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In this lesson, our team first got together to decide on our final topic. After some discussion, we came to an agreemen that the topic we most connected to out of these 2 lists was the aspect of cybersafety, particularly in the area of scam calls. We all discussed how we often got calls from unknown numbers, disrupting whatever we were doing to pick up the phone and only be met by someone trying to scam us. As this was a fairly common yet still without a solution and frustrating for many, we started brainstorming ideas for a solution that could allow us to remove distractions such as these entirely, while still allowing for calls from family, friends, or institutions such as hopsitals tying to contact us.

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This week, we focused on preparing and delivering our INNOV8 Marketing pitch. After the groups were drawn for the presenting order, we were suprised to find out that we were first in the list, but since we had prepared and practiced well beforehand we were still confident going up. Without any other examples from other groups, we were determined to set a strong standard for all the future pitches. Overall, our marketing pitch went quite well. Thanks to our practice and Collaboration, there were no issues or confusion while we were presenting, and we were able to get through the pitch easily within the time limit. We all spoke clearly and were able to answer all of the questions that were directed towards us with confidence, having prepared for them beforehand. This demonstrated our Communication, particularly in Presenting Information with the area of "Use a range of strategies to effectively convey information" and "Can persuade, engage, or hold interest of an audience". Not only this, but by going with without fear of messing up or being a bad start for the rest of the lesson, we also demonstrated our abilities for Character in terms of Emotional Regulation, remaining calm even through what was an important and graded situation.

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This week was dedicated to watching the rest of the INNOV8 Marketing Pitches, after we had already presented. While waiting, I made sure to demonstrate the element of Citizenship with Being Respectful.

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In this activity, we required to come up with a one minute pitch surrounding a specific topic, making use of various persuasive techniques to grab the viewer's attention towards the facts of the topic. The topic in question was, "Globally it is estimated that approximately 52% of all sea turtles have eaten plastic." After getting into groups, we consulted several different persuasion techniques that we could apply onto this topic to make its message the most effective before choosing to write several into our short pitch. The persuasive topics we chose to dive deeper on were emotive language, hyperbole, and high modality. While writing, we made sure to make use of descriptive metaphors such as "the most ferocious predator of the ocean - plastic bags" that directly drew comparisons to how they would behave as a real-life predator, creating intrigue and making it easier to sympathise with for the audience.

How might this activity help with the larger Spin Off Topic?

The skills developed in this activity will go towards the creation of the Spin Off Topic pitch and how this might develop in the future. The main focus of today's activity, persuasive language, has large uses in public speaking and advertising, that we would especially use while marketing a product like in our Spin Off Topic. Using techniques like we used in this activity such as emotive language, hyperbole and call to action established a base of understanding from which we can now develop on in our Spin Off Topic, refining the speech with more time to create a truly compelling argument that would sway the audience. This relates to the capability of Communication, with Uses a range of strategies to effectively convey information.

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A screenshot taken from our Insight Statement document, depicting our Insight Statement based around scam callers.

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We then did the Insight Statement activity, in which we put ourselves in the shoes of an imaginary "Sarah" and imagined how she would feel about receiving scam calls mixed in with those of her small business' client calls. We thought that she would feel frustrated and not be able to communicate with regular customers to a higher amount if she was constantly plagued with such scam calls.

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Redesign your Partners Lunch Time

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Redesign your Partners Lunch Time

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What did you find most difficult during the activity? How will you overcome this in the future?

Something I found difficult during this activity was that I had to keep the length of the pitch within 1 minute. As the topic I was covering, which was the study of sleep cycles and how they could be applied to my partner's weekend experience, was fairly complicated I had to choose my works carefully in order to deliver the pitch within the time limit of 1 minute while also explaining all the smaller aspects of the study and how exactly it would work with my partner.

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A screenshot taken from our Empathy Map canva, depicting our Empathy Map based around those receiving scam calls on a regular basis.

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The next activity that we did was filling in an Empathy Map around this topic. Placing "any people with a phone who receive scam calls" as our target in the middle allowed us to consider a broad range of all circumstances. Filling in each section of the map allowed us to consider all the different points of view and ways that we could create our product to be effective as possible while still retaining customer satisfaction.

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My group's brainstorming paper for problems around the topic of Cybersecurity

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In this lesson, we formed our groups before beginning our spin-off project by brainstorming a core concept. My group decided that the two main areas we wanted to focus on were cyber safety and environmental quality. In the space of 10 minutes, our group worked togehter to brainstorm and wrote down as many subtopics and potential problems that could occur for each, managing to write about 20 for each topic.

How did you use or develop or grow your 5 C's?

This activity enhanced both our abilities for divergent thinking and also the aspect of Communication, as we had to communicate and work as a team to be able to produce as many ideas as possible. This served as the start of our spin-off project and gave us some ideas and pathways that we could follow down later.

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The next activity that we did was filling in an Empathy Map around this topic. Placing "any people with a phone who receive scam calls" as our target in the middle allowed us to consider a broad range of all circumstances. Filling in each section of the map allowed us to consider all the different points of view and ways that we could create our product to be effective as possible while still retaining customer satisfaction.

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What are our initial thoughts about our Spin Off Topic?

My intial thought on the Spin Off Topic are that it is a collaborate activity that will enhance our capabilities of collaboration and communication. We are required to design a product that will solve a frequently occuring problem in our local community, also making us use Critical and Creative thinking to be able to produce a thoughtful and effective product.

What do we still need to know or find out?

I believe that we could still find out more or know more about how we will actually potentially design this product, taking into account lots of factors such as costs, materials, labor, and any other problems that the product would have in real life that we would need to solve. We could also have more information about the kind of marketing and advertising that we will need to provide for the product.

How can we find this information?

We could find this information by conducting extensive research on all the ways to create such a product, including looking up what kinds of materials we would need to use and how much they would cost, and seeing if a similar product has been designed before allowing us to improve on its previous potential flaws.

What is most intriguing about this topic?

Something I find intriguing about this topic is how we are meant to discern between scam callers or other numbers such as hospitals, schools or jobs, which a phone user might not neccessarily have saved contact in their phone right from the start. By filtering out unknown contacts, it is possible that blocking these numbers might come as an unwelcome side effect, so we will have to think of a way around this to improve our product to its fullest potential.

What am I most concerned about (either this topic or Spin Off in general)?

Something that I am concerned about with the direction our Spin Off topic is heading into is the potential logistics of the solution, as well as keeping it grounded in reality. For example, one of our proposed features that the app would include was to require a potential input for the 'reason of calling' that could then be picked up and analysed by the receive to determine if they had a legitimate cause or were simply wasting their time and effort. However, after doing some background research, we discovered that implementing such a feature in real life would be highly impractical, as it would involve creating an entirely new calling and messaging app which was outside of any realistic boundaries for the project, or making a collaboration with a popular calling company such as Apple themselves to implement our app as a built-in extension, which was also highly unlikely. With enough research and collaboration, our group should be able to outmaneuver these problems to deilver a satisfactory and feasible end product.

What presentation techniques where most effective?

By watching several examples of effective advertisements, we were able to determine some presentation techniques that could be effectively applied into our own advertisement in order to make it more persuasive. A key factor present in many of the example advertisements from larger real-life brands was humour, which would be applied to connect and relate to the viewer, incentivising them to look further into the product if they found that it was funny. As this was prevalent in many advertisements, it seems as if this is one of the most effective advertising technique and that we should find some way to incoporate it while doing future video editing.

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A picture taken of our group poster advertising our brand, with information for various different 'filters' we were given

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.In this lesson, we were required to assemble into groups of three to participate in an activity that would challenge our Critical and Creative thinking and help us to ideate a product while facing several challenges and limitations that could occur in the real world. We first selected an area that we would like to focus on, our group selecting 'Health and Wellbeing', before coming up with a common problem that was faced. My group and I discussed together before deciding on focusing on nutrition, particularly for those dieting or attempting to diet. With some background knowledge, we knew that this was a severe problem that could impact the mental and physical health if a diet failed, so we then moved onto finding a solution. Our initial idea was to create a sort of meal planner as well as delivery service brand that would help peolpe organise their diets while still eating healthy, removing potential unhealthy temptations from cravings. As time passed, we were given various prompts that would help us shape our pitch. The first prompt was 'What if your idea involved creating a new product'? To remain centered around the theme of nutrition, we decided that we would partly have to push the boundaries of realism to create an entirely new food - supposedly something that would cure cravings while being healthy at the same time. Our next prompt was relating to the price range, and we received the selling price of $150. We decided that this would be a suitable price for around two months' subscription of our product, with regular deliveries of food and health advice. Our final prompt was 'Your idea must be able for use in the desert'. We incorporated this prompt into our brand theme, where one of our slogans was 'It's so good, you'll even want it in the desert!'.

Overall, this activity was designed to nuture our skills of Critical and Creative thinking as well as Collaboration in areas such as Actively participates to maintain a conversation with others and Demonstrates curiosity and inquires into the areas of interest in relation to the purpose while preparing us with core skills that we could apply to the similar INNOV8 project. Using the same topics and themes as were present in the INNOV8 main task, we were required to collaborate efficiently in order to quickly create a functional product that would also overcome several prompts and demands, mirroring the demands of customers in real life.

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A screenshot from our group document we used for brainstorming

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Continuing on with the brainstorming from the previous lesson, with the core topics selected in mind our group was now able to think of some specific solutions and random ideas relating to the topics, before picking one to then develop into a full-fledged solution. By sharing the doc between us, we were able to all contribute to it at the same time resulting in a varied assortment which we would then regroup to discuss and highlight the ones that we thought had potential.

Eventually over the course of several lessons and discussions in the group chat, we decided to focus on the topic of learning to tackle bias and misinformation in media, particularly those that students would access for school projects. Since students such as us often had summatives involving writing convoluted research papers, it was a major problem that the internet nowadays is full of uncertainty and behind the scenes influence that could cause doubt and innacuracy when translated into our work. Being able to emphasise deeply with the problem as the target audience ourselves, we compiled several of our frustrations into the ideal app, which would be a crucial tool in the unley community to improve accuracy and clear up internet misinformation not only for students, but even adults with jobs too. Through extensive discussion and compromising in the area of Communication and Collaboration with Committing to Purpose, we eventually came to an agreement that everyone was happy with. This would then let us continue forwards in developing our project with much less disputes and confusion.

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This week was mainly centred around finishing up our video for the Spin Off presentation, with finalising scripts, filming, communicating with our group members to checkup and video editing. Over the weekend, my group applied the capability of Collaboration in the area of Shows awareness that an outcome can be greater when working with others as we individually completed our assigned areas of the script in order to regroup and film when we returned to school. We dedicated a lesson to filming, where we persevered filming multiple takes of our lines in order to attain the optimal product. Once we agreed as a whole that we were satisifed, we were then able to move onto doing the video editing. As it would be difficult to share editing access with three people at once, I took initiative to do the main share of the video editing, showcasing my growth in the capability of Character Self-Efficiacy, in Actively taking responsibility and ownership for learning and wellbeing.

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This lesson was dedicated to introducing us to the INNOV8 project, with us first forming our groups to work with. After making a group of 4, I made sure to apply the self-feedback that I had given myself from the previous Spin Off Topic reflection, and by the end of the lesson ensured that we had created a group chat where we could all talk about and access information if needed for the project. This demonstrates the C of Communication and falls under the topic of Giving and Receiving Feedback.

Our first activity as a group was to test our skills in Critical and Creative thinking, as a sort of mini version of what we would later start for the main INNOV8 project. We were pitted with another group from across the neighbouring class and given a 'silly' topic that we were required to ideate a solution for something normally considered nonsensical, before presenting it to the entire two combined classes in an engaging manner to win over the other team. The topic that my group received was the 'left handed pencil'. Although this seemed strange at first, after some brainstorming we came up with the idea of a pencil that would simulate the normal grip of the right hand around the left when holding it, allowing right-handed people to use their left hand to write with ease. This would come in handy if your right hand was impaired. With limited time to formulate a speech, we were then made to pitch in front of the class. I took initiative and volunteered as the main speaker for our group, where following some basic jotted-down notes I fillied in the gaps using Critical and Creative thinking to deliver the pitch. A vote was cast and our group was decided as the 'winner' of the round, showcasing evidence for my skills in the area of Acting with courage and confidence.

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A picture taken used of the whtieboard we used for brainstorming

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This lesson marked our official introduction to the INNOV8 project. After watching some videos about the current issues facing South Australia relating to topics such as environment, social enterprise, health and wellbeing, learning, and enterprise, for the first lesson we were tasked to simply find our main topic and problem that we would be focusing on. Using a whiteboard to streamline our thoughts taking inspiration from the divergent thinking exercises, we brainstormed several topics and ideas that we were satisfied with, eventually through group discussion narrowing it down to three: enviromental caring, wellbeing, and learning help. We then moved onto brainstorming some of the major flaws present in these areas, such as the inefficiencies of electricity and batteries, suggesting ideas such as a bike electricing generator, or a teacher's help app under learning that would allow them to give more attention and personalised assistance to individual students.

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This lesson served as a break from the ongoing work in the INNOVAT8 topic to refresh our abilities in designing effective solutions. For this activity, we were given several different areas that we could choose to focus and develop a product on relating to our daily life, including a faster way of transportation, solving food inneficiency, waking up on time, or completing homework more efficiently. Under rapid time pressure, we had to be highly collaborative with one another in order to get our message across as effectively as possible. Our group deicded on selecting a faster way of movement, and from there we began brainstorming ideas. One of my group members suggested something about using a zipline through the suburbs to speed up daily walks, which I then accepted and expanded upon using Creates better outcomes with others compared to their individual contribution to an outcome under the capability of Collaboration. I suggested instead of constructing costly and space consuming zipline strucutres, we could take a new spin on the already existing power lines that were everywhere on the streets. After explaining in depth, my team members wholeheartedly agreed and we were then able to move onto ideating our script in quick succession. We then presented our short pitch and presentation to the class, where I gave the main body paragraph in order to practice my public speaking skills. This activity was overall a good demonstration of efficient Collaboration and Communication within a group, and would strengthen our collaborative bonds and working capabilities as a group.

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Today, we were required to present our short pitch about our partner's weekend problem to the class. Having prepared a script in advance, I read it out to my peers as an audience. Writing the script, I made sure to pack as much information about the complex topic of REM sleep as I could into 1 minute, which was very difficult but I managed to get the basics across to the audience. From there, I expanded more on my product, explaining how exactly it worked with reference to the problem. After presenting, there were some peer queries on the topic, which I was able to answer with confidence having researched the topic in depth to create the pitch in the first place.

What tools, skills or activities did you find most useful in the redesign your partner’s weekend activity?

An activity that I found useful in redesigning my partner's weekend frustration was the empathy map that we were required to fill in. It had multiple categories that prompted us to think about and relate to their struggle, allowing us to read it and find a good solution that met all of their requirements. This required the skill of empathising and understanding my partner's situation, including their thoughts, feelings, context and past experiences.

How did you use or develop or grow your 5 C’s?

In this activity, I mainly developed my skills in the areas of Collaboration and Communication. For collaboration, as this was a partner task and we were to solve a problem of theirs we were required to deeply connect and emphathise with them to move on, testing our ability to work together and in harmony.

For communication, as this was an oral assignment where we had to pitch to the class we had to make a speech that would be engaging, explain all the terms and ideas properly, and end within the 1 minute time limit, before being able to communicate properly to the class with good speaking volume, eye contact, and pace.

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Where did our group do really well in the Spinoff task?

I believe an aspect that our group performed successfully in the Spinoff project was in group discussions and assigning roles for out of school work. As mentioned previously, we made efficient use of each lesson to figure out what work we needed to complete, and then divide roles equally so that everyone did a fair share of the work, checking in to make sure that we were all on track to completing our parts. We had no disagreements over who would do what, as being a group we understood that everyone would have to put in their own share of work in order to keep the project going successfully.

What Persuasive Techniques did we use? How effective were these? What evidence do I have of this?

We first discussed what kinds of techniques that we should include in the video, with reference to the previous lesson where we viewed some brand advertisements and noted the persuasive techniques used in those, deciding to focus on using statistics, accompanying videos and images, some humour, and a call to action. While I discussed the potentiality of looking up unknown numbers online to see if they were legitimate or not, I used my own phone as an example, taking one of my most recent unkown number calls before searching it up on google in a side by side presentation with my own speaking. This allowed the viewers not only to hear the basic words that I was saying, but also understand what it could look like and connect to it deeper with the crucial aid of visuals. This was an effective use of technique as was stated by several peers that I received feedback from, stating that it was a part of the advertisement that stood out to them.

What improvements would we make if we had the opportunity to do the task again?

If we were to repeat this task again, an area of improvement that I believe I could focus on for the capabiliy of Communication would be ensuring communication with group members not only in class but also while completing indepedent work out of school. This falls under the area of Engaging in Conversation. Although we made sure to have group meetups and discussions while we were all present, this was not frequent outside of the classroom as we did not have contact with each other with any social media or such. Because of this, there were some misunderstandings with the work that would not be able to be clarified by the group when recouperating with the class. An example of this would be with the video editing, as since filming took up a good part of the lesson we did not have the time to figure out who was going to do what, and with no out of school communication we lost up to two days of potential editing out of confusion only a couple days before the due date, leading to unwanted stress and anxiety. To improve this, next time with a simialr project I believe that by the very first lesson of working out groups it is reccomended to establish some means of a group chat that can be used for helpful communication so as to make work more efficient out of school.

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Empathy Map of my partner's problem and its circumstances

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In this activity, we were required to pair up before interviewing our partner on a common frustrating problem that they enocuntered over their weekend. My partner, Ciyan, had trouble waking up regularly in the morning for school, and when trying to sleep in to make up for it on the weekends would only endanger her schedule on the weekdays. After talking to her across two sessions, I was required to take notes and dig deep into the problem to indentify all the context of the problem and apply empathy to understand her feelings about it, as well as trying to come up with a solution. This was made easier by making an empathy map which had all the information we required to know all about the problem.

How did you use or develop or grow your 5 C's?

This activity boosted my skills in both communication and collaboration, as it was heavily focused around being able to emphasise with others and put yourself into their shoes. I combined my partner's retold experience with those of my own relating to the same problem in an attempt to see things from her perspective, also repsenting my skills in Critical and Creating thinking. By allowing myself to visualise this new way of thinking, I could really connect with her struggle on a deeper level and then design a product that would solve all of her possible frustrations, something that even I would be happy with as well.

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What are the concepts that you have learnt and how are they influencing the way you approach future problems?

So far, I have been introduced to the general structure and doings of AP, including divergent and convergent thinking. These ideas have given me food for thought towards the different ways I should act when solving problems, taking into mind the pros and cons of each one.

What do you think your biggest challenges are going to be in AP?

I think that my biggest challenge in AP is going to be working to collaborate with many peolpe that I have never interacted with before, especially in the upcoming variation assignment.

What are you most excited about in AP?

I am most excited to be able to develop a creative marketing pitch for the Week 8 Expo, drawing from previous exprience with similar projects such as the LEAP $20 Boss assignment. This intrigues me as I have always liked designing and creating solutions for various challenges and working through creative problems alongside my teammates.

What about your personality do you think will help or challenge you in AP?

I believe that my leading and creative personality will help me succeed in AP as it will give me the necessary skills to develop innovative solutions in the various projects. However, this could prove to be a challenge as not knowing many people in this class, I might not be able to fully take place as a leader.

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In this lesson, we worked on the 30 circles challenge, which was a small task to test our proficiency with convergent and divergent thinking individually.

The activity started with a quick brainstorm of multiple ideas to test our divergent thinking, in which you create multiple individual ideas that are initially random and unconnected. We were handed a sheet of paper containing 30 small circles on it, each of which had to be filled by a unique design of a kind of recognisable object.

After we did this, we then moved onto convergent thinking. We partnered up and combined a random circle from each of our papers into a product that used aspects from both circles. I chose the circle which I had turned into a lemon, and my partner chose a fan. From this, we began to brainstorm some ideas that made use of these. Our first idea was a kind of pepper spray that instead used lemon, which could also be repurposed as a refreshener. However, we went on to evolve this into a focused air refreshening fan that could both clean the air and cool you down on hot days along with the clean scent of lemon. We decided this as after emphatsizing, we realised that the hot temperatures of summer Australia were more likely to require a fan than a spray.

This is an example of convergent thinking, where you focus on one idea and develop it until it is ready for testing.

What persuasive techniques did you find most effective?

I found that using a mix of convergent and then divergent thinking when formulating ideas is quite an effective way to do a brainstorm. I will be sure to use this in the future if I ever have a mental block and need to come up with ideas quickly, by coming up with numerous short ideas to work out one that is good, before expanding on it and potentially combining it with other high potential ideas through convergent thinking.

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What feedback have you received from staff and students about your own INNOV8 Pitches? What improvements, changes and tweaks do you need to make before INNOV8 EXPO on Tuesday on Tuesday Week 6?

Although I thought that we went quite well, we were also able to receive some feedback from our teacher assessors. For one, while many groups struggled with finishing both of their full pitches in time, on the other hand we found that our pitch was actually too short - only around 2 or 3 minutes in total. This might have been caused because of stress causing us to speak fast, as we did not encounter this problem while speaking. In the final INNOV8 pitch, our group will make sure to time our pitch thoroughly and account for external factors to make sure that we can convey as much information as we can while still remaining within the time limit.

Another piece of feedback that we received was to have less words on our page and replace them with more supporting visuals. Although we mainly tried to minimise the amount of words on our slide, this might have happened as while we were displaying our demos we brought up articles that naturally had a lot of text on them as well as our extension that had multiple parts to it, which could have been confusing or too long for the audience to read in the short amount of time that they were on screen. Although for this activity we were constrained by time limits preventing us from showcasing the demo fully, for the final INNOV8 pitch we are considering having working demos out for use that viewers can test out and read at their own time.

Which of the 5C's do you feel you and your group struggled with the most? Why is this and what could do differently?

Although our group was generally able to collaborate very well, I feel like the 5C that we struggled with the most would be Citizenship. Although we attempted to make our products as accessibe as possible, since they were mainly designed for researchers it is possible that we were not able to reach the global audience that we hoped for. We also were questioned about this by our assessors, who wondered if Scope would be accessible not just to researchers but also normal people just browsing articles. In the future, we could consider tweaking our target market so that it is more globally and demographically inclusive, as well as recognising this while desiging our marketing.

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What aspects did you see in other groups presentations that were really strong?

An aspects of presentation that I liked in other groups was their interactivity with the audience. For example, many groups opening with a question such as "Who here has done x?", prompting the audience to respond and authentically engage with their speaking. As well as this, some groups had physical demos, like a small 3D print that was passed around the room for the audience to look at as well as larger demos that showcased what the product might look like as an early concept. These helped to engage and capture the audience's attention, as well as helping them get to know the product more. I think that to enhance our presentation, we could have also incorporated some of these aspects, although it might have been difficult to create a passable demo considering that our project is web-based.

What aspects did you see in other groups presentation that were less successful?

An aspect of presentation that I thought was less successful was the use of Artificial Intelligence, which many groups used. They would primarily use AI to create images and visuals for their products, which is somewhat understandable considering the limited time frame to build an actual demo. Despite this, the use of AI made their presentations seem less professinonal and rushed, disconnecting the audience from their presentation. To avoid this, my group attempted to be as independent and authentic as possible by creating all of our own graphics through Powerpoint and Canva, which I believed helped us seem more professional and dedicated to our work. Because of this, we were also able to create animated demos that consistently showed what our product would look like as well as providing a base for future developments.

What were the really great ideas?

Some good ideas that I saw included an aerated water showerhead that would increase the water efficiency of showers to reduce the water waste that goes on in our neighbourhoods. They also had a working demo to go along with this, which I thought was quite effective in communicating their point. Another group that I thought was effective would be the group that developed an automatic sorting bin that would seperate landfill, organic waste, and more using an AI scanner. Although this is not the most original idea, I thought it was interesting how they made a 3D model of their product so that we could view it with more detail.

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This week would mainly focus on forming the foundations for our INNOV8 EXPO product. We identified the area that we wanted to focus on as bias within research, so began designing our product around this idea. First, we needed a name. With our corporate elements, we wanted something that sounded sleek and professional, with just one word that would still stand out and not be the same as anything else in the market. Everyone in the group contributed their ideas, such as Prism, Dragonfly, Scope and Symmetry, highlighting ourcapacity for Communication, particularly in the area of Engaging in Conversation. After a group discussion, we decided to choose one that would have some degree of meaning instead of just being random, like Dragonfly, Prism of Symmetry. We eventually narroved in on Scope, which had connection to our product that 'scoped' in on bias.

From there, we began to develop our brand identity and logo. We decided that being something to help with research, we should mainly use clean, sleek, shapes and simple colours. We experimented with the idea of a magnifying class and a scope to fit with our product name. Eventually, after many trials we eventually came up with a design that we were all happy with - a magnifying glass representing a question mark with its bar, as well as having a scope inside of this. I think that this logo represented our product very well and communicated what it was as well as looking good on a laptop screen. I helped to create a digital render of the logo in Canva, which we would be able to use for future marketing.

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During this lesson, our group split up into different roles to manage the workload better in order to prepare for the upcoming INNOV8 Marketing Pitch. My role was to do some research into how the product would look in action and make an example demo that we could show on the screen while presenting. After working together with some of my team websites to locate some test websites that we could build an extension interface around, we found some that we thought could have some bias. After this, I designed our extension's use interface, which went through several drafts before finally being approved by everyone in the team. It comprised mainly of a large statistic entailing the general amount of bias in the articles, a summary, and some keywords that we identified that gave the article away to be biased. I made sure to make it look very realistic, almost like you were using it in real life, so that while we were presenting we would look well-prepared already having a demo, demonstrating my abilities in the area of Presenting Information. The layout of our product was very important to get down early so that we would be able to base the rest of our pitch around it, so I am very proud of what I was able to create.

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Another activity that we did this week was doing an "opposite pitch" excersise. We were given a random celebrity within our groups and a product that they would not normally be expected to interact with, such as vampires and garlic, and then design a marketing pitch around this. My group received the prompts "Mr Beast" and "Designer Bags", so we designed a product called "Beast Bags", the name taking inspiration from some of Mr Beast's other products. To imitate the style of Mr Beast, we presented in the format of his $1 vs $100,000 videos, where we gradually showed different purses at different prices ranges until culminating at our own product. We also used persuasive techniques like using forceful communication and exclamations, highlighting our capacity for Presenting Information in Communciation.

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Another group member and I collaborated to work on the Persuader's Toolkit, which included things like an Empathy Map, an Insight Statement, and some other guiding prompts. Completing these was important so that we could gain more information on how to appeal to our target audience, especially with the Empathy Map. By filling in categories from the point of view of our consumer like their thoughts, feelings, needs, and constraints, allowing us to look back on this and design our product around these wants and restrictions.

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In this lesson, we did an activity that helped us open our minds to more ways of approaching our stall design. We were given prompts to apply to our stall, allowing us to consider adding some new features in preparation for the upcoming Expo.

How has this task changed my way of thinking how I could brand and display my product?

Some prompts that we received included "creating a theme some for our product" or "showing how our product might look throughout time", which, while they did not neccessarily align with the style of presentation that we were aiming for with our pitch, they still helped us consider the different ways that we could design our stall layout and how to appeal to visitors, like by claiming the large screen in the middle to play an eyecatching animation..

Did you get any other ideas along your gallery walk with other students that you could extend uypon your inital stall thoughts?

Some ideas we saw were to have food and things that visitors could take away with them. We thought this was a good idea, as it would generate more advertising for our brand as well as providing some extra information that visitors could look over.

As well as this, we started designing an 'Elevator Pitch' for our product. This was supposed to be a concise, 60-second maximum pitch that would quickly convey to the viewer what our product was about and hook them in to listening to our more detailed explanation. To do this, we applied the feedback we received from our previous Marketing pitch by Giving and Recieving Feedback and made sure to put in persuasive techniques and memorised the pitch so that we would seem confident while presenting.

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We finally had the INNOV8 Expo on Thursday - the culmination of all our effort for the past term. My group demonstrated Critical and Creative Thinking by Acting Creatively to ensure that we had access to the smart screen right in the middle of the room, as we would be able to play our animation in an eyecatching manner and attract lots of visitors. For our setup, we had our small lectern, which had brochures, business cards, and posters for audience members to look at and take, as well as three laptops displaying working demos that audience members could actively interact with to build their understanding of the product. We had also memorised our elevator pitch, showcasing our Committing to Purpose, and were successfully able to explain and demonstrate our product to many parents, staff, and the adjudicator. I believe that we spoke and demonstrated our product confidently, which helped us gain the support of lots of the visitors. Eventually, we were chosen to be in the top 3, where we had to give a 5 minute final pitch that we had prepared beforehand. Although we only came third, it was still a valuable experience, and we were able to excel in our abilities of Communication and Collaboration.

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What is our current problem that we are focusing on?

Our current general area that we are focusing on is difficulties in research and learning. Being students ourselves, an important part of our lives is knowing how to find accurate and reliable information on an online space filled with uncertainty. Our two products, Clarity and Scope, focus on different subcategories in this but still fall under the same general vision.

How is the use of the empathy map evolving our idea?

The use of the empathy map helped us to consider other points of view and the perspective of our users, forcing us to think about what constraints or needs they might have and design our product to be convenient to use for them

What new ideas or insights have you uncovered from this process?

From this, we came up with the idea of making our product into an extension rather than a website. Bias detecting functions already existed, but were slow and inconvenient to access. By catering for our audience's need for fast and efficient procressing as well as accuracy, we were able to make the change to an extension that would automatically scan your articles in the background and immediately pop up with all the required features during use.

How is our group collaborating? What can I do to improve collaboration within my team?

Our group is collaborating very well - we have set up a group chat so that we can comminicate and catch up on work after school, demonstrating Committing to Purpose, as well as delegating roles efficiently during lessons so that everyone is working to the best of their abilities and is satisfied with their output. I have taken on somewhat of a 'leader' role to push our team forwards, but to improve our collaboration I could consider stepping back and letting everyone share a more equal voice.

What barriers are we currently experiencing?

We are currently having trouble mainly with managing the tight timeframe of the task with the burden of work that we have. One of our main responsibilities is to hard-code a demo of our product, which is difficult and time-consuming. What are our next steps?

Our next steps are to finalise our script for the Marketing Pitch as well as creating slides that will play in the background and provide supporting visuals while we speak.

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This week, we found out that we were required to pitch not 1, but 2 products related to the general similar target audience. Although we were initially surprised and stressed at the thought of having to do a whole new load of work, we perservered with the skills of Managing Uncertainty. We began to brainstorm some ideas, but eventually realised that creating another product based around bias would be hard. To solve this, we went a step back in our target audience and just focused on researchers instead. Some prominents ideas included an AI detector or an online library curator, but we eventually settled on a language tool that could identify and solve ambigiuties in translation. All of us being language students, we were able to recall our past experiences of being told not to use tools like Google Translate, so designed a product that could help us ourselves. We also settled on the logo, being a magic wand with translated versions of our brand name "Clarity" around it, efficiently communicating our brand's identity while retaining the same sleek corporate theme that we had with Scope.

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We also worked on our marketing pitch for Scope, considering elements like our target audience, budget, pricings, problem, and uniqueness in the market. This is an example of Commiting to Purpose in Critical and Creative Thinking where we applied the skills and feedback that we had been learning all throughout the semester to create an engaging and informative pitch.

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What have you gained from this experience?

How has Action Project developed your understanding of the 5Cs?

Overall, I have gained some valuable entrepreneurship skills from this semester of Action Project. I had limited experience with designing products in the past, but now I have gained knowledge on design thinking and product ideation. These included coming up with a product, identifying a target market, applying effective presentation and communication techniques to convince viewers, and considering global-scale partnerships with related companies. By pitching to a real business CEO and receiving feedback for it, I have gained some insight into how the world of business and marketing operates.

How can you use the skills developed in Action Project in other areas of your life / in the future?

My communication has developed by improving my live talking skills, like memorising a pitch rather than reading off a script, using language that the audience can understand rather than technical jargon, and applying effective talking techniques to hook the audience’s attention.

My collaboration has developed by working with a team for a long period of time, as well as designating roles and responsibilities that have to be followed up on out of class.

My creativity has developed by opening my mind to the world of marketing products, by seeing the original ideas that I and my peers have come up with to solve problems in our society.

My critical thinking has developed by making effective judgements and actions under a limited time period, efficiently delivering an outcome to the best of my ability.

What challenges did you face in this course, and how did you overcome them?

In the future, I will make sure to consider all the feedback that I have received throughout this course, such as limiting the amount of words and background noise that is present as I am speaking to streamline the audience’s attention, creating working demos to hook the audience’s engagement and make us seem well-prepared and confident, and designing items like business cards and flyers that help us to advertise.

Were any of your personal Character Strengths a benefit or did you have to stretch your lesser strengths, explain how.

At the time of pitching the Expo, I was a little stressed, having months of build-up leading to this moment, but also confident in my own capabilities as a speaker like for Communication and Collaboration. I was definitely satisfied with the result that my team was able to achieve, and making it into the top 3 was a big relief and joy for me. My team and I made sure to put in the best effort that we could into delivering a thoughtful and genuine pitch, and since then I have been satisfied with the overall outcome that this course has had.

How have you developed as a learner throughout this course?

I can take some of the presentation techniques that I have learnt in this course to other subjects and activities. For example, in Debating, I would need to be proficient in talking on the spot, answering questions, and speaking with confidence and eye contact, all skills that I have been developing throughout this semester of Action Project.

What have you gained from this course at a personal level?

As an individual, I have learned that I am confident in speaking and marketing to others, that I can take a role as a driver of the team, and that so long as I work hard enough I have the potential to impress even those in high-up positions.