Murrays Bay Intermediate
The design process
Students in the school's design business were given the following design brief:
Your company has been approached by the New Zealand Board of Small Business Development, asking you to develop a pharmaceutical product suitable for a small business to manufacture on a production line employing up to six people.
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When we received the design brief, our team had lots of discussion about what we were going to do and how we were going to do it. We brainstormed to get ideas before choosing our product designer. We had to think about the skills we had and the materials that were available, as well as the time we had to create the product.
We decided to make a strawberry-shaped soap.
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Our designer carved a strawberry shape in soft wood. We used this shape to create the plastic mould in the mould-making machine. We had to consider the materials we would be working with. For example, we decided it was better to use rounded forms rather than sharp, pointed forms for this design, so that the mould would be easier to make and the soap more pleasant to use.
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Each member of the group had a different role. One of the team acted as the manager and we had a designer, a person in charge of production, someone in charge of packaging, and another person looking after marketing. This worked really well, as we could each concentrate on our own job, but we could also support the team.
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When the mould was ready, we prepared the soap mixture, decided on the colour, and prepared to pour the soap into the mould.
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As we knew that the soap would be competing with many other soaps in the shop, we decided to wrap it in cellophane, so that we could see the bright colour through the paper but there was still a bit of mystery to the product. Our target market was a young female market, so we decided to add a silver heart to make the packaging attractive to this group.
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At the start, we couldn’t think of a label for the soap. We all had ideas about it, but we couldn’t agree. Someone saw ISKI in a magazine and we thought that would be an interesting and unusual brand name. When the soap was packaged and labelled, we presented our product to the board.
The board was very positive about our product. They said that it met the design brief requirements and that it was attractive and marketable. They questioned the brand name and thought we should consider changing it so that it had more associations with the school.
