
For this meeting we agreed to spent about an hour of time to discuss and record the video assignments and later to Maarten will added the music and edited it to post it on team blog. We interviewed and survey around the Kingston Hill campus and managed to get some good interviewees, we tried to communicate rather than ‘asking’ them questions but still when they noticed there’s a camera, responses might be guarded. It’s the first time we do videos, it takes so much longer than we planned.
We have agreed to spend no more time on videos
20:30
The next section really is concentrating on the possible materials we could use and the production process could be available in Harry’s work place.
We briefly talked about the budget for our company or for the chair. We suggested everyone to put some money in, maybe a £100 but it is still a very rough budget because its still too early for Harry to tell how much will the chair cost in terms of production and cost.
Following the mace blog’s guide we talked about the activity theory and filled in the content to post it on team blog later on.
At the end of the meeting, Harry raised the question about naturalisation and innovation. And later on it was covered again with all the team members after the class on following Friday. We have slightly lose our USP and we want something that can easily branded with a hip style rather a very high market chair.
So we concluded that we should go back to what we wanted at the first place – a gimmicky but functional chair.
Jobs were assigned as follow:
Maarten – edited and upload videos
Harry – continue the research on materials
Wendy – meeting summary and re-draw activity theory graph
Jack – more sketches for nature chiar
Oleg – update powerpoint to present more specific company’s direction
Filed under: Uncategorized
Kingston Hill Nightingale Centre Study Room
21th Oct, 2009
18:30 – 21:30 Full attendance
Meeting started at 18:45
For this meeting we agreed to spent about an hour of time to discuss and record the video assignments and later to Maarten will added the music and edited it to post it on team blog. We interviewed and survey around the Kingston Hill campus and managed to get some good interviewees, we tried to communicate rather than ‘asking’ them questions but still when they noticed there’s a camera, responses might be guarded. It’s the first time we do videos, it takes so much longer than we planned.
We have agreed to spend no more time on videos
20:30
The next section really is concentrating on the possible materials we could use and the production process could be available in Harry’s work place.
We briefly talked about the budget for our company or for the chair. We suggested everyone to put some money in, maybe a £100 but it is still a very rough budget because its still too early for Harry to tell how much will the chair cost in terms of production and cost.
Following the mace blog’s guide we talked about the activity theory and filled in the content to post it on team blog later on.
At the end of the meeting, Harry raised the question about naturalisation and innovation. And later on it was covered again with all the team members after the class on following Friday. We have slightly lose our USP and we want something that can easily branded with a hip style rather a very high market chair.
So we concluded that we should go back to what we wanted at the first place – a gimmicky but functional chair.
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Jobs were assigned as follow:
Maarten – edited and upload videos
Harry – continue the research on materials
Wendy – meeting summary and re-draw activity theory graph
Jack – more sketches for nature chiar
Oleg – update powerpoint to present more specific company’s direction
Filed under: Meeting Summary
Kingston Hill Nightingale Centre Study Room
14th Oct, 2009 18:15 – 20:00
Full attendance
First half the meeting:
The aim of today’s meeting is firstly discuss and draft our very first company’s statement by identifying the main attributes of the business we are in, with the help of a framework that Oleg prepared for us. Secondly, make decision on company names., Lastly, assign different duties for each of us till next meeting.
In order of the Oleg’s framework, we discussed the basic direction of this company and decision came easy. Our company should focus on create and sell a innovative products instead of selling a ‘service’, we want it to be tangible. Considered the knowledge and skills we had within the team, work as a product design company really is on the top of the list compare to other sectors like publishing or PR, which some of team members might lack of experience.
Then we agree on using ‘Creative Control’ as our company name, it will also be the name of our team blog. Maarten suggested this name and other suggestions we had were: Harry’s chair, The Pound Bag, inno(vat), London Creatives, etc. Through out the discussion, we realised our company’s name should not only concentrate on one product, whereas it should be able to distribute a general sense of our company’s directions. We don’t want the name of the company would hinder the inherence of the company in anyway.
After tat we talked about our consumer orientation followed by business orientation, during this part of the conversation, we fell off a bit and intended to skip this tropic and talk about the design of product itself. It will be a mistake if we did because these two orientation is one of the key management skills and it would be always important as they company runs no matter new comer or a long history brand.
Our company would put more concentration on the innovativeness of the product itself and sustainability or recycle would act as a sub-objectives. We want our customers are groups of individuals that who constantly seek for innovative ideas to implement their everyday life and willing to take creative challenges despite the age. Also we want our idea/products would be able to inspire others to follow.
Second Half:
We came to stage of presentation of ideas, Harry brought his research on ideas of creative a chair, re-usable bag. We would love to know more about the cost of the product would be and also we would need some design both on the products and the logo/ brand name for the next meeting. And that would be handling by Jack and Wendy. We had a diversion of the target market here (affordable/high class).
Jack also suggested a new materials we can use for Wendy’s idea of the wires holder, we would have to come back to this idea as we need more info about the materials from Harry’s connections.
For section 4 and 5 on the framework namely ‘Who do we want to beat’ and ‘How will we beat them, What is the promise’ would have to discuss at next meeting since we reach the closing time of the library.
Jobs were assigned as follow:
Maarten – register team blog
Harry – find out varies info we need for the design of the chair and the materials for ‘wires holder’
Wendy – summaries the meeting into written format and also creative logo mock up for ‘Creative Control’
Jack – Do a couples mock ups for the chair and further discussion with Harry if necessary.
Oleg – company profile and create briefs for each of us and specialise jobs roles.
Filed under: Meeting Summary
Kingston Hill Nightingale Centre Study Room
7th Oct, 2009 18:15 – 20:00
Full attendance
18:15
The aim of today’s meeting is to discuss all the initials ideas we had for our company. Team members Oleg and Wendy are taking management as their major subject in MACE course, they learn about strategic planning for group meeting and encourage team works together in a more organise manner. They demonstrate what they learn in this first team meeting by putting everyone is order to present all the ideas they’ve got and vote at the very end. We tried to get the team work together effectively and get most out of the time allocated to us, in our case it was 2 hours time.
The team briefly agreed on emails we are interested in producing a final product than running a service. So we all came to our first meeting with few ideas in our heads for product development. Maaten started to tell us about his ideas first and follow by the rest of the members.
Initial ideas we had in the first meeting:
1. Grow ‘Green’ bag – Maaten
2. Aesthetic design wires holder – Wendy
3. Disposable toothbrush – Jack
4. Nature Chair
5. Ideas of producing anything flat but 3D capable and functional – Harry
6. Calories meter (used by scanning barcode on existing product) – Oleg
7. Iphone apps which help you to design what to wear for the day – Harry
8. User-friendly coffee machine – Wendy
All of us have got experience in different areas, through talking about ideas we tackled a few of them because of our limitations, mostly in term of a technology aspects. The most do-able and promising products for now also considering our strength are IDEA number 1, 4 and 5.
19:15
All idea On the other hand, we talk the target audience and company profile. We spoke about there are two ways to find out about these, either by stating our company profile first and then move on to design stage of the product. Or going the other way round, we have a finished product and then we can make up those statements. Oleg thinks that we should do it the first way. We also talked about the series ‘Design for Life’ on BBC is very useful to watch and that’s come to the end of our meeting.
Lastly, we design group meeting will be on every Wednesday at 6.30, Jack will booked us the study room in library and note that Harry and Wendy could be late for meetings since they both work during weekdays.
Jobs were assigned as follow:
Maarten – further research on the idea Green bag
Harry – Research and look at the possibility of doing Nature chair and materials for green bag.
Wendy – Responsible to drop notes and write down summary for every meeting afterwards.
Jack – Early sketches on products we talk about and research about more ideas.
Oleg -draft commpany’s profile and anything related to marketing the company and paper work.
The end.
