Creating New Products

I recently took part in the Make it Happen course run by the brilliant minds at Make it in Design. The course is aimed at anyone looking to get going on a "new something", whether that is a brand new something or a evolving from something that already exists.

The course drives you through a 12 week project from inception to delivery, helping you to set out your milestones , and what your deliverables will be. It does this by seting out a series of prompts that are then used to tease out your ideas and give you the motivation to take these ideas forward. Your participation in the course is in real-time actually working through your plan and checking-in during the course along with the other participants. I think this helps ensure a level of accountability which in turn helps you keep on track and this increases the chances of project success.

The project that I chose to do was to add new products to my existing range on my Etsy shop.

I wanted to expand my range in order to attract a wider range of prospective customers.

I settled on creating some notepads, tea towels and tote bags, practical products that could be used and then easily recycled when no longer wanted or needed, the ethos of my business.

The course encouraged me to look in detail at what I wanted to achieve and break it down into smaller, more manageable chunks, and with realistic deadlines.

So how did my project go?

Embarking on my own project along with others did help me to stay, not just focussed but also inspired. When you are working on a project, on your own, it is really easy to talk yourself out of doing it, not just because the self-doubt creeps in, but when you are engrossed in a single thing, it can be discouraging when it is not going how you would expect, and you can lose perspective getting caught up in whether your designs are working.

The course did a good job of keeping me on track and when I felt like I was going to descend "down a rabbit hole", it re-focussed me on what it was I was trying to achieve. One of my weaknesses is being over-inspired and going off on tangents when I think I have another idea to develop.

The hand outs helped me to write my project plan which in turn held me accountable over the twelve weeks. The check-ins help me to come up for air, reassess, see what everyone else was doing and then get on with it again.

I didn't get everything that I wanted to do, done. I think I was too ambitious with what I how many products I wanted to release. I had wanted to get notepads, tea towels and tote bags into my range, but it came to a point I had to decide that the notebook was all could do with the timescales, as I was trying to do this along side my usual card release cycle.

I went with five different notebook designs, two from my hero product designs, with a spring and the summer version, along with introducing further summer influenced designs such as my puffins and sailing boats.

Go take a look at this notebooks on my Etsy shop.

If you find yourself in the situation where there is something that you have thinking about doing but can't get started, or you keep finding an excuse for not getting started, then this is the course for you. Go take a look Make it in Design.