Hello everybody,

Tomorrow there is no class, but we recommend to use the project time constructively to progress within your teams. Sync within your team, assign tasks, make plans on how to create synergies and basically proof your concepts and take action!

Find relevant missing puzzle pieces, make desicions to gain a common ground for certainty, visualize your ideas, see and feel where you are still not agreeing or where you are still not on the same page or have questions, and find solutions, arguments, variations, compromises or answers for that!

Define your minimal criterias, what your product needs, so it might definitely play back based on your concept! According to that, what are nice to haves, what can you reach for and what would be the ideal version for the 22th january's pitch?!

-- Then sync again, proceed and build further, talk, communicate, sync again --- then do it again and go further each time you do it etc... ->  this means iterating! - Feel free to share these lines with your teammembers?!

This is how you kill all uncertainties and how you find errors within your concept or avoid non-sense decisions. Sometimes ideas are great till the moment you figure out, this does not work at all like you thought..but maybe it worked till a certain moment..identify this moment! -- or visa versa: an idea seems not convincing, since you really go for it and bring it into the group as a visualized concept piece which can proof/convince that it works! ...so adopting, shrinking, changing decisions and finding a better idea, or size, or material, or look, or interaction methods etc. are important here. ---  It's all about acting creatively in the group and as a group and finding ways of how to make it work within the parameters given (groups, time, skillz etc..). Working means here not only the technical plan or interaction or business case itself, but your concept as a hole convincing story in all aspects. Whatever you are working on, make sure it does tell itself! And this goes not only for you as designers, but also to your group members of the different areas.

So what to do? - You are in charge of all design related activities. If this means improving layouts, or creating storyboards, or UX/UI concepts, or finding the right wording for a story, button or presentation, or realising an idea to convice the group for a better version, making a video to demo your idea (fake it till you make it!) in a specific context (i.e. with a specific animal and/or gatekeeper), or if this is material choosing and building it, product developping or testing, ----> just go for it! Work practically! Sync in your team, on who is doing what and make sure everyone understands, what this specific task means / decide what is the outcome for this task. Make user stories: in which way / behaviour is the user going with your product? Why will he use it! > Define a reason, which makes sense! Decide on style: adjectives help here! What kind of visionated look and feel do you imagine?! Share this with the others and state it precisely step by step...

There is in every group still a lot to decide on specific layers of your concept: design and proof that it works from the bigger picture to the more and more detailed one. Not the other way around! Do not loose your group discussions in details, before you have not synced on the bigger general decisions.

So, no time to waste here. You have great conditions in this project to really demo a proof of case in the zoo - live and direct! And you even have the chance to sell the product in the end! C'mon, this is amazingly privileged. - Agencies are waiting for this kind of moments!

-- Be sure, we also see the challenges in your group. But there is so much potential in each group and in each concept, which you can set free, with a lot and strong communication and effort to create convincing prototypes here. And we want to see this effort taken. You all have already some skills and all facilities to learn new things here: there is KISD, there is Gummersbach and Südstadt Campus, there is what you are, there is the internet, there is us as teachers, there are other people and students already done things, there are many IoT Communities....- Use all of this! Be creative! Find your common grounds and intersections within the group. This is, what make interdiciplinary work rich, smooth and unique. Find the best of each world and bring it together into the world you create together. So, no need to keep it theoretically! No excuses, that it was no possible... Yes, it is some work, but make it possible! Because it just is. :)

Last week, we have barely seen a wow-progress; was it due to the fact, you could not showing it in 10 minutes, or due to the fact you were not there (Apologies by email, if you are not attending a meeting would be more than appropriate!). Most of the groups gave us the feeling, you are not properly communicating or too less and that you are not really talking about what everyone is doing exactely! Good relations means hard work and time to spend together. Some groups seemed stuck, as you missed out to make a decision. i.e. which animal and where to install your product and what exactely makes a great interaction a great interaction?! It will become easier the more specific you make it, as only here you can do deeper research and create facts and see the real problems.

Next meeting will be a pitch training on the 8th january and we meet in the Campus Südstadt. Use the time inbetween to create and design!

Enjoy your holiday, merry christmas and happy new year!

Nina