Over the course of this semester, our team has been working on ‘Perfectly Imperfect Co’. The first product line consisted of makeup bags with inspirational quotes that encouraged body positivity. After the launch of these products, I discovered that our audience was using our bags in a different way than we anticipated. This led us to further develop the social utility of our product for our audience. Further to improve our Digital artefact we decided to explore how we can make our brand more sustainable. Throughout this project, our team mostly participated in liquid labour. 

From the design thinking methodology, I noticed that over the last few weeks, we had to focus more on the Ideate stage as we had gained significant insight into how our users used our prototype when testing our products.

My market research showed that our target audience has a high prevalence of mental disorders as almost 2 in 5 people aged 16-24 have had a mental disorder. It also revealed that international travel by Australians is forecasted to increase by 40.1%. So we decided to remix our product by altering and repurposing our bags to create a new collection with a different objective that directly targets what our intended audience is actually using our product for. To do this we switched from makeup bags that promoted body positivity to travel bags that promote organisation and a healthy mindset. Perfectly Imperfect is also keeping the option for our consumers to design their own bags on my website so they can alter it exactly to their needs.  We included this feature to hopefully improve our participatory culture.  Once again we gained inspiration from Pinterest as we know it is a platform that our audience predominantly uses and is useful for finding inspiration.

The new travel pouches are labelled with unique designs so that users can easily organise their things when travelling. This time Andrea used Canva instead of MidJourney to create our designs for a simpler and cleaner look. On the back of the pouches, Andrea and I included quotes generated by ChatGPT to promote positive thinking as having a healthy mindset is a key factor of our brand. 

When making these travel bags we did run into some issues. Firstly, I could not get the normal printer to connect to my laptop which I needed in order to test the size of our designs to ensure that they would fit nicely on the bags. Eventually, I got it to work by printing them out a different way.  

Next, we once again had some issues with the laser cutter. Our first design was too big and the wrong shape. It also snapped and did not print correctly. Ming and Ngoc adjusted the design on the computer software and tried again. This time it cut out the right size however the design was quite small and difficult to see. Finally, on the third attempt, we were happy with the results.

Now that we had our new product range we had to figure out exactly how to reach our audience. For our online presence, I continued updating our website and posting on our social media accounts including Instagram and TikTok. 

However, I realised that in order to increase our brand’s popularity we need to focus more on what’s trending and what people will watch. I recognised from talking to Travis that in order to compete in the attention economy we need to start making morning routine content and day-in-the-life content as this is the format our audience is most likely to pay attention to. Andrea, Ngoc and I made a TikTok showcasing our bags being used in uni life which already received more views in one day than our other video edits did.

I also realised that an ideal way to reach our target audience is through influencers. However, it was difficult to reach influencers as we are not actually selling the bags, therefore influencers do not want to promote something that is not for sale. For the future of this product, I believe that celebrity endorsements would increase the popularity of our products.

Another important element I included into our project was improving the sustainability. To make this project sustainable I made our designs available for free download so that our users can use our designs to make their own products.

I also incorporated a chat forum made by Ming into the website that allows people to comment their opinions on our designs and post their own creations. We hope that this chat forum creates a positive space where people can support each other and give feedback. 

So far we have not had any issues since incorporating these tools into our project.

Another key factor that I feel is highly important is ensuring our brand is environmentally friendly. My plan for selling this product is to use sustainable packaging such as compostable mailers. In addition, I would like to donate 10% of each sale to the Australian Conservation Foundation so that we are doing our part to help society.

Overall this experience taught me that you need to look deeper at your intended audience and how to reach them.

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Our Group Report: