Category: Unit 4

Yuqian Ma

As an environmental designer and a postgraduate student of jewellery design in RCA, London, Miss Ma is a new generation of creative industry practitioners, this interview with her was limited to three simple questions due to time and space constraints. Her answers explained her background and affirmed the significance and value of bio-synthetic fur, she did not give clear advice about the positioning of bio-synthetic fur as she does not consider herself to be a veteran of the apparel industry, and on her own, she feels that bio-synthetic fur should be subdivided into different classes in order to adapt to all levels of the market.

Finally, she added that the application of bio-synthetic fur can be extended beyond the fabric industry, whether it is in jewellery and accessories or home furnishings, these potential consumer sectors can expand the use and value of bio-synthetic fur.

Street Interview

Overall, the street interview was a failure as most of the people rejected my request. There are two reasons leading the result: I appeared subjectively shy and resistant to such interviews with strangers honestly, and I was inexperienced in questionnaire preparation for street interviews, and time attempts. Therefore, I think the next step, I need to find students who are good at interested in a piece with me or I will change this session into the mode of acquaintance introduction, firstly, to improve the efficiency, and secondly, to target the creative industry can get more senior professional feedback.

According to the feedback from Hotroom, my unit 4 plan has been fine-tuned based on unit 3, and this change is mainly on two directions: firstly I need to continue to deepen my investigation with stakeholders and secondly I need to find more support on the logical and theoretical level about commercial and ethical significance bio-synthetic fur.

In terms of stakeholder, based on George’s suggestion, I categorized the stakeholder into three types, consumers, industry practitioners and investors. The questionnaires and pitching proposal corresponding to consumers and investors respectively need to be enlarged samples. I plan to get more than one thousand questionnaires and interviews with more than five investors in later three months. I hope these samples can help me better understand the market, conceptual significance and direction of development of bio-synthetic fur. The main change is stakeholder investigation of the industry practitioners of this piece. My research should not be limited in fur industry, instead, it should be targeted on whole of a creative industry. This is a kind of expansion, but more corrective because a single industry research will lead to the results of the similar survey results. More persuasive and innovative views for bio-synthetic fur is asking broader objective professional evaluation from whole creative industry.

On the logical and theoretical level I need to find more support for the idea that bio-synthetic fur makes commercial and ethical sense. Firstly, I need to prove that the current decline in demand for fur is mainly due to environmental and animal protection issues, and secondly, whether the introduction of bio-synthetic fur can solve dilemma above and rekindle people’s interest for fur material. In genera, for this unit I need to clarify whether the decline of the material is a result of the material losing its value(people don’t like furry products anymore), or the controversy it carries overshadows the material’s value.

Schedule of tasks

Task	Deadline	Tips
Get more than 1000 questionnaires	25th November	Obtaining a portion of the offline sample in person
Get 5 more interviews with investor	27th November	Recording and make feedback for the pitching presentation
Make a new questionnaire to clarify the reasons why people decrease the demand for fur	20th November	Obtaining more than 200 sample for this questionnaire
Theory learning or secondary research about the logical relationship between the decline in demand for fur and the existence of animal/environmental protection	5th November	Searching some authoritative interviews, the environmental/animal protection movement and other forms of evidence(at least 5 pieces)

This is the starting week of unit 4. After understanding the content and requirements of unit 4, I broadly made my research plan for next few months, fine-tuned my strategic direction (based on UNIT 3), while at the same time I continued to subdivide my stakeholders and deepen my visit to my stakeholder based on the suggestions of the tutorial.

My research plan mainly consists of two parts, primary and secondary research, the primary part is mainly questionnaire interviews and offline interviews while the secondary part is mainly for the logic of the loophole to add. I quantify some specific tasks and set a time line. (See more on Strategic Reorientation)

The stakeholder interviews this week were based on George’s suggestion, I contacted five practitioners in creative industry and also tried to get some people’s opinions on the street. Unfortunately only one invitee completed a brief interview and recorded the voice this week. Meanwhile, due to in lack of preparation, the street interviews suffered from the majority of people’s rejection. (See more on Investigation )

Overall this is the week for preparation and plan. Development of established plans have been slow in the early stages but initial conversations with industry practitioners have confirmed that I can expect to get their views in the coming weeks.