As research for my crowdfunding page, I explored and took notes on these existing sites available for everyone.

1) https://www.justgiving.com

2) https://www.patreon.com/

3) http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk

I found that there are many common components  that make up the average crowdfunding page. This includes:

– Name of the project and summary of the company and situation
– Amount of money need to fund the project and how many days left to achieve this
– How much the project has raised and its backers
– A promotional video or image that represents the project and encourages people to back the project.
– A section that explains what the money raised will be used for
– Rewards for backers

All of these sites have a clear layout that makes it easy to navigate around and all the important information is given to allow people to back a project they know all the details about. The sections most important for a backer to know is usually in a banner at the top of the page in a creative way to attract people to certain projects.

STEMettes- teaching grid to code their own mobile app

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/stemettes

HYLI- Teach every child in Cornwall the skills they need for life #fund4lifeskills

http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/fund4lifeskills/

Surrey-wide casualty reduction theatre education project targeted at secondary schools.

http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/casualty-reduction-theatre-workshops

I chose all of these examples because they are either about life skills or a project that are supporting schools to provide workshops for their student which is what Smart Skills is all about. I will take inspiration from all of these when creating my own crowdfunding page.

This week, after deciding exactly how I wanted to solve the issue of young people not being taught enough life skills in school, I started thinking about how i wanted to present this. I bounced around a few ideas for names for the company including Think Forward, Forward Thinking and Live Ahead all of which show the company is all about education that can take you further ahead in life. After doing a quick google on some of these I found most of the already exist as company names and tend to have a similar concept of teaching a specific audience different skills. After some time I decided on the name Smart Skills as I felt it was relevant and to the point.

   

After finalising what the company was to be called and creating a quick sketch of what i wanted the logo to look like. The design I went with is a light bulb (which is commonly associated with an idea and being bright/smart) with a spanner for the inside as the light (to represent skills).  I opened Adobe Illustrator and created different variations of the initial idea. I tried different line weights and changed small details that could effect the way consumers saw the company. I decided in the design in the bottom left hand corner as I thought the lines indicating light on the last two of each line was too much detail and unnecessary for the representation of the company and decided the lines to represent a screw bulb gave a more professional look to the logo and something I could see to my advantage later on when doing my visual representation for this project.

When starting to think about the solution for the problem this project is based on, I knew I wanted to keep what ever I designed towards this sophisticated yet colourful. So when I designed the logo, I started to play around with colour and created a couple colour palettes that I though would work well with the theme of the project and also the target audience. I wanted basic primary colours so made pallets of variations of reds, blues and yellows. However, when I asked for a peers opinion of colour selection they said they associated the colour green to education so I decided to Incorporated green and also orange (this made the colours work better together and means I have more to be creative with) to the colours to my primary colour and adjusted them to complement each other. The final palette is shown on my style guide.

 

Deciding on a font to use in the branding of the company took some time and a lot of trial and error. In the end I decided on the typeface Raleway as I feel it will work well for all occasions whether used in 12pt for a paragraph of text or as a title or logo, its versatile and has many font variations with in it which will give me much more room to be creative yet keeping the style of the company cohesive and it also works well with the theme and logo. I also tried different variations of how to layout the logo, where to place the main logo in correlation to the name of the company. I decided on 3 different ways the logo can be used and how colour can be incorporated with each one.

When I was a student in secondary school, the national science museum did a talk at the school and taught us things that were not on the national curriculum but that were worth knowing. They presented this information in an interactive presentation with workshops that followed. I enjoyed this as someone who learnt things best in a visual way and some of what I learnt that day I still remember and is useful information to know. I have asked a range of other people if their schools provided this sort of experience and they all responded with a yes meaning this teaching technique is something that is commonly used in schools around the country, however it seems only available for science and creative subjects.

https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/learning/outreach-we-visit-you 

Knowing how effective visual learning really is I decided this is the way I want to solve the problem at hand. So taking inspiration from the National Science Museum I have decided on a company that can be hired by schools to do workshops on certain life skills that can be carried into their futures. Students could pick what skills they want to learn and have practice in with some being for everyone i.e. sewing, cooking, survival skills would be of those to choose from where as a lesson of maybe money management would be for everyone. Schools could hire this company to do talks and workshops on set skills that they do no offer themselves meaning it can cater to all schools and not repeating  anything on a schools individual curriculum.

This could work on its own however this company will only help for one day so to help carry on the learning into the home or just past education and into independent living, an app or website that young people can refer to when they need tips on a certain skill. This can mean that if a school does not offer the workshops for their students they can use a piece of soft ware that can provide a similar experience with videos talking though topics. It would be a social media/ video sharing site that can be used at all ages to help them in what every skills they are lacking in.

This week I created a persona of my target audience. I took the feedback from my primary and secondary research and wrote out a script with- an overview of who they are, scenarios related to the audience and problem, goals and pains of the scenarios, their behaviour and their needs when it comes to a solution to the problem.

After I wrote this up opened indesign and created the following design and layout.

 

For my primary research I decide I wanted to survey my target audience together as many responses as possible and also interview a teacher get their opinion on where they think schools are going wrong in teaching life skills and if they see it as an urgent problem that needs a solution.

After trying to get hold of a teacher that i was familiar with and failing I chose to survey my back up research group. 18-22 yr olds who have recently (within the last 3 years) moved away from home.  I created two very simular surveys but altered them for the two age groups. This would allow me to compare answers from both demographics and see if there was pattern in education and if students see this as a problem at 15-16 or is it something you realise is an issue when you are faced with having to use skills you haven’t learnt in a real life situation.

15-18 results Life Skills Survey (Responses) – Form Responses 1

18-22 results Life Skills (Responses) – Form Responses 1 (1)

What I got from doing this research

• On the 18-22 survey I asked the question ‘Do you think you would have been ready for independent living at the age of 16?’. The response was mainly no however when asked my target audience the similar question ‘Do you think you are ready for independent living?’ the main response was yes. Before young people have left school they most likely believe they don’t need to learn these skills and they believe they are already set for facing the world alone however it seems when you going independent living you realise you do need those skills.
• 100% of all the people who answered the surveys wished their schools taught more life skills skills which proves this really is a problem that needs a solution and now.
• All the responses to the survey show that schools do not teach money management and basic law at all. Two things that seem obvious to know and to be taught and things that could could impact someones life if they never learn these.
• the last question on both ‘ Are there any life skills you think schools should teach that have not already been mentioned in this survey?’ gave surprising answers. Out of the young people between the ages 15-18, only one gave answer to this where as on the 18-22 survey all but one answered this. This may show that young people don’t know what skills they need to be taught at school until they leave which is then too late to ask for support. However I can only make this assumption as I didn’t require an answer this question meaning the people who didn’t answer the question didn’t for this reason.