My focus group set up idea!

Following recent events, I have decided to set up a focus group company run by myself, where I will take food and drink products off existing shelves and bring together groups to talk about them. I have been crafting this idea over a number of weeks so this is something I have not thought lightly about however today was the day I put action to the plan. I am a quick thinker and I am one to act upon carefully thought out plans and strategy which my passion and enthusiasm will be evident as I follow this idea through.

I have already contacted a few food and drinks brands which I hope will be interested in this market research activity. There are both benefits to the brands which come on board and myself. For them it will provide data surrounding consumer behaviour and the opinions about their products and why and when the audience chooses to engage with it. The benefits for me are to allow me to understand more about brand and consumer experiences and engagement. I really want to pursue a career in advertising or marketing and so this will really help me understand more about the industry. 

In the growth of this idea I am hoping to get some students from the course I am involved in too as when I have spoken about this have become interested. I am really looking forward to which brands want to come on board. If you have any thoughts or want to be involved don't hesitate to contact me via email. I would love to hear from you.

Design storm at the Met Office

Ross Middelham who is the digital designer at the Met Office in Exeter invited some students from Falmouth University, Plymouth University and Winchester University up for the day for a design storm. It was a great day and I learnt an incredible amount and just want to share it with you all.

The day started at 08.45 so we had to leave Falmouth at 06.30, however Ross and the team warmly invited us with tea and coffee. The Met Office building itself was not what I expected, the building is incredibly cutting edge to go with all its high-tech equipment. The building was opened on 21 June 2004. 

Ross introduced the whole event with a presentation about what the Met Office Content Team get up to on a daily basis. He delivered this through a fantastically engaging video which explained what it is like to work in a government organisation and the importance of design in the strengthening of the brand. Personally, I did not expect a presentation like this - it was very interesting to find out about what goes on inside an organisation this scale as what it refreshing to see how much fun they have as a team.

Michael Robinson, former Head of Graphics at the Guardian News & Media (2002-2012) was the keynote speaker for the day who provided us all (students, practising designers and members of the Met Office) with such valuable information. I would just like to capture some things which Michael said which will always resonate with me.

'Be as good as you can'

'You can't impress the client with the size of your 

office but only you as yourself'

'A designer and client must have a close relationship'

'Digital has made print better'

'A designer solves other people's problems' 

Many things which Michael along with Ross touched a lot about what my dissertation is on where I am exploring the rise of brand accessibility and its result in terms of creating mediocre marketing content which is infiltrating people's daily lives. Elliot Lyons who is the Met Office Brand Manager also provided some thoughts too as he presented purpose and aims in the Met Office as a brand themselves.

D2 Creative, Bluestone 360, Meor Design were the three 'agency life' speakers who provided insights into what it's like to work at their agency. Each had different approaches to tackling design issues and a range of different offices in some beautiful locations around Cornwall and Devon. Lunchtime provided the chance to network with the agencies and other practising designers such as David from River Collective. Have a look at all their work by clicking on their names.

The afternoon was the chance to work in teams on the challenge set by Anna Slingo who is the Social Media Manager at the Met Office. We were divided into 4 teams - Clouds, Snow, Rain and Wind and were given content to work with. Anna explained that through social media they reach a span of 700,000 people. Social media is such an important platform to use in today's society as it reaches a huge amount of people in a short space of time, much faster than the roll out of a print campaign. She uses infographics, videos and images to tell stories as she finds 140 characters in a tweet too difficult to sometimes put across a message. This is easy to understand when a number of issues she is addressing online are very scientific and need to put across the right information without confusion. 

Using the content we had to produce engaging content within our topic. I was in the 'snow' group and worked with 3 students from Winchester University, a tutor from Winchester and Sean Russell from NHS Choices. 

We created a 2 week campaign which included the run up to snow falling, the snow fall day and the recurring effects. The main idea revolved around a 'snow day' and would initially engage the audience with a question via twitter with the question 'what will you do on your snow day?'. A tool was also mocked up which would generate further interest and was inspired by my Christmas holiday. The Christmas just gone was particularly special for me as I spent it with my younger cousins which I haven't done in a number of years. They were all very excited about Christmas and found the Santa Tracker particular fun to follow every minute of the day. This Santa Tracker fuelled the idea of a Snow Tracker which could be potentially created by the Met Office to engage younger audiences about the possible occurrence of a snow day which could give them the day off school. The Snow Tracker could be downloaded through the Met Office website onto devices (iPad, mobile and tablet) and would generate push notifications. The user could watch their 'snowman' grow which would represent the likelihood of a snow day in their area. To follow their area all they have to do is supply their postcode. 

We all worked on the campaign at various touch points from the initial spark of interest to the very end. It was great to work with people I had never worked with before as was it interesting to understand how different people liked to start off live briefs. I really liked Sean's approach about creating user profiles to understand why we want to engage with audiences by questions ourselves. This was similar to the approach which fffunction take when tackling briefs.

After an hour and a half we had to pitch in groups for a social media campaign to 2 judges and the rest of the members of the design storm. All the campaigns were so great, I was very impressed by Will a student at Winchester University who developed an app in the short time frame where you could draw clouds on paper and then reflect them into a camera where it would translate digitally in real time on a computer.

Anna and Michael decided that the 'snow' team which I was involved with would be the overall winners and we each took home a pair of Met Office socks. Perfect for my next 'snow day'!

The whole day was so fascinating and totally not what I and the other 3 students from Falmouth University had originally expected. I love surprises like this.

Laurie Stansfield captured the day by being the graphic facilitator by illustrating our thoughts and ideas throughout the day. Her work is beautiful and she works so fast, I would definitely recommended checking her work out.

Thanks to the Met Office content team, Ross, Anna and all the speakers for organising the day.