Final Reflection
Reflecting on the Crooze group project — where every moment of challenge was an opportunity to grow, as a designer and as a teammate.
Key takeaways
Designing with care
I'm a creative student who loves designing beautiful apps and websites — and I enjoy working in the background on the code behind them too.
Starting with structure
At the start of this project, I focused on the design of the app and website, trying to work as efficiently as possible from the very first sprint.
Designing together
I designed alongside several team members. Being able to collaborate with different people generated different ideas — and a stronger result.
Staying in sync
I regularly checked in with our web developer, Tim Donners, to estimate how difficult each design would be to build before committing to it.
Introduction
My name is Miguel Celen, and I study Digital Design. In the first semester I had Werkplekleren for the first time — a subject that was completely new to me. Over time it became clear that workplace learning gives a much clearer picture of what actually happens inside companies, through assignments completed individually or in groups.
At the start of the second semester we were given a bigger challenge: groups of five to six people, each assigned a theme without knowing each other beforehand. Only at the end of four sprints did we learn what the client actually wanted.
Our group — Niels Volders, Tommy Vanderheyden, Tim Donners, Diedre Schwillens and myself — received the brief from Crooze: design an application for mobile, and a musical website, both themed around music. We worked Agile/Scrum, with a sprint review and retrospective after every sprint, dividing tasks into subtasks and supporting each other whenever something got stuck.
Along the way
At the beginning, we didn't know each other and had no prior grounding in the theme of "music." That took some getting used to. After a few weeks working together, a good group bond started to form — but we also noticed we had far too many different design ideas, which slowed us down until we sat together and narrowed it down to one direction.
Once the app was designed, it was time for the promotional website. Because the team was a little behind on the design decision, that created a backlog for the coding work. Thanks to the hard work of Tim Donners and myself, we limited the damage — and the setback ultimately made the group bond stronger, as we started supporting each other more whenever someone was struggling.
Conclusion
As a student, I'm genuinely satisfied to have helped bring this project to life during Werkplekleren 2. Designing inside a completely unfamiliar team, around a completely unfamiliar theme, was a new experience — and I'm glad I had the chance to work with this particular group. Everyone had their own strengths, and that's something I'll carry into future teams, in a professional world where working with people you've just met is often exactly how it goes.