Jay’s Contextual Report

For my digital artefact, my friend Janae Thomson and I decided to collaborate and create a bead decor business. This idea was generated from her desire to learn a new skill of making beads decorations and my love of small businesses and social media. Our small business became Jay’s bead decor through the combination of our names, Janae and May. Once we had ideated and defined our idea we were ready to begin our project. However, our journey over the semester proved to be one of many learnings.

We decided that our goal would be to sell the bead decorations to our target audience of gen Z. Our social utility was to provide people with cute and funky bead decor that they could use to decorate their spaces and showcase their personalities in an affordable way. We chose to target this demographic as our research showed that this age group is the most likely to decorate their personal homes and spaces. In order to sell the beads Janae was making, we decided to create an Etsy site. We chose Etsy to sell our products on as it is a platform that is becoming increasingly popular and we hoped this would assist in making sales.

Next, I decided to create an Instagram account for our business, so that we could increase our audience and potentially bring traffic to our Etsy site. The reason I chose to use Instagram to promote and showcase our bead decor is because it is one of the most popular social media platforms amongst our target market.

Feedback from polls + Human centered design thinking

To begin our business venture Janae and I used the Human Centred Design Thinking process which is a methodology that highlights the steps taken throughout the creative process. The steps in this methodology include empathise, define, ideate, prototype, and test. One important aspect I learned about the design thinking process is that it is a creative and collaborative practice. In our project, this was displayed through our bead designs and my partnership with Janae. A significant step for our digital artefact was when we were able to test our designs. After we had made our samples in the prototype phase, I used Instagram’s affordance of the poll feature to test our designs. By posting polls on our Instagram story I was able to receive direct feedback from our followers and potential customers on what designs and styles of our bead decorations they liked. This helped us create and design products that our audience liked and would be willing to purchase. It also allowed us to learn more about our consumers and make necessary changes to our products. The Instagram polls were very successful amongst our audience as the majority of our followers engaged in the activity, it was clear that many people enjoyed being able to vote on different products and were appreciative of being able to have a say in our business and what we produce, thus making them feel more connected to the brand whilst showing that we value their opinion. We had hoped that figuring out exactly what our consumers wanted that it would increase traffic and we would receive more sales.

Switch to TikTok + Project development

After noticing our lack of sales I realised we had to improve our project development as this is vital in the design thinking process especially when things are not going as planned. An essential aspect of this methodology includes the implementation of project iteration techniques. The use of project iteration techniques helps us generate new ideas that can lead to improvements in products, customer satisfaction, collaboration, flexibility, and empowering teams which is exactly what Janae and I needed. By exploring new ideas I realised we need to consider framing and reframing our project. To understand project framing we need to use the 3 activities of seeing, thinking, and acting to help us decide when and how to pivot our project whilst achieving the same goals. By exploring project framing I noticed that our Instagram engagement was not as high as it was in the introduction stage as the platform is hard to gain followers on and it is difficult to reach new accounts. However, it is still a good platform to receive feedback from our consumers and provide them with updates on our business. I decided to reframe our social media approach by making our advertising less restrictive, by implementing new techniques to improve our project development.

To do this I created a Tik Tok account that I could use to promote and showcase our products. I decided to use TikTok as it is a platform I already use and have seen other small businesses benefit from it. After our first post, we immediately reached more accounts in one night on TikTok than we did in weeks on Instagram. This meant that I could increase our engagement without reframing our product, audience, or utility.

We feel that we failed in this project due to our lack of sales which is a direct result of our inability to dedicate enough time and money into our small business. It is for that reason that Janae and I will not be continuing this venture, however, we have learned a lot and it will assist us in future projects.