Jay’s Project Development

In the last blog post, I explained what Jay’s bead decor is and how we started this project from scratch. I also outlined the steps we took in relation to the design thinking process. Our initial design thinking process helped us create a solid idea for our small business, However, we are not achieving many sales, therefore it is time we looked at ways to develop our project through framing and reframing.

When starting a new project, as it develops people often find that things may not be working out as well as they hoped. That is why a necessary part of the design thinking methodology includes project iteration techniques. By exploring and implementing project iteration techniques specifically in businesses and organisations it can help generate new ideas and perspectives, which inturn can improve products, increase customer satisfaction, improve collaboration and flexibility and empower teams. Project development can also include framing and reframing, this is the process of shifting our original way of thinking about our projects. Understanding problem framing consists of 3 activities, these include seeing, thinking and acting and by utilising these 3 activities it can help us decide when and how to pivot and experiment with our projects whilst still achieving the same goal.

Our audience on Instagram is increasing at a slow rate, we have seen a lot of engagement from our current followers, however, it is hard to gain new followers especially as we aren’t reaching many accounts. It is still a good platform to announce updates to our followers and my Instagram polls are still popular amongst our customers.

The blog by David Aaker made me realise that I needed to expand my way of thinking by reframing our social media and advertising to be less restrictive. We realised that now is a good time to work on our project development and implement some new techniques to improve our small business. https://twitter.com/MayaCassar4/status/1571660826528075778?s=20&t=TilIgWryeydnTE0xKMhLjA

Through problem framing activities of seeing, thinking and acting I decided to pivot my approach and try a different platform that is also popular called TikTok. I made a business account and posted a short video and it immediately reached more accounts overnight than our Instagram had received in weeks. This shows that it may be a better platform for attracting customers than Instagram and could have the potential to solve our problems of attracting people to our Etsy site. https://twitter.com/MayaCassar4/status/1571660572059664385?s=20&t=TilIgWryeydnTE0xKMhLjA

Although I have reframed our social media approach, we have not reframed our product and it still has the same utility of providing our consumers with funky handmade decor that allows people to easily decorate their cars, rooms, phones and more at an affordable price. This project is still relevant to me as it is providing me with new experiences and learnings about running a business which will be useful to me in the future.

Jay’s Bead Decor is still targeting young people aged 10-25 who are students or just starting out in the workforce. From our polls we have been learning more about what our consumers like, such as most prefer bright vibrant colours. I think it is important that we continue to conduct more research to learn more about our audience.

Moving forward I would like to try out instagrams “boost” feature to see if this would help us gain more followers and more website visits. This affordance has the possibility to gain more traction for our small business and increase sales.

Although Janae and I have found this a difficult project to make successful, I feel we have learned alot and it is a good practice for future projects. From working with Janae I have also learned a lot about collaborating with others and appreciate her participation and ideas within this business.

#Brightenupwithbeads

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jays.bead.decor/?hl=en