Week 12 Capstone

One week to go… what a fantastic journey it has been so far! Going into week 13 is well and truly the home stretch. This week was solid, I got practically everything on my to-do list done and made some progress on what I had planned for next week already! Unfortunately, I’m struggling to know when enough is enough. I’m constantly thinking of new ideas and ways to change or improve what I’ve done, which is excellent when in the ideating phase but not so good when there is a week to go. I need to learn when enough is enough and that even though I think I can make something better, I need to shift my priorities to ensure everything is done for the headline. I’m still struggling with the sensation that I can’t get away from this project, but only a week to go before it’s just the report I need to worry about! Outside of Uni, We’ve got a week of training left and final preparations before we fly out to China, which is wildly exciting! It’s hard to fathom that it’s just a week away.

Going back to the reflection on my project, I’ll start with the context phase. Week 12 was focused on creating my final deliverable video - Recording, voicing, editing, sourcing, and all that jazz, finishing my casebook, touching up my packaging, sorting my final prints for my prototypes, and further working on my visual summary. This was a complete shift away from my comfort zone and threw me into a work world where I don’t feel the most confident (graphic design and aesthetic work). This is something I struggle with, as I know my strengths don’t lie in the artistic side of design, but I think being aware of my limits in this aspect is good, and I don’t hold myself to as high standards as I do with the other aspects of my work. This results in some work that might not look the prettiest, but I’m normally pretty confident with the actual content of what I’ve made.

Casebook Mock-up

The actions I took to address the context of this week were also pretty straightforward. For my video, I collected testing and urban space footage that I had taken over the last few months, combined it with a storytelling aspect based around the unifying power of football through a few stock videos and personal football footage, spoke over the video to address the issue and how my solution works, and put it all together on DaVinci Resolve. I spoke on the restrictions of DaVinci last week, so I won’t comment on it again. In terms of packaging, I added multiple other languages to the back of my packaged model to better emulate a market-ready product. For the 3D printing part, I attempted to print a few of model 6 to attach to a boot and take photos of, but the FabLab has been packed all week, and they haven’t got around to seeing my email yet. Hopefully, I can get this sorted out next week. For my casebook, I collated all of the research I had collected on sustainable practices in football, I commented on improvements around lighting, chemical use with fertilisers, different playing surfaces, better use of space, and a few local examples. This was pretty enjoyable to create, as a lot of the research I had done earlier in this project and for other projects.

This resulted in what felt like a very productive week, and leaves me with only 2 deliverables to finish in week 12 - the visual summary and presentation. Along with this, the deliverables I did finish this week I’m pretty proud of, although I think it’s clear that my strengths lie in prototyping - which are the part of this project I’m most proud of. The others - the casebook, heroshots for ReDesign Submission, and the video, I’m also very happy with. I think with the time I’ve had and my limited graphical skills, they are both at a standard that I believe is good.

Again, I think this week has reinforced the importance of planning. My Gantt chart and to-do list were created at the start of this assignment just to tick off a section of a rubric, but now I think it’s been the MVP of this project. Being able to ground myself back into what needs focus and setting my own deadlines has been so important and has meant that I’ve never really felt horrifically stressed or overwhelmed with what is the most important assignment I’ve ever done. Despite this, coming to the end of this journey has also shown me how much I’m going to miss this part of my life. I never really thought past going to university, and the fact that I have a week of it left has put me in a position of insecurity that I haven’t experienced before. This has left me in a bit of an emotional limbo if I’m honest. There’s days where I’m super excited about the opportunities in the future, but others where I crave stability. In the end, I'm just happy that I've made it this far with this project and University as a whole, and have survived a pandemic ridden degree! One week to go...