PROJECT EVALUATION; Question 3...

Question 3:
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
I am a member of the target audience that my group’s music video and ancillary tasks are appealing too: late teens- early adult women with a rough age range of: 17-25 years. Despite this, I soon found that I am not actually a fan of the ‘pop-piano rock’ cross-over genre which meant that both my research and feedback were crucial to the success of my contribution to this project. Immediately I was aware that what little knowledge I had about our chosen genre was going to need to be heavily supported by that of my peers and teachers. Therefore I found myself constantly questioning my friends (who, fortunately, were also within our target audience) for their suggestions and improvements on my work.

At numerous occasions throughout the development, production and evaluation stages of this project my group received extensive feedback for our music video. The majority of this was from our teachers as they oversaw us during our time spent on the editing computers. They were frequently available to check over work, analyse footage and help make difficult decisions. I learned from their feedback that, if ever you have a doubt about any aspect of the video, your teachers are always there to offer their help but at the end of the day it is your video and the decision is yours to make. I found that it was usually best to try and solve the problem myself but, only if that was absolutely impossible, there was the option of asking for help.

Unfortunately, and something I would change if I were to re-do this project, the major feedback our music video received actually occurred after we had submitted it! Therefore we were unable to make any changes- but fortunately I don’t think we needed to! Our video was shown to a group of mixed boys and girl of about 15 years of age and they all looked as if they were enjoying it. Although they were not quite our target audience their feedback seemed mostly positive which pleased us; as there appeared not be any glaringly obvious lapses in judgement- I think our music video was a success. From this technique, I learned that it is probably the most honest form of feedback possible as what they thought was instantly shown on their faces- be it good or bad. I found that the various locations we used made the video and storyline quite relatable and the constant movement made it enjoyable to watch. I was happy with the feedback I received at this stage.

From people I spoke to about my video, mostly the other media students in my class whose opinion is slightly more relevant than most, I learned that our narrative was fairly easy to follow: the simple girl meets boy, falls in love and has her heart broken. The generic locations, simple costumes and use of flashbacks made the concept slightly more interesting with one student: Cerise Gibbins, stating: ‘your characters reflect the lyrics really well!’ The shot that received the greatest praise was our last shot- the one where Melissa’s hands slip out of Aaran’s; I think this was because it was so dramatic as it was edited in slow motion.

In terms of my ancillary tasks, I was assigned the construction of a:

• Tour poster
• Billboard design
• Digipak

I saw feedback from my teachers, feedback from my peers and feedback from my target audience as three very separate categories. I made sure I gained feedback from all three and have featured this on my blog throughout the development process. From my teachers I found their comments to be much more technically-minded. I found it to be more about ‘filling dead-space’, ‘alignment issues’ and ‘suitable font choices’ which I learned, in the long run, is exactly what you want to hear. I continuously acted on their comments and made any and all necessary changes but it was not my teachers that I went to for feedback in terms of the type of images they’d like to see as they were not members of my target audience. Therefore when I had questions about costumes and make-up, I would immediately ask my target audience for their advice. Fortunately, they never failed me! Feedback from my peers was also rather difficult as I still to this day don’t believe you can believe everything your friends say when there is an option for criticism! I did find that sometimes friends were too nice and ended up complementing every aspect of the work, which in the long-run doesn’t really help anyone. This meant that I rarely asked my friends for feedback and chose to either ask for the skilled opinion of my teachers or the headstrong opinion of my target audience- who always seemed to know what they wanted.

With the group choosing to pursue an overall Gothic styling with a red, black and white colour scheme, I must admit that my initial ideas were rather poor- I even had one friend bluntly state: ‘that looks terrible!’ in reference to an early design for my tour poster. The problem was that I had slightly over-used the colour red disproportionately to the black and white neutrals with the same friend concluding that it looked: ‘more like an advertisement for a Fright Night than a concert tour poster’ and so I wisely chose to change it! I am very glad I did this as, surprisingly, the final product actually favours the colour white over the other two now. It consists of a large white background, interrupted only by a red-rose border behind the key image: Melissa, and I have been given several positive reviews when it comes to comparing the before and after designs- suggesting improvement.

For my tour poster, I gained feedback through conversation and some quick note taking with my teachers. We met at our review meeting to discuss the overall project and it was here that some improvements were suggested.

For the design of my billboard, I decided to receive feedback in a slightly alternate style. I had never attempted anything like this before with the majority of my feedback only ever being conducted through an informal conversation. Yet when the idea of recording actual footage was suggested, not only did I think it a great idea but also quite a sensible one as it made future referencing simple! Therefore, using my camera, I asked a member of my target audience for feedback on my work.

I found this type of feedback very useful as it was much easier to remember when it came to acting on it. In future, when I need to receive feedback, I would seriously consider using this method again.
 
And finally, I also learned alot from the feedback for my DigiPak. It is strange to see how different the final product is from my original designs! When conducting the feedback, I used three people from my target audience and two people who were not in order to get an all-round idea of what my demographic would like to see and used a Dictaphone to quickly record the data. It is from this that I was able to select quotes that would help redesign my product:

"Yes I think they do! I've just bought Birdy's new album and her DigiPak actually very similar to this one."
- Elanor Bradshaw

Then I transferred the information onto graphs:

This helped make referral that much quicker in the future and is definitely a method I would choose to use again. From the feedback of the DigiPak I learned alot about what different demographics like and what they don't like. From asking the two boys what they found appealing about my design, I learned that different aspects stand out to different people and that we all look for different features on a product. Therefore, I decided what features were the most important and chose to focus my design on those.

All in all, I have learned that feedback is absolutely essential when designing anything. People seem to know what they like and what they don't like and when you are designing a product for someone else it is crucial that you listen to them because you don't always know what's right!

Lily-May Smythe