Week 4: Initial Project Brief

In order to move forward with my project I aimed this week to create a brief which would define my project and help me move forward into idea generation. After some consideration and a little rephrasing my initial brief was as follows:

I knew I wanted to create something which would help the user convey their ideal tone to luthiers and so this formed the headline of my brief. In addition because I wanted to improve my making skills both in woodworking and in techniques utilised heavily by contemporary designers I stated that I should use both of these when making my product. The reason I refer to my project as an instrument rather than a product was because I thought that I could encourage myself to get creative by thinking about different uses of the word instrument (musical, scientific etc.) which would help me come up with a range of ideas.

However after speaking to people about my brief and receiving feedback I have recently come to realise that there are several issues with my brief, the most prominent being that it is too constraining. The way I have phrased the first line makes me think only of a very specific object and so it will not prove helpful when it comes to brainstorming ideas. In addition the target user and environment for the product has not been very well defined in the brief and so this could also hinder idea generation. Over the current week I can hopefully refine my brief so that I can come up with a range of solutions to choose from for my final product.