Minor Project - Tasks
WEEK1-WEEK15
NAME: JIN RONG
I.D: 0361701
COURSE: Minor Project / Bachelor of Design (Honors) in Creative Media
INSTRUCTIONS
TASK PROGRESS
Week 1
In our first week, Mr. Mike introduced the module and presented seven
real-world client projects for us to choose from. We were tasked with
forming teams and selecting one project to develop over the semester. Our
team—Group 9—consists of seven members. After a team discussion, we
decided to take on the
Yubari Self-Watering Pot
project, working in collaboration with the client company
Expedio.
Week 2
This week, we confirmed our team roles and responsibilities. We also
watched the recorded lecture on myTimes, which gave us a clearer picture
of the project objectives, the assessment structure, and what is expected
of us moving forward. With this foundation, we felt more prepared for our
upcoming client meeting.
Week 3
This week, my work focused on deeply analyzing YUBARI's brand direction and positioning, developing concepts for an immersive online experience, and optimizing them based on class feedback.
First, I systematically refined the brand direction, defining YUBARI as a lifestyle companion that integrates intelligent care, emotional companionship, and spatial aesthetics, rather than simply a self-watering device or decorative item. It symbolizes a quiet, gentle, and warm lifestyle, offering a constant presence and care without disturbing users.
In the brand identity, I defined the brand's personality (Quiet, Gentle, Emotionally Warm), core concept (Silent Companionship), and keywords (Emotional Connection, Low Maintenance, Ambiance, Smart Living, Quiet Companionship). I also emphasized its emotional value—after a busy day, it acts like a silent friend, bringing users a sense of belonging and relaxation.
I also wrote a Brand Positioning report, distilling three core values:
Emotional Companionship – Building Emotional Bonds
Low-Intervention Intelligence – Quiet and Self-Managing
Home Integration – Combining Practicality and Aesthetics
In my competitor analysis, I compared Plantui Smart Garden (Finland) and Rise Gardens (USA), analyzing their features, strengths, and weaknesses. I also highlighted YUBARI's differentiating strengths—its warm design, emotional ambiance, and product positioning for casual users.
Based on the principle of "promoting the brand, not the product," I proposed four creative directions:
Micro Moments VR/AR Experience: Using VR/AR to create a warm, slow-paced virtual space (such as a study or a plant corner), allowing users to immerse themselves in moments of emotional relaxation and share their own "calm moments," strengthening emotional connections.
Short Video Series - "Emotional Objects": Inviting users to share emotionally meaningful stories about everyday objects, recreated through illustrations, audio, or short videos, conveying the brand's empathy and warmth.
Short Video Series - "Still Life": Capturing quiet, gentle moments in life (such as the evening sun or a blanket on the sofa), using a slow-paced aesthetic to convey the concept of "slowing down" and cultivate the brand's emotional identity.
(Highlight unanimously recognized by the panel) Life Rhythm Contrast - Online Immersive Web Experience:
This proposal creates emotional transformation through a sharp contrast in the rhythms of life.
Opening: Using fast-paced, stressful animations (subway, traffic, and overtime work) to simulate urban anxiety.
Transitions: The tempo gradually slows, the music softens, the colors warm, and the scene shifts to plants, natural light, and a quiet corner, allowing users to experience a sense of emotional release.
No-action interaction: The entire experience unfolds naturally, guiding users' emotions from "chaos" to "calmness," strengthening their subconscious emotional memory of the YUBARI brand.
Emotional psychology: Through emotional contrast, users feel understood and cared for, fostering a deep emotional resonance.
Brand significance: The message conveys that "YUBARI understands the emotional fatigue of modern life and provides an emotional haven for balanced, gentle, and mindful living."
Week 4— Deepening Research & Initial Persona Development
During the fourth week, I designed potential interview and questionnaire questions centered around three user archetypes identified by our team: young people building their first home, women running their own businesses, and Gen Z users seeking lifestyle adjustments. These questions revolved around the concept of "Me Time."
To tailor my questions to each user archetype's daily context, I considered their pain points regarding time, emotions, and lifestyle. For example, for young people building their first home, I focused on questions about "sense of spatial belonging" and "creating a calming atmosphere at home." For women running businesses, I considered topics like "emotional fragmentation" and "finding moments of relaxation amidst high-pressure work." And for Gen Z users seeking lifestyle adjustments, I sought to guide them in describing their ideal personal space and explore their understanding of emotional sustainability.
These questions addressed not only functional needs (such as whether self-watering plants can improve quality of life) but also emotional desires (such as the desire for a carefree object that provides companionship). This allowed subsequent interviews to help us identify key points for the YUBARI brand to resonate emotionally with users.
Week 5— Persona Refinement & Survey Planning
This week, Mr. Mike reviewed our first draft of the personas and offered valuable feedback. He pointed out that one of the personas—a mother—was too broadly defined and overlapped with others. In response, we refined her profile into a more specific “young home-nester”, ensuring all three personas represented distinct identities.
We also decided on the target demographic distribution for our survey:
60% Gen Z
20% young home-nesters
20% female entrepreneurs
During this week, I was primarily responsible for designing and refining questionnaires for three user groups:60%Generation Z,20%young couples, and 20% female entrepreneurs.
Based on different user profiles, I adjusted and refined the questions to ensure they were more tailored to their needs and characteristics, enhancing their relevance and practicality.
Week 6— Survey Finalization & Feedback Integration
After submitting our survey draft, Mr. Mike gave us detailed feedback. He reminded us that the main objective of the survey was to support the development of a strategic promotional campaign that not only resonates with our user personas but also encourages genuine interest in Yubari’s product.
He provided sample questions and suggestions for improving clarity and focus. Using this input, we carefully revised the survey, refined the language, and selected the most relevant questions for each persona group. Once finalized, we created a Google Form and began preparing for data collection.
Week 7— Survey Distribution & Targeted Outreach
During the survey distribution phase, we aimed to collect responses that matched our target audience:60%Gen Z,20%Nesters (ages 35-50), and 20% Early Millennials (ages 31-45).
Since I belong to Gen Z, I was primarily responsible for expanding Gen Z user participation through personal channels. I shared the survey with my family and asked them to forward it to their appropriate age groups. I also sent the survey to my classmates to reach more respondents who met our target demographic.
Through these methods, we strived to ensure a diverse and representative survey sample, providing valuable user feedback for subsequent product design.
WEEK 8
During the "Discovery Category" phase, our team worked together to categorize and organize the collected survey data.
I participated in analyzing user feedback and helped identify key discovery categories, including "Me Time" experience quality, the impact of visual content, style preferences, product purchase motivations, and social media trends.
Week 9
Mr. Mike gave us input on our Point of View (POV) section. Following his suggestions, we revised and polished the content to ensure it was more concise and well-defined. Once the POV was finalized, we moved on to developing our proposal presentation slides.
WEEK 10
Task 2: Idea Execution
Week 11
Mr. Mike briefed us on the required content for the final presentation. At this stage, we started working on both the user journey map and the customer journey map, using them to plan out the design tasks. We also began preparing a Gantt chart to track our progress leading up to the final presentation.
Gantt chart link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HO2S14EZL8WBHIl8fbvTo4waTWS-UEvyS0xfmG7auXo/edit?gid=1115838130#gid=1115838130
WEEK 12
Mr. Mike mentioned that our visual direction was still not well-defined, so he suggested we brainstorm some guiding keywords for the project. After our discussion, we settled on "simple,""calm," and "playful" as Yubari’s core descriptors. He encouraged us to design with these words in mind and recommended that we create a poster to help establish a clearer direction.
Following the session, we started discussing the color scheme. We looked into several green-toned palettes and presented them to the team. After everyone voted, we went with the palette that received the highest number of votes as our final selection.
After fully confirming the project requirements, my team and I began systematically sorting out and refining the app's functional modules, ensuring that each component effectively met the needs of the target users and the overall project direction. Based on previous user research and persona analysis, we identified the core design goal of the app: to help users intuitively "overview their current emotional state and the mood of the day," serving as a key entry point for mood management and feedback.
With this goal in mind, we began detailed interface design and feature planning, focusing on simple and expressive visual elements to enable users to easily and quickly reflect and record their emotions. We also considered the smoothness of the user experience and intuitive interaction during the design process, striving to create a mood tracking module that is both beautiful and practical, laying a solid foundation for subsequent functional expansion.
After receiving this feedback, Mr. Mike suggested that we first standardize and unify the app's visual style before entering development. This guidance emphasizes the importance of visual consistency, which helps enhance the coherence of the user experience and the professionalism of the overall brand image. Based on this suggestion, we plan to first develop detailed visual design specifications, including key elements such as color, fonts, icons, and interface layout, to ensure that subsequent development work is supported by clear and unified design standards.
WEEK 13
Since we needed to first unify the visual style, my teammates and I decided to create a colorless version of the design so we could focus on refining the layout and functional structure. This way, we could ensure the rationality of the overall interface framework and the smoothness of user interaction before agreeing on the visual elements, laying a solid foundation for subsequent coloring and detail optimization.
We have made multiple revisions and optimizations to the completed project parts, while also working on improving the unfinished content, striving to improve the overall quality and functional completeness. Through continuous iteration, we ensure that the project is more refined in details and the overall experience is smoother and more coordinated.
WEEK14
This week, we focused on designing the interactive experience of "emotion-to-plant lighting feedback" within the app. Specific work included designing lighting colors and transition effects corresponding to different emotions (such as happiness, sadness, anger, and neutrality), ensuring that the visual presentation accurately matched the emotional state. We also planned design solutions that unlock more refined emotions (such as anxiety and calmness) as the user's level increases, enriching the user's emotional expression. The entire design process focused on a smooth user experience and intuitive interface, striving to create an emotional interaction module that is both beautiful and immersive.
In response to the team's request for a unified visual style, we made detailed adjustments to the application's color usage, focusing on standardizing and unifying the color application of each interface module to ensure a more harmonious and consistent color combination. This secondary coloring work not only optimized the overall visual effect, but also enhanced the professionalism of the interface and user experience.
WEEK 15
Task 3: Final Presentation
YUBARI G3 | Final Presentation
REFLECTION
Throughout the project, I deeply appreciated the importance of teamwork and systematic planning. Initially, when clarifying requirements and target users, we spent considerable time developing detailed user personas and questionnaires, which laid a solid foundation for subsequent design. However, during the actual design phase, insufficient attention to a unified visual style led to inconsistent color schemes, impacting the overall visual quality and user experience.
After receiving feedback from my instructor, I realized that design isn't just about polishing interface elements; it also requires a holistic approach, establishing clear and unified visual standards to ensure a consistent and professional look across the entire application. To this end, we first created a colorless version, focusing on refining the interface structure and interaction flow. We then meticulously adjusted and unified the colors of different modules. This iterative process effectively enhanced the product's completeness and visual harmony.
Furthermore, the repeated revisions made me realize that design requires close communication, timely feedback, and collaboration with team members to avoid duplication of effort and improve efficiency. In the future, I will prioritize overall planning at the beginning of a project, promoting the development of clear design standards and processes to ensure seamless and steady progress.
Overall, this project experience has allowed me to gain valuable practical experience and understand the complete process from user research to visual design and iterative optimization. It has also enhanced my teamwork and design thinking skills. I will continue to learn and improve, striving to be more professional and efficient in my design work.
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