• ‘Ensure you’ve reflected on data collection and visual/ financial modeling completed by the team’

I believe I talked about our data collecting survey in ‘Blog Post #2’, so hopefully that suffices. Unfortunately, it is a different story for the modeling. We don’t have anything for the modeling strand- nothing for visual, and as for financial, we didn’t find the cost of making a pack of these soup dumplings (pack of 6).

• “Do you feel that your product has met the goals you set at the start of the process?”

Sadly not. We don’t have finalized designs for the dumplings or a certain restaurant it would go to, and we haven’t figured out the cost to make a pack, and therefore how much to sell it for- Therefore, we don’t have something for the modeling strand. And Alex had wanted (or at the least voiced a desire) to make a physical product, but we didn’t end up doing that- we ran out of time: it was the last working class and hadn’t planned to make it, so we didn’t have ingredients prepared, and we didn’t have a complete recipe.

• • “Did design choices still fit your target audience?”

Maybe not as much as it might have in past stages of the process. Our target audience is tourists/foreigners, family and children- and due to the survey we said the product would be found in a restaurant- but we were able to change it to theme park restaurant, because we had already done work towards that place, and it had the second highest amount of votes, so it did go with the survey results. However, when thinking of it being sold in restaurants, I don’t think of the audience of family/ younger children… (at least at the moment) however, perhaps the restaurant being in a theme park saves it.

Thinking about it now, it does/should. earlier when thinking of it being sold at theme parks, it would still have to come from some source, which may have ben a restaurant- so maybe I am just thinking of more fancy restaurants, when I am ‘saying’ it. (Ex: this rollercoaster restaurant I went to in the UAE, where the food is delivered to you by track and carts).

• • What would you do if you had more time or resources?

Ideally: figure out the cost to make one pack (of 6), and then look at that cost and the prices Yifan reached based off of survey responses and thinking about where this product would be sold (assumably thinking of theme parks) (I think)- to decide/ figure out how much one pack (of 6) would cost. And therefore give us something for modeling.

• “How would you evaluate your contributions to the team? Anything you’d like to work on in terms of team work?”

I think I did do some good contributions to the team. I tried to help organize roles at the start… I may not have been the best though, but I did send emails to try to send updates in some cases. I also helped make the survey (I did have help, additions, and opinions from team mates). However, I didn’t put in the work outside of class, and so I think that is one place where my teamwork and dedication needs work, I don’t think I prioritized the project. And maybe I could have checked in on somethings, to see where they were.

(Hopefully this isn’t bad, and hopefully I am not giving misinformation- I just want to get something in, hopefully I will do better in the coming project).

• “What progress has your team made so far? Have any new ideas, questions or challenges arisen from this work?”

We have sent out and received responses to a survey (more information on this comes later on). Alex had the idea of having the dumpling packs not be sold as all one ‘flavor’ (where all the soup-dumplings in a pack have the same soup filling), but that the packs would hold different kinds of dumplings.

• “What process have you and your group made on collecting data?”

We sent out a survey for people to answer (Ex: I posted a link to the survey on my moments) , some of the questions were: “What soups do you like and would like to see in a soup-dumpling?”, “Where would you expect to find such a product (soup-dumpling with different ‘soup filling’ options)?”, and “How do you think the product should be sold?”.

• • “How was it collected?”

At least something that I did, was post a link to the survey on my moments, in hopes friends and family (people in my contacts) would see and answer the form.

And in terms of looking at the data: the survey was created using Office Forms, which is able to not only show responses, but even present them in appropriate ways (Ex: graphs) and can help provide helpful data/ analysis of them: like being able to hover over an answer in a graph (assumably from a “choice” question”) and see not only how many chose it, but also what percentage of responses that answer had (this is seen it the pie charts (at least).)

Here is a link to see survey results: https://forms.office.com/Pages/DesignPageV2.aspx?lang=en-US&subpage=design&FormId=mg0rwMPcY0mWYd9SbtulftUJrBzVH8NKn9T1wsZc99dUQTNYTUJQNTE2TkdXNk1WTVMwRE82M1A5UC4u&Token=fbf416b82984435f8141fb2d8d89116e  

• • “How has that supported your design choices?”

The data from the survey led to certain conclusions and decisions: (I looked at an email I sent to team mates to remember some of the reasoning)

• • • That the dumplings would be sold in packs (6/8 people chose that, and 1 out of the remaining 2/8 chose that it didn’t matter).
    • That the packs would be packs of 6: Because when I listed out all the answers (in cases were the answer was like “1-3” I would list it as “1,2,3”) and 6 appeared the most amount of times (4 times), the median (if I did it correctly) was 6, and the average was 6.5.
    • We don’t need to worry about making the dumplings see through (or the option of such) because no one said they wanted that. Out of the choices of ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘maybe’ ,’doesn’t matter’. ‘Doesn’t matter’ had the most votes with 4/8. (followed by ‘maybe’ with 3/8.)
    • When it came to the question on where people expected to find such a product, the results were relatively split/close. However, ‘Restaurant’ did win with 5/15 (it was a multiple choice question), followed by ‘Themepark’ (4/15), ‘Nightmarket’ and ‘a store’ (both 3/15) (‘other’ got 0/15). So it made sense to at least go with Resturant, as that was what the data supported.

However, in terms of pricing, Yifan had already looked at theme park pricing. So we ended up combining restaurant and theme park, by saying theme park restaurant. (This may not have been the sole reason, but still).

• “Have you worked on visual or financial modelling? If so, provide some insight into those processes.”

Kind of.

As mentioned earlier, in an email Yifan concluded that in “tourist areas” “the price […] may be slightly higher”: giving the price range of “between Rmb15 and Rmb25”.

However, one would hope to also figure out the price that the survey data leads to, and to find the cost of making a pack of dumplings, and look at all those prices to figure out the price to ‘sell’ a pack for. (For which we would need a recipe, and while Alex does seem to have some ingredients, not all of them have measurements, so I think Mr. Landrum supported (not sure if he first recommended it- Alex’s list does include “Flour dough”) the idea of pre-made wraps and it would also be easier if we ‘used’ canned soup). (unfortunately though, the reason Alex was working on a recipe was in hopes to end up using it to make a physical product (unless I am mistaken), but we have run out of time, and will not be doing it).

But our last work class was last class, and I think we are ‘presenting’ tomorrow- so I am not optimistic. While it is true that I could try and make sure it gets done by tomorrow’s class, I don’t think that is going to happen.

“What is your product idea and who is your audience?”:

At the moment, the product is an alteration to soup dumplings (which -in my mind- then connects this project to Chinese Cuisine). The alteration being the ‘soup-filling’ of the soup dumplings. One of the original/ starting ideas, was to have the soup in the soup dumplings be alphabet soup, however one of my group mates seems to like the idea of having other ‘soup-filling’ options: while I am ok with this idea, part of me still likes and leans toward the alphabet soup, so maybe that could be the variation we (or I) focus on? I am not sure, but perhaps I am leaning towards alphabet soup because that helped lead me to think of certain target audiences and designs.

Speaking of which, I think (/plan on) we are going to go with the base of foreigners/tourists. I hope we can then further specify to families and children. Brigette had the idea of theme parks, and I found a place to buy food in Shanghai Disney, that I think can work! The theme of the food place is related to ToyStory (linking to my association of alphabet soup and children/youth). I think the food place is open for/ around lunch (which I can see working with alphabet soup dumplings), and after some research, the ToyStory character Forkie: which could be an implicated theme/ decoration inspiration for the product, to better link it to the ToyStory theme (Brigette helped think of ways to implicate Forkie).

“What are your plans for data collection and [modeling], as a group or individual?”:

Some possible survey themes/questions could be to support my association with youth and alphabet soup or maybe I can research why, I suspect it has to do with the ‘alphabet’ part; so maybe I could see if I can find others supporting that connection, so it is not just me think this (maybe because you usually learn the alphabet when you are young).

Maybe one survey could be asking peoples thoughts on this idea/product. Another could be to see if people associated Forkie as innocent and child like (and therefore, in my eyes, a good option for the product theme).

“What is your role in the team?”:

Right now, I kinda feel like the person in charge, as I am kinda telling and directing people. So maybe part of my job could be checking in on people, and trying to make sure we are on the same page. But in terms of what to work on, I like design and art, so maybe packaging. But also, maybe looking more into where it would go, as I have already done some work finding a possible restaurant, however I fear that would be too little, so maybe then theming the product. I am not sure, our team still needs to figure out everyone’s roles.

“What are some potential challenges you may run into over the next 2-3 weeks?”:

Lack of organization and time. In most of the classes (I think) for this product, we haven’t had our full team present at once, and while we can send emails, it can make it harder to check in on people and how fast you get their thoughts. We have yet to figure out everyone’s roles. And I would like to further specify our target audience, and re-disccuss (as a team) our goals/aims.

And as I feel we are behind, there comes the chances of use not being able to get sone what we desire, in the remaining time.

Hopefully we will be able to get eveyone roles, that they are happy with, because I worry Brigette and I want to work on similar things, so maybe we can either find a middle ground, I work on something else, or we work on it together. Who knows? Hopefully we will be able to have all our team present more often these coming classes, than not. (At least next (or these next) coming class, so we can get everything sorted out, so we can start working.)