Feedback is an important part of this project, and although I have been getting the usual feedback from family/friends/teachers throughout the project I have not evidenced it on the Blog. So I'm making a dedicated post covering what feedback I got and how it helped move the project along.
The first feedback I got was to change the target audience to students. This particular feedback is very important because it completely changed the course of the project, it made the project a lot better. Changing the target audience meant I now had a project I could connect to more, as I'm a student and will be in a situation where I look at accommodation very soon. The professional couple on the other hand, can't relate to, nor do I know any personally, whereas I'm surrounded by people who are students, thinking about accommodation too.
Now that I was making a building for students, I thought it would be a good idea to create a survey so I could get an insight to what kind of things others would like in their accommodation if they had the option of choosing. I have my own perception of what the ideal accommodation is, but that's my individual opinion and it may not be similar to other's opinion.
Survey:
Results:
From this graph I can clearly see what people want in the accommodation, that helps me tailor the building to my audience. However that doesn't mean I'll follow it to the letter. I think when you are trying to be innovative, you have to go against the grain, you are trying to introduce something new. If something is new, then people wouldn't have been exposed to it, and thus wouldn't ask for it. A good example is the rating for the communal spaces and garden. The whole design of my building is made around the sense of community so there is a huge emphasis on those communal spaces, for example the first thing you see when opening the front door to your flat is those communal rooms, in hope it will encourage students to use those space rather then be tucked away in their own rooms. I won't get rid or downsize these communals spaces even though it is not something that is held in high regard.
In the other part of the survey I asked people what they would prefer out of two situations. You could argue the questions were leading questions, and they were, I had an idea in mind, and I was hoping to enlist those responses to justify my ideas. However it could also be that their responses were not influenced by my questions. I did get a lot of responses I was hoping for, an example is that the vast majority of people preferred, having a loft bed, their own bathroom/toilet but a shared kitchen. I was glad to get those answers, as they were all things I wanted to do in my design. However a lot of people didn't care for a balcony, or more storage which came as a surprise. So no balcony, the storage is another question. In some way the second part of the survey isn't that useful, because there will be two types of rooms. With the two types of rooms, plus the terraces and shared kitchen/living all of the options discussed in that part of the survey will be offered.
Then the other piece of feedback I got was on the final design and how I presented it. In terms of the design itself, people mentioned that it looked structured and detailed. I would say all the feedback I got in terms of the design was positive, people liked it, one of my peers said it looked like a famous building, one that would house important people. I think it would be fair to interpret that comment as the building having character, and being imposing, which does correlate with the purposes of my design. I wanted a structure that didn't look like it was temporary even though the rooms are intended to not be there permanently. Someone else mentioned that it reminded them of Lego houses, and I think that just goes to show how much the steps I took to reach that final design influenced it. I did not set out to make a building that reminded people of Lego, but I did model a lot of designs, including the final one, in Lego; obviously in doing so characteristics of the Lego models transferred to the final thing. I like that because it means each step in my project informed the next and so all things can be traced to the beginning which is what this project was meant to do. The last bit of feedback on the design regarded the use of materials, which was described to be basic but good. Again I think that is a positive. The purpose of the building was never to show off any particular material, or have any crazy colours, what I wanted to be front and centre were the forms, which is why the choice of concrete and wood was made.
The other part of the feedback regarded how I presented it. A few said they liked how I showed separate layers, and how they would fit with one another, however it was noted that it could also be confusing. What my peers saw was the final building, without any explanation of the design or how the project developed so it makes perfect sense that some aspect got confusing. I'm really happy I got this feedback, because without it I would've carried on with the assumption that people fully understood what I was presenting, when in actually it's not clear. From my point of view everything makes sense but that's because it's my project, the thing I've been working on for weeks, but I cannot forget that, this is not the case for anyone else. So for the rest I'll present it so that it will make sense to someone that has been introduced to my project for the first time. The last bit of feedback was also related to how I presented the work, as it gave someone the impression the building was open to anyone, which lead to questions about the security and safety of the building. During my research I read that majority of student put security as one of their biggest concerns with accommodation, and so when designing I made sure that the building was safe. However the way I chose to present my design eluded to something else, so what that tells me is that I need to be careful in the way i capture my work as it may lead people to think things about the building which aren't a problem.
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