Star Date: 9.7.7
Listed off various customer needs that will be required to make Design on Time a successful project for the dual purposes of the project; academic and professional development.
Continued reading management handbook and taking notes, aiming to make personal reading notes available to the rest of class by Monday.
Met with Andrius in library fishbowl, Baptiste was unable to attend. At that meeting we discussed:
1. Our mutual lack of progress on the project between today and last Friday when we met.
2. Goals for the week pertaining to the TFNovember project
3. How to accelerate the project progress, decided that for this week we could submit and edit our weekly goals electronically and use the next meeting date to continue moving forward.
Group project deliverables for the week ending 9.15.7:
Creation of individual timeline
Review project component list for sections with similar work/redundancies
Individual project progress for the week ending 9.15.7:
Vision/ Mission Statement
Project objectives
Project requirements
18 comments:
Stardate 9.12.7
Finished and submitted the inital stratigic planning stages
Worked on several sections of the TFNovember project which however disconected from this project has given me experiance on getting the pieces of this puzzle to fit together.
Spent time working through the InDesign "Classroom in a book" begining to develop ideas for the project template.
Continued progress will include establishing a project timeline and finding appropropriate software.
Star date
10.2.7
Been working on the individual projects that will make up the portfolio.
Begining to understand the complexity that will go into this document, but at the same time I've been wanting to get this done for a while and will be a good way to put some fire unter my feet.
I wrote out some product development peramiters for all of the projects identified as potental canidates for the portfolio; inevitably they are focused in different areas. It will be crucial to identify the areas to expand uppon (if any) for each project that way I can create a portfolio with enough breath.
Uppon determining the work I'd like to do for each design project I will be able to determine the time required for esch of thoes and an estimate for total time.
BD
Hello been working on the project
Decided upon several items that will be added to the portfolio, more will be added if time allows.
These items include
Heat recuperation system which shows off technical ability.
Tea dangler which will be further refined to demonstrate modeling abilities.
Peeper popcorn holder to demonstrate the process of continuous refinement.
Wankle cycle motor found in the CAD lab, again to demonstrate ability to use the CAD program.
The monocart as it shows of my ability to perform concept generation based on a theme.
The idea is to take the observer through a voyage in the creative and technical design process. One thing that I have seen with other design portfolios is the lack of depth and I hope to address that with fully expansive portfolio entries that show an initial concept turn into a cloud of ideas which gets narrowed down to one or two via systematic logical reasoning. From there the concept is continuously refined to meet the established customer needs as it moves from abstract concept to drawing to CAD drawing to detailed drawing and for some cases into a state of production ramp up and eventual production.
Critical path established
The project will be considered a success upon completion of the heat recuperation section. The reasoning for this is that it is also my senior project and a rough draft will need to be completed by the end of this week.
After that all other paths have the same importance, however a logical path does exist. It must be determined how much work each of the other portfolio entries will take and then complete them with the intention of making the best use of the resources that I have at my disposal on campus. The thought being that upon graduation I can still work on some of the material but other aspects of it will be lost.
Capitan out
working on drawing creation, currently the format is hand drawn but will evolve into CAD to establish final renderings and the detail drawings for the products.
The heat recuperation system drawings include drawings that relate to the concept generation, development and refinement proceses.
The hardest part about this task is that it takes a long time and a high degree of focus; however I truly enjoy it.
Next task in que is refining the concept selection matrix, this tool is awsome for identifying the best concept and will provide an awsome visual in the portfolio demonstrating my structured approach.
The Work for the group project has been a blessing as it has helped to hone my abbility to work with the InDesign program before I get to that stage in this project. The ammount of pollish for that project is much less than that to be conducted in a portfolio none the less it provides experiance.
All of the drawings for the Heat recuperator segment are ready to go
Most of the tables are ready to go
Most of the drawings for the tea dangler are ready to go
Tables for the tea dangler are ready to go
Drawings for the popcorn holder are 80%
Tables for the popcorn holder are ready to go
Drawings for the monopack are ready to go
Establishing weak points in portfolio, it seems that more of my marketing skills need to be emphasized. The monopod project will be targeted to show off the marketing abilities that I have acquired.
I must scan in the pictures I have developed
I must find a physical holder for my portfolio
I must establish a size of paper that I will use for my portfolio
I must establish the weight of paper that I will use
I must establish the color of paper that I will use
I must establish the gloss of the paper that I will use
I must establish a background template for the pages in the portfolio
I must find a printer capable of the quality I am requiring
I must design a background theme to go in the portfolio
Charts and tables to be included in portfolio background information as the material learned in this class has real value to a design professional
Business card design is being considered; originally it was not to be part of the portfolio generation effort, however is being considered after the October 20th "Connecting" conference.
Progress is good, objectives are being met, if possible my work for the left in stitches project, the department brochure and the department web site will be included if it is possible. As this project is only requiring the resources of myself a great deal of the planning effort is taking on a less structured roll; I do however have some the project management tools developed in somewhat rudimentary stages. I believe that the most important one will be the reflection process as it is something that I try to do for everything I design. I will keep those who want to know in the know regarding the project.
Drawings are a long and "drawn out" process, as I am creating the portfolio for personal benifit I want to show off my abilities. Therefor it takes forever to transfer the sketches that have been completed for quite some time into color drawings with proper perspective and value.
Impossible to decrease quality, seems like I just have to put in the work. I already have most of the recuperator work done in this regard, but there is a lot more to be done yet.
I know I haven't written in for a little while and so this post is to bring us up to speed.
Time:
I have hit a wall in terms of being able to devote any more time than I have already to this project while maintaing the level of quality.
Scope:
It seems that the primary objectives of this project have been hit, I have indeed gained knowledge in using the Indesign and Photoshop programs which has been used to develop a template that can be adapted to any number of projects that I have worked on. Throughout the process I have jumped back and forth in determining how many portfolio projects I should do for this assignment. I believe that two projects will be fully developed and the portfolio background will be included as well. Needless to say that this portfolio will not be a finished portfolio, I will graduate in December so at that point developmnet will continue to make the portfolio something to submit to graduate school.
Cost:
In terms of materials for the physical portfolio cost is not an option, if they make a better paper/ binder/ printer I want that. This is the essence of my portfolio, to provide a glimpse at the best of my work.
Schedule:
As this is the last week of work on this project the ammount of time that will be spent on it will peak. The fact is, the level of polishing work that needs to be done is staggering; it has been a major problem of this project I simply can't schedual enough time.
Drawing by hand is one thing and that took a little time and energy, but converting thoes immages into computer files took me for ever! Seriously days and days.
Quality:
Back to what was said under the cost section, the reason for the project it to demonstrate the best of my ability. I don't care if I got less done than I originaly set out to or that it costs a lot (Time, energy, sleep, work, money) to perform at the highest quality. It's a personal philosophy that drives me to produce good work, I'd rather build a single Ferrari rather than fifty Hundai.
In this diary entry I would like to review the process of creating the drawings for the portfolio. As this is a major component of the portfolio and an area that has taught me a lot in terms of time management it is important to me to review what has happened.
The last message was aimed at giving a perspective of the overall outlook of the project; albeit a bit less formal than a process review report but with the same goal. To establish where we are and if any adjustments must be made before the project is to be shown in class next Friday.
Portfolio Drawing Process review:
Current project status:
Most of the drawings that will make it onto the portfolio for this project are in their final stages. That is conceived, hand drawn, scanned, traced and drawn in Photoshop. The drawings for the projects that will not make it onto this version of the portfolio are ready to be traced and drawn in Photoshop; the time required to produce drawings of sufficient quality is not available for those projects and quality has a much higher weight than quantity.
The drawings done on CAD programs are also all set and ready to be either directly imported into the Indesign file or first sent to Photoshop for a touch up. The Photoshop process is much faster for these type of drawing as opposed to hand drawn.
Future Status:
Within a week the project will be over and I have a number of other projects that must also be completed by that date. Therefore there must be a cutback in scope of the time consuming task of Photoshop editing among other things.
Status of critical tasks:
Most all of the work done so far has been on the drawings of the heat recuperation system. This was identified as the critical task as it also applies to two other of my classes. Getting the drawings onto paper will be the next critical event to occur but drawings probably won't be the limiting factor for that event.
Risk assessment:
Yeah I'm crazy busy right now trying to graduate in three weeks and at some point I have to sleep.
Information relevant to other projects:
The skill gained using the Photoshop and Indesign programs has the potential to be very valuable in the future. Also having an idea for how long it takes to construct drawings of the type I've been doing. Additionally the PM tools have been nice to work with on this project some of which I will use on future projects.
Just checking in to say that the final polishing efforts are going well. Things are comming together well, the project management information is meshing in with the industrial design and I am starting to see what this will look like when this is all over.
Today developed the backgrounds for each and every page of the portfolio. I wanted something that would be easy to produce as time is very limited but something that would exude the same level of quality that I had put into the rest of the project.
At this point I love Adobe! Illistrator just saved be so much time, the learning curve was near vertical; the easaly accesable tools made a cleverly themed background possible in hours.
Working on the documentation portion of the portfolio that gives an insight to the project management process is really an eye opener to how the project went. After reviewing all of my PDN's in the context of my plan and looking back at my Gantt (a tool which I honestly didn't use very well) I can see myself getting caught up and off track.
The project was still productive; however I focused way too much on the work that needed to be done rather than the management of the work. I can really appreciate what the book was saying about working project managers; I put so much effort into getting it done that the management left something to be desired. One of the main reasons that this slip happened was that I was really into the topic of my project, so much so that I found myself putting off using the PM
As I continue to peice this thing together I can't help but to feel that I could have, should have done a better job in not getting so wrapped up in the work that needed to get done and more into the project that needed to be managed. I think that the group project was far more effective in getting me to use the tools than this one as I was so focused on having something to present.
Today I picked up the portfolio and talked to someone from Kinko's about printing. Will require that I convert to PDF (I have pro so no big deal) then I can simply hand them my flash drive and get all copies made. Should be no problem and will get it done tomorrow afternoon.
Process review report
Name: Benjamin Davis
Title: Project manager
Project: Design Portfolio
Date: 11.29.2007
Current project status:
Complete
Future status:
Continuing, the aim is to take the momentum of the portfolio at current and to nock out sections for a number of other projects I’ve been working on. The goal being submission to prospective graduate schools this winter, schools with a MFA in Industrial Design frequently require a portfolio (actually I haven’t seen one that didn’t) to be considered for admission along with transcripts and letters of recommendation. I proposed that I might try to make a business card for this project to help further a sense of branding, however I ended up cutting quite a bit of scope rather than adding things on; none the less that project is also in the pipeline.
I am extremely happy to actually having a portfolio that I can hold onto, seeing things right in front of you makes it much easier to improve; doing it right the first time isn’t such a great goal Pareto comes and bites you in the butt one way or another. I set out with the goal of creating a template that could be applied to other projects using the Adobe CS3 creative suite; I did that but I went beyond just a template, I learned how to make the program do what I wanted and have moved well along the learning curve for those programs.
Status of critical tasks:
One critical task was getting the portfolio here with the highest quality images readily available, I have done that. A critical task was getting the heat recuperator segment finished so that it could be used for my senior project, that has been done and the drawings have been implemented. As a whole the critical tasks were achieved, I would have liked to see some more personal branding implemented but the portfolio is cohesive and clear.
Risk assessment:
There is a real possibility that I won’t have as many projects together as I would have liked for the submission to graduate school. I start a job the last day of school and may loose my ability to use the labs at Humboldt State, thereby taking away my tools and dramatically decreasing the chances of success. The overall risk is much lower now that I have the experience gained from this project, I won’t make the same mistakes again and I have developed a better work flow strategy.
Information relevant to other projects:
As I talked about above the portfolio is an ongoing project probably (hopefully) for the rest of my life I will be developing new portfolios demonstrating my abilities and keeping a record of my works. I feel that this project has taught me a great lesson in project management, a first hand example that you really can’t do it all; I picked a topic that I have a lot of interest in and so I wanted to do the work but I wasn’t spending enough time managing the work that was being done. I have a tendency to try to do it all but I feel that this project was a good example of why not to over extend myself.
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