Reflective Summary- My First Retail Project Experience
Ending my first semester of interior design school with this project was an eye opening experience. Our first real project with multiple deliverables or parts of the assignment having to progress together and move forward simultaneously. It showed me what a real project would develop like in the field. It starts when you first get your assignment brief. My first move was to strategize and create a game plan for how to progress as many aspects had to advance at the same time. By peeking a glance into our seniors works I got a brief idea of what was required.
We had to first decide on a brand. My chosen brand was Cartier as I was interested in the aspect of it being the first store of its kind in Sri Lanka and how this would affect the community and how the community could also benefit from them. I had to interpret this brand and come up with a design concept on my own for their store. I was very excited to be able to explore and came up with an idea for this high fashion brand to interact with the local community. The first stage to do that was research. The research stage is important as it allows you to make better informed decisions further along the design process. A study tour excursion to three different stores at three different price points gave us invaluable understanding of where our brand stands in the market and how they are currently represented. This is where I faced my first obstacle. My perpetual need to perfect a task before moving on to the next stage was a hindrance in the overall assignment. It caused me to push forward but also at times fall back a few steps as I needed to go back and complete or do additional work for the previous stage of the project. This constant jumping back and forth between stages and making additional changes wasted a precious commodity I did not have called time.
This brings me to my second obstacle, time management. A habit of procrastinating and not paying enough attention to what requires it and more time spent on the little things that don't matter as much on the longer run cost me. It was really hard to express my thoughts creatively in a time constraint. In a process of improvement I learnt along the way how to overcome both these challenges over a period of time. Good time management and a practical and realistic time scale with a small dose of strong determination and perseverance allowed the work to be completed in time. This is where one of my lectures on Gantt charts really helped me. It helped to put the entire development process into a simplified perspective of which components of the project have to work together while considering the timescale.
A constant time constraint kept you on your toes and the need to move forward and progress was automatic due to the frequent reviews held by the lecturer for critique and to check on our progress. It was difficult to come up with a concept that encompassed all of Cartier's brand identity and my own vision for the store into one. The thought eventually came from the people. My final concept was 'involvement', to involve themselves into the Sri Lankan culture and how their jewelry and watches also represent a form of involvement from the brand to the customer to wear the pieces customized to you and affixed to your wrists from their signature love collection.
The next phase was finding an appropriate realization of the concept into the physical and keeping the reality of the retail project in mind. Understand the real life application of the design concept was a new and unique experience. Not just the material choices but even how people walked around the space was influenced by the concept. This was the third phase of the project. This kicked into high gear all the other deliverable components. Material sample collection and hashing out the final details and kinks in the plans so that the final stage of presentation could start. The reviews with our lecturer were a real help during this stage. A little knowledge of technical drawings and a lot of help from the lecturer helped complete this stage of the project. One thing that I really took to heart was that the customers and employees felt comfortable here. Everything was catered to their needs n requirements while keeping an element of sustainability and ergonometric in mind. Of course this design proposal for Cartier opening a first of its kind store that fully immerses itself in a host nations culture was going to gain international recognition. They have never done this before. So to involve the people into the process was also a crucial step. At one point in the design process, my design consisted of an automation of gears representing the brands watches and also the concept of 'involvement', very soon into actualizing this concept with a concept model and technical plans I realized what I pictured in my imagination and the reality were two different things. To remedy that I went back to the drawing board and came up with a better way to execute my ideas and it worked out well after that.
The final leg of the project was the most stressful period. The nerves are frazzled, tensions are high, sleep is at an all time low. The pressure was minimized by breaking the remaining work into small segments of time and finishing accordingly instead of getting overwhelmed by the bigger picture. The model required a level of precision that I was not expecting. The lectures that coincided with the project were very helpful. For example the lecture on presentation boards and grid lines helped me get a better understanding on how to go about making one that was balanced and visually appealing. Then it was just a matter of finishing touches and the project was done. The satisfaction you get when you see all your hard work in front of you is incomparable to anything else. My final thoughts at the end of this experience and moving forward are to work harder, gain knowledge from my mistakes and experiment even more with the next one.
