As a group what problem did you identify and why in response to Drink Tea?
We wanted a network for tea drinkers and enthusiasts to be a part of, and discuss tea. We wanted a place where everybody could access it, and every part of tea would be addressed. Because we had interactive polls, it could also be very useful for research purposes. We wanted to communicate the benefits of tea, and just encourage people to talk about it, as we realised that coffee was a lot more popular than tea, and we wanted to address that.
What methods did you use to gather your evidence to prove this was a problem and what forms did it take?
We looked at the prices of different teabags so that we could pick the cheapest option to use for the video to keep costs at a minimum (we bought 6 boxes (80 teabags each) for 27p each), which happened to be Tesco's own brand. We made a Twitter, had a lot of polls on the blog and an interactive poster to let people choose what their favourite tea was, so we could see how many people would be interested in talking about tea.
We looked at online blogs and websites to research what information was already out there about all aspects of tea, as we wanted to distribute information through the twitter and blog about tea. I also looked at an origami book and craft blogs to see how to make your own teabags and the kind of responses that these had already had. This helped me realise I didn't want to carry on that idea further.
We had polls on our blog asking different questions about tea; a 'taste and tweet' leaflet to see if people could name a unidentified tea; an interactive poster asking what tea people preferred and followers on our Twitter and Blog, who responded to our tweets.
We discussed as a group our thoughts on tea, who drinks it, the kind of things people would be interested about hearing etc.
What methods of research did you find useful and why?
Initially when we had the idea of creating a tearoom, I found it incredibly useful reading a book called Package Design Now, and reading why designers made the design choices that they did. I feel this changed my way of thinking when in the idea generation process, as I wasn't just thinking about how it would look, I started thinking about how it would fit/look on the shelf, how it would be transported, how resourceful it could be and how it could be easily opened by people. This has definitely helped the way I looked at package design, and I don't think I could have learnt that by just looking at existing examples of packaging.
When I was thinking about the 'make your own teabag' idea for a viral video, I looked at origami books, videos on making own teabags, and other websites that featured tutorials on it. Doing this helped me realise that the idea wasn't that great actually, as the websites/blogs it was featured on were very crafty and were generally mums who had small children, and that isn't necessarily the audience we wanted to aim our idea at. I also realised that you had to use a sewing machine to stitch the bags, and that there wasn't really a specific net for them, so it helped me know that I didn't want to do that idea. I am glad I did the research into it though, because if I had just booked the photography studio and drew some sketches of a teabag I wanted to make it wouldn't have been very successful.
What research could you have carried out that would have proved more useful?
For the initial idea of the tearoom, I think just by reading that book alone it was so invaluable, but I also did some research on the internet. At that stage, I don't think I could have done any more research that was needed because we only wanted enough research to discuss further ideas with each other, and I had some solid ideas that I wanted to share.
For the idea of the video, I probably could have researched more about the photography studio, as when we got there, we realised that we needed certain equipment like a big tripod and video lighting. Luckily the photography technicians were there to help us and they let us use the equipment, but if they hadn't have been there or we weren't allowed to use the equipment then I don't know what we would have done, as the tripod was an essential part of the video being shot from a bird's eye view.
How did you manage the workload as part of a group?
I think this is definitely a part that our group excelled in, because initially when we were doing research, we talked about the ideas that we had and what we were going to do, and broke up into sections the areas that needed to be researched. We then chose a topic that we were happy with, and set deadlines which everyone stuck to.
We also helped each other a lot with what we was doing. For example, when Kirsty was making her typeface out of tea, me and Sophie helped her do it, and in the end we got a bit of an assembly line going on, where I was drawing out the letters, and Sophie and Kirsty were cutting out the tape and putting the tea on.
Also, when I had the idea to do the video, me and Kirsty made the poster with the tea typeface on that would be featured in the video, and everybody in the group came to the studio, and helped put up the equipment, and once we were all set up James and Priyesh went to print the posters, and me and Jane, Sophie and Kirsty filmed the video, sweeped the tea and made sure that everything was going well. Then James took the video and edited it that night, which helped me because I didn't know how to use video editing software. Because we had communicated with each other and he knew what I had envisioned for the video, and had come up with some good ideas himself, everyone was really happy with the finished product.
When me and Kirsty were making the poster for the video, Jane was also in the studio creating the leaflet on Illustrator, and when she got stuck on certain parts I helped her so that she could do the leaflet more smoothly, and have a better understanding of the software.
When Priyesh printed out the flyers and posters, me and James cut them to size, and then me and Kirsty distributed the posters around the college, and James and Priyesh distributed the flyers, so that we could spread out the workload between us.
All in all, we all helped each other out with what we were doing so that the workload wasn't as large as it could have been if we had done all of our tasks individually, which I think is one of the most important parts of working as a group.
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