Coleman Project: The Home Stretch

J08
J09

The team:
Be
Ben
Cindy
Ian
Julia
Rachel

More or less our project consisted of making a clutter free area within the kitchen through the development of pots with collapsible handles which nested within each other. Big decisions made were the design of the lids and their handles (made in a rainbow shape allowing smaller lids to slide in beneath them and fit comfortably), the packaging to be made from canvas around a recyclable cardboard cylinder, and our kiosk to look like a tree showing off the product (subtly reminiscent of outdoorsmanship of Coleman). Overall the team worked fairly well together. There were a few bumps to begin with, but once we got a few key concepts settled out we effortlessly finished the project. Small qualms I had were that, one of our team members didn't show on the day of presenting, and promises made to develop and post said powerpoint in the drop box were not fulfilled with the deadline quickly approaching. Besides these problems our organization was fairly efficient as we split the work up produced our portions of the project, brought them back to the table, tweaked designs and finalized, utilizing with great success the drop box set up by Julia.
I began with a kind of self imposed role of group leader, motivating the group, ensuring that we stayed on track and that everyone was heard equally and without scrutiny throughout the process. In initial steps I brought the ideas of a static charged lamp as well as a blanket/duvet cover which could be adjusted by the layers of the Coletherm placed inside. These ideas did not make it to the final cutting board but the blanket had there been more to the idea was our second choice. As far as work done, I developed the logo and icon change, picked the color scheme that we would work with on our kiosk as well as the packaging and line's image. After initial ideas were brought back to the group, I helped Ben to finalize the kiosk in Photoshop, imposing wood and logos onto the kiosk. I then would also redesign/render the packaging in Photoshop from the initial designs and changes to create the final design. I also helped with cleaning up a few images for the powerpoint. The only thing that I can think to have done different would have been early involvement in the process. I'm more of a see what people have and then jump off their ideas or better it kind of person, so when we came back on the first two classes I brought nothing to the table from home, but while there created many ideas. Had I put more into it from home in the earlier steps we may have finished it faster with less hassle. Overall I'm very happy with the project, I feel it's far from finished, but since it is only a 200 level class I thought we did marvelous. Not to sound full of myself either but I feel like our project was a solution to a problem where as many other groups designed and found how the product may resolve issues. It was a great experience and I look forward to the many projects I'll hopefully have like this down the road.