Week 11 - Presentations

Overall I believe that our groups presentation went very well. We had four main speakers for our pitch, all of which spoke presented soundly, by speaking with clarity and good pace. Furthermore we managed to pass over most key pieces of information, and were rushed for time at only one small part towards the end of our presentation, which was probably the only low point.

We received mostly positive feedback from the judges whilst only one question was asked for our group, which I will see as a positive as perhaps we managed cover all the areas with thorough detail. I do believe this project could go further, and would do very well if more professionals were to help direct the project.

Overall I enjoyed my time on the social enterprise module and perhaps could be a potential career path in the future, as having a few family members who do similar lines of work and interests (voluntary/charity work) could always put me on the path. However I will first be concentrating on completing my psychology degree and then seeing where life takes me.

Week 10 - Presentation Workshop

During this weeks session and the week to come the group had to design the presentation. Personally i'm not confident in presenting to large groups of people so will only take on a minor role if any. I believe that I work better behind the scenes, discussing options with a smaller number of people such as my group.

The main difficulty we had at this stage was finding the time for all members of the group to meet, however we all scheduled an appropriate time. The group met up at one of our members house to run through what we shall include in our oral presentation as well as the organisation of who says what.

During the run throughs of our presentation we had clarity in terms of what information would be presented which was key for making sure that key pieces of information would be judged, keeping everything relevant. Furthermore we clearly labeled which parts would be said by who, in which each individual would be confident in the parts they had otherwise we were able to change parts with others who were comfortable in saying the other parts.

Week 9 - Orientation to the deliver phase

During this week sessions we had members of KPMG come in to present a helpful powerpoint, as well as provide direct support to groups. This provided our group with guidance of possible finance routes that our enterprise could take, making us better understand the cash flow of our project.

In terms of moving from the creative process of formulating ideas and solution to examining our solution through desirability and feasibility was reasonably smooth. The group worked well to suggest solutions, and believed that we would not directly charge our main beneficiary (students) as it could negatively effect desirability.

At this stage I believe that I am better suited to the creative stages compared to the business stages due to my lack of experience in business. However learning about the ways in which businesses work has been interesting and has opened my mind up in terms of dynamics of how one operates.

There have been a number of learning curves during our project, particularly during market research for when we had to consider our idea and what features we could include in our application.

Week 8 - Gathering feedback

During this week, there was a Wednesday session for groups to showcase their prototypes and receive feedback. As well as receiving positive reviews, there were negatives too, which highlighted a few issues that may need dealing with. One of these being that our idea of a budgeting application may not be efficient for individuals who have money moving quickly in and out of an bank account, as well as the issue of individual taking spending notes whilst on a night out.

However due to the brainstorming of ideas there are a number of solutions which the group have in place to work on. For example our volunteer student consultancy service idea, when students who need support with budgeting can visit a trained consultant for support. Furthermore the idea of the application being linked with the individuals bank account has been proposed which would save time for the beneficiary.

During the create phase the group has been productive creating a number of ideas to lead our enterprise in a strong direction. However the co-ordination could have been more effective if the group knew exactly what we wanted as our key features, for example offering an online application versus a consultancy service.

Week 7 - Reflection on brainstorming / protoype

This week’s session was about prototyping, in which we had to start to think of a design for our product or service. To begin the session we recapped on our brainstorm ideas from the previous session. This effectively allowed us to consider possible designs for products and services that we may consider to create.

On a whole our product would mainly be application based, in which it serves a few different features. This would include a finance calendar, a price comparison section (for shopping in Southampton), forum peer support, and some other features.

As it would be extremely difficult for us to actually create an application, our prototype designs will be paper sketches on plain paper. Furthermore I believe that during the stages of brainstorming and idea production the group was very productive, which should hopefully lead to a successful prototype.

Week 6 - Brainstorming / Reflection of themes emerging from data.

At the beginning of this week’s session we reflected on our research data, which was our online survey. There were a few outcomes that could be identified, such as, how to desire for an android application was popular. From receiving this information the group have taken a strong stand with our enterprise being app based, which could perhaps expand the opportunity area established, for example into different countries via the internet.

During the session we also had to brainstorm ideas as one of our class tasks. By partaking in the exercise the group and I managed to consider a whole variety of ideas which could feature within our enterprise; particularly the application idea. After the ideas had been brainstormed we had to evaluate each idea. In this sense we could reflect on what ideas would be worth doing and which would not be.

Overall this week was helpful as we were able to identify with data from our research, in which we then combined this knowledge along with our brainstorm, to provide useful ideas and themes.

Week 5 - Reflection on the conceive stage

During the conceive stage the group designed our challenge, identified our targets group, and conducted research. As an individual all these tasks were made easier to me due to my excellent team; as being the only first year within our team at first I thought that I may potentially struggle to put forward ideas and gel within the group. However since starting the complete opposite has occurred. The team remain well organised, and communication is excellent as we constantly share our ideas as well as views with one another, this allowed us to push through the conceive stage. For example by communicating via Facebook during the research phase we were able to easily communicate about our online survey, such as where we could potentially share it to increase respondents, in which we gained a large amount of (over 100).

From a personal view I feel that I am reasonably creative, so I’m always on hand to provide ideas towards our project.

If there were to be a potential challenge for the remainder of the design process it would most likely be workload. This is due to the fact that as we near the end of the first semester individuals will face increased pressure from other modules they partake in. In this sense it could take time away from our challenge. However having good organisation and knowledge of our deadlines I am sure that the team will be able to cope.

Week 4 - Reflection of the process of conducting research

Over the last week ‘The Budgeteers’ thought more deeply about market research, such as what methods and designs we should do to reach our targeted beneficiaries. In a group we all agreed that an online survey would be practical as a vast amount of information could be gathered quickly. As a group we brainstormed what sorts of questions would be appropriate for us to obtain useful information and move on effectively with our idea and research.

Within this questionnaire there were demographic questions, to help us identify which groups of people would be more likely to use our service. Furthermore there were questions linked to our service, in which we allowed respondents to type in there own answers to gain specific feedback, helping us identify any issues. 

However a potential issue of data research and peoples needs is the idea of data protection. Most students would not want to complete one of our surveys if it was to ask for personal details, for example loan size and other more financial aspects, making it difficult to obtain certain quantitative data. This could possibly reflect on our service. Therefore suggesting that trust would have to be built with students using our service