Do you ever feel like school isn’t letting you do what you want? Do you have a project or idea you want to pursue, but just don’t have the time? You should do a Blue Sky project!
Blue Sky was a program started in the company 3M as an incentive to keep workers at their company. Designers would get to spend 20% of their time working on a project they wanted to work on. This was adopted by other companies, like Apple, and led to great things, like the iPad.
We do Blue Sky in PLP as an end-of-year project. However, there are several constraints. The Grade 8s had to create a project for a problem a non-PLP peer is having. I chose my friend Isla as my client. She has trouble with organizing her projects when they’re really short.
The design cycle we use to create our projects is called the LAUNCH Process. I showed the steps of it in my Designer’s Journal, at the beginning of the post. It has several steps, which are clearly outlined in this video.
I created the Project Planner, which helps people organize their project in a super simple, customizable way.
One project timeline from the planner.
Everything else I added is outlined in the pitch in the Designer’s Journal.
We presented our projects at the PLP Spring Exhibition. The group that I was put in was the Quality Education group. Our room was based off the idea that every child deserves quality elementary and secondary education. This was fairly difficult to decorate, but I think we did it.
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- The sign that welcomed people to our room
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- A wide view of our room- my project is to the left
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- The whiteboard with the goals of the UN on it
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- A sign we used
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- The Health and Career section, where my project was
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- This sign was written with window markers
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- The wall next to my project, complete with inspirational posters
My presentation was based on the LAUNCH Process. I created red signs that showed how I related the planner to the LAUNCH Process, and yellow signs that showed how I used the LAUNCH Process to create my project. I included most of this in the Designer’s Journal.
My presentation table
Here are a couple photos from the exhibition!
Gabby and Jason scarfing down food ten minutes before it started
Nik tries on the tutu from Tricky Tutus
It was really fun to watch other people try on Kiera’s project- an adjustable tutu!
Overall I had a really good experience. I think that having all of the constraints (who the project could be for, it had to be a new idea, it had to be manageable in the time frame) really helped our ideas progress and develop. If I were to do it again, I would probably create a more detailed timeline for how I wanted to develop the project. I spent this whole project learning about project management. I think with that new knowledge (that I also incorporated into the planner), I could easily improve my next project.
Thanks for reading my blog post!