quarter 4 final project

Our Project

For our final project, the teachers gave us teams of four or five, and assigned us with the task of creating a product. This may sound easy now but trust me, it was pretty difficult and had many different components to the whole project. Not only did we have to brainstorm ideas to make the product, but after we decided on the idea of making a hair growing shampoo called Ulu Lae, we had to make sure that our product would sell. We created advertisements, animations, logos, graphic designs, commercials, and even a website so we could really show off our product to the buyers. After all of this was created, we then had to present our ideas in front of the e9 teachers and anyone else in their classes, sort of like an episode of shark tank. This project had to be very thought out, and took mainly the whole fourth quarter to create, with rotations from the e9 teachers classes around every two weeks. Many people saw the more put together side of this project while we were presenting, but there were some challenges throughout the quarter. My group had to deal with issues such as, team members being absent, splitting the work evenly among the four of us, and creating some of the different advertisements and the website. Throughout these challenges though, I learned a lot about what it takes to make a successful product, and I learned a little more about each branch of e-Comm, including graphic design, animation, film, and website making. To make sure that we had a great presentation we presented in front of the class, which is where we gained the most feedback about our website and about how we could improve on things like presentation skills. From there we could make small adjustment to our work, and changed factors like what to say when we presented and any small fixes to our website to make sure that everything worked. Overall, I really enjoyed fourth quarter and I thought that it was a great learning experience that summarized and used all the skills that we have learned in e-Comm this year.

Time In Class

During class we were given a lot of time to work on our project. On our first rotation which was animation, we worked with Adobe Photoshop to make different advertisements that would really show of our product. We also created a 3D animation of our product, which we used to show the viewers what our shampoo bottle would end up looking like, as well as the animation. After these two eventful weeks went by we then moved to our next rotation, video and filming. In this class we mainly made a commercial for our product, where we learned that there are a lot of factors that go into making a quality video. After brainstorming what we would do for our commercial and filming, we then went to Adobe Premier and edited our commercial separately so we could chose the best group members for our website. Another couple of weeks later, and we were getting to the end of our project and onto the last rotation. For this rotation we worked on more of the graphic design portions of our product. We made Logos, Coupons, and Banners, as well as creating different color schemes and our website, which tied the whole project together. As you can guess, there were times when we finished early or possibly did not have much more to do with our project ,but when this happened my group decided to keep brainstorming ideas or simply move onto the next portion of the project. There were also times where work needed to be done outside of class, which is when my team and I would come in during Raven50 and really make sure that we had the best project that we could create. 

Strengths

My team made sure that we maximized our strengths and that everyone would be working on a part of the project that was considered their strength. Personally, I worked on more of the graphic design portion of the project because I find that to be the branch of e-Comm that I am more interested in. I really enjoy working with Adobe Illustrator and creating different designs and color schemes. I also helped make one of the advertisements, which I would not have thought of as one of my strengths until after this project. I figured out that I enjoyed making the animation and working with Adobe Photoshop, which I appreciate because I was able to discover different strengths and areas of e-Comm that I enjoyed.

Improvement 

For areas that I would need to improve on, I would definitely say that web designing is not something that I am confident in doing. I believe that if I can improve this skill, it will make me a more rounded e-Comm student. I also believe that I can work on my presentation skills and project management. Overall, I think our presentation went well, but it could have been more developed and possibly working on my presentation part of the project would have helped with this. There were many times that we had to come into Raven50 to work on our project and while we would get most of our work done in class, I wish that we would have had better project management to really get the result that we wanted for our product.

Summary

 Overall, I really liked that they allowed us to be creative with making a product and that we could really take this project any direction that we wanted to. There we limited guidelines and I felt like I was actually making a product that I would be selling, which was a really interesting experience. I would possibly change some of the decisions that we made about our commercial, possibly making it more informational. As well as changing some of the design choices on our website, just so the whole product would look more professional. I really learned a lot of important information and what it takes to create and advertise a product that consumers could actually buy. One goal that I have for myself is that I would like to continue applying these skills to my everyday life next year, I believe that they can really help me moving forward in any computer program. To wrap up this whole quarter project, I would like to say that I really enjoyed e-Comm this year, and how much these different projects have helped me move towards a more challenging task.