As Year 7’s, we get to participate in an awesome learning opportunity called the Christmas Market where we make and sell products at a Market to students from the College. This project went over a term, and we got a little taste of how to run a business.
PROCESS
We had to go through along and extensive process we went through to reach our final project, Watermelon Sugar Scrubs and Baskets! We followed the ASC Design Thinking Process throughout the whole process.
Empathising ~
The first step in the design thinking process is Empathise. This is an important part in the process as it allows us to connect with our target audience and to understand what they might like. We empathised by completing an interview with someone else. This interview worksheet made us ask other people about what Christmas means to them and what Christmas gifts they would like to receive.
Defining ~
The next step of the design thinking process is defining. We defined what qualities we wanted our products for the Christmas Market to have. For example, we wanted to perhaps have an ethical component to our product, or wanted to have a chemical free product.
Ideating ~
Ideating is creating possible options for our product. We ideated all the different ideas that we had, and finally came up with an idea that we wanted to do. However, it’s always important to not pick the first idea that comes to your head, but an idea that you think is the best after brainstorming many ideas.
Finally, we settled on sugar scrubs and handmade baskets. Then, we completed a worksheet where we could prepare for our pitch to get our idea approved.
Prototype ~
The final step in the Design Thinking Process was prototype. This was where we made our sugar scrubs and baskets. We were happy with how our prototype was, so we started producing the sugar scrubs and baskets.
CAPABILITIES
When going through projects such as these, we use a lot of essential capabilities that will help us in the real-world.
Collaboration ~
Collaboration was used quite a lot in the project. We had a group that we worked with while creating our products. Because this project went over a term, there was a lot of work needed to make our products in the time crunch. Thus, collaboration was essential in making sure that we finished our products by the deadline.
Organised ~
It was important to be organised in this project as we had to make sure that we managed our time well. When doing any project, it is easy to get distracted and waste valuable class time that we had. However, Natasha, Ava and I were able to manage our time well and we finished making our products in time.
We were also organised by going shopping earlier than some other groups which meant that we could start producing our products as soon as possible.
Problem solving ~
One of the problems that we faced was our pricing. We initially thought that we were going to sell our sugar scrubs for $6, but then we decided to up our price after Ms Shaw said that the quality of our products was a lot more. We were also initially going to sell our baskets at $3, but due to the demand, we upped it to $4.
Another problem that we faced was the fact that our original plan (putting the sugar scrubs in baskets) didn’t really work as the sugar scrubs didn’t fit in the baskets. Therefore, we changed our idea to sell them as separate products. In hindsight, this was a good decision as we made a lot more money than we would have if we chose the sugar scrubs in baskets.
PROFIT
Overall, we made a profit of $82, which I was quite happy about. Here is the profit spreadsheet that we made to keep count of all our expenses and sales.