Working within a team is always an interesting task. You either get the benefit of needing to do less work if everyone contributes, or needing to take over the entire operation.
This week we started work on a group assignment where we engaged in a group workshop. The task centred around the development of a healthy children’s snack as part of a competition.
This project will be ongoing and the first section of this was really just about getting a sense of group dynamics and brainstorming ideas. As the competition is still ongoing I’m not at liberty to reveal what my team came up with, but I felt like talking about the overall experience of the workshop and how it went.
The day started out by assigning us into groups where we chose a name for ourselves. Unfortunately, I wasn’t present for the naming but liked the final result of it either way. We became the “Artful Pandas” for…reasons, I suppose. 😛
Artist rendition: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/162833342748409974/
The day was a whole lot of different presentations giving us a very clear overview of the issue – kids were not eating healthy snacks, man! Kids these days! It gave us a lot of insights into the kinds of obstacles facing solutions which ultimately graphic design is all about rectifying.
The next step involved interviewing kids of different age groups in order to get a firm grasp on what they would respond to and what they would more likely shrug off. There were a few interesting responses, two of the ones that stood out to me the most were of one kid that said he’d prefer to see rice in the canteen, and another who said it made no sense to add unhealthy ingredients to a healthy meal. It contradicted the purpose, in other words. There was some scepticism within the team as to whether or not all of the kids were being truthful or not, and many of us just ended up assuming they were being nice rather than being truthful.
Food advisers that were with us on the day gave insights into children’s behaviour, purchasing habits and what they responded to.
So when we started brainstorming we kept in mind the concerns of parents involved, as well as what the children wanted based on what they’d said as well as what they’d purchased in the past. The session was really about brainstorming, so we drew on a F*** off big sheet of paper! That was fun.
All in all the day was a great team building exercise. Really got me thinking about how to go about solving problems.
As for where the rest of the project goes…
Time will tell.
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