Minor Project: Final Compilation and Reflection
Week 1- Week 14
Siam Siew Yong 0358399
Bachelor of Design in Creative Media | Taylor’s Design School | Taylor’s University
INSTRUCTION
PROCESS
Week 1:
In Week 1, after forming our group of seven—Jordon, Amber, Yee Qin, Yi Kian, Abigail, Zhi Ni, and myself—we started by diving into contextual research. And we chose Jordon as our group leader. Our main topic was around plants and self-watering pots, so we divided the work and each member focused on different subtopics to explore. At the same time, we also looked into articles, recent news, and creative examples related to street art, aiming to expand our understanding of how visual communication and creative expression might connect to our project. This initial research helped us build a stronger foundation and spark early ideas.
Contextual Research
Week 2:
In Week 2, we realised that there wasn’t much recent or in-depth information available on our topic. After presenting our contextual research to Mr. Mike, we discussed this gap with him. He encouraged us to go beyond desktop research by reaching out directly to the community—either by sending out research questions or speaking to people in person. His advice emphasized the importance of connecting with real users to gain a deeper understanding of their experiences and needs.
Taking his suggestion on board, we started drafting a list of questions for survey and prepared to send them out to our target audience. We also outlined a simple structure for our interviews to keep them focused and consistent. Below is a breakdown of who we aimed to reach, along with our planned interview questions and structure:
Survey Questions
Interview Questions
Week 3:
In Week 3, we were tasked with creating three assumed personas based on our target user groups. We focused on teachers, Gen Z, and students, as these were the main audiences we identified during our early research. Since it was still early in the project and we hadn’t gathered real data yet, we built these personas based on common characteristics, behaviours, goals, and pain points that we imagined each group might have about plant care and self-watering pots.
We completed the personas fairly quickly, using them as a starting point to better understand potential user needs.
Personas
Week 4:
After finishing up the survey and interview, we are also required to do the data analysis based on the responses gathered.
Survey Responses
Then we also gathered the interview transcripts from 3 different teachers / educators.
Interview transcript
Week 5:
After completing our earlier tasks, we shifted our focus to developing our problem statement and "How Might We" (HMW) questions. We began by identifying common themes from the interview and survey responses we had collected. By grouping similar feedback into different categories, we were able to spot key user concerns and patterns.
From there, we worked together to craft 3–5 insight statements, which helped us clearly define the core problems and needs. These insights then became the foundation for formulating our HMW questions. The process was fast but collaborative, and it gave us a clearer direction moving forward with our concept development.
Insight statements
After this we moved on to create a problem statement and 3 different 'How might we...' statements.
Problem statement and 'How might we...
Week 6-7:
Once we wrapped up our research and insight analysis, we moved on to presenting our findings and execution proposal. We compiled everything into a clear and cohesive slide deck and shared it with our industry collaborator, Mr. Toru. His feedback was generally positive—he expressed interest in seeing how our ideas would take shape as the project moved forward.
The main suggestion he gave was to explore how our concept, Yubari, could be integrated into their existing program, XP Edu. This feedback made us realise the importance of aligning our creative ideas with real-world systems and highlighted the need for strategic thinking when proposing design solutions.
Week 8:
In this week, we were tasked with completing the user journey map, which we structured into four stages and four parts to capture the user's experience clearly. We divided our workload evenly to finish this task as soon as possible.
After finalising the user journey map, we presented it to Mr. Mike, who gave us positive feedback—he mentioned that the outcome was "nice and good to go." This gave us the confidence to proceed with the next stages of our project.
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Final user journey map |
After completing the user journey map, we moved on to the next task — creating mockups based on the journey we had proposed. Before diving into the design work, we decided to first finalise the art direction for Yubari. This step was important to ensure that all our visual outputs — from social media content to product mockups — would follow a consistent and cohesive style throughout the project.
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Final art direction moodboard |
After that, we started to create mockups, like social media feeds and website prototype. For the first stage, awareness of discovery, we proposed 3 main product introduction posts and a few miscellaneous contents.
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| Social media content 1 |
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| Social media content 2 |
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| Social media content 3 |
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| Social media content 4 |
Other than that, we also made teaser video, microsite prototype and others relevant stuff as well.
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| Microsite prototype |
In stage 2, comparing, we had proposed mainly 4 social media posts and 2 IG story for engagement. So we quickly finished up together.
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| Social media content 5 |
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| Social media content 6 |
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| Social media content 7 |
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| IG story for engagement |
Then, for stage 3 onboarding and first use, we also created a few posts and IG story to promote and build a community. We tried our best to create the mockups based on the user journey map.
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| Social media contents for stage 3 |
Lastly, for the last stage which was sharing and advocacy, we also managed to finished all the mockups by week 14. After the first draft, we also did some finalization on all the posts to remain consistent.
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We also finished up the microsite that consists of all the features mentioned in the user journey map. After we finished up all the mockups and social media contents, we compiled all of them together into the presentation slides and get ready to present to our collaborators.
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| Microsite prototype |
Final figma prototype link: https://www.figma.com/proto/ArHIiT6P8Lcpvz4Vx333vY/YUBARI------?node-id=0-1&t=tdsDMFJd0talVHl9-1
FINAL REFLECTION
Looking back at this module, it’s honestly been a long but meaningful journey. From the first week of research to the final presentation, I’ve learned a lot — not just about design, but also about working as a team and thinking strategically.
At the start, we were still figuring things out — splitting research topics, trying to find useful information, and getting used to working together. When we realised there wasn’t much online data, I really appreciated Mr. Mike’s advice to go out and speak to people directly. That pushed us to get real insights from surveys and interviews, which made our project feel more grounded and relevant. It was my first time doing this kind of user research in such a structured way, and I could see how important it is for building something that actually makes sense for the audience.
Creating the personas, insight statements, and “How Might We” questions helped us turn raw feedback into clear direction. And when we started designing the journey and mockups, everything felt like it was finally coming together.
One thing I personally found really valuable was learning how to build a proper marketing strategy. Instead of just designing random posts, we thought about the purpose behind every stage — from awareness all the way to advocacy. It made me realise how important consistency and storytelling are in branding. Developing the art direction, planning out our content, and making sure it all flowed with the user journey was challenging, but also really rewarding.
Also, getting feedback from Mr. Toru, I knew that creativity needs to fit into actual systems and solve real problems. It’s not just about cool visuals — it’s about making something useful and usable.
Overall, I feel like I’ve grown a lot during this project. I got better at teamwork, time management, and creative thinking, and it made me more confident in tackling projects with a strategic mindset. I’m proud of what we’ve done as a team — and I’m taking all of this with me for future work.
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