One challenge I've faced during my time at UAG is coming up with ideas for products that could possibly compete with these other phone case companies that might of already started selling those certain products. It's also very difficult coming up with ideas for new products that might not have a big enough market for. It's difficult to figure out what might work in certain markets and what might not work in other markets. Something UAG has dealt with in the past that I would consider a real challenge was when they were designing a case for a new HTC phone. A feature this phone had was a button on the top of the phone that is a remote capability. UAG didn't know about this feature so they had to tell the factory a couple weeks before launching the case that they needed to make a change to the design. Luckily they were able to change it in time. If that didn't happen UAG could risk losing a lot of money which can be devastating for a smaller company.
One person who commented on my post recently was Nigel. What was really interesting about his comment was at his internship they use Wacom boards quite often as well. It was definitely interesting seeing some of the similarities other internships had to mine. The 3 people's blogs I commented on were Daniel's, Benny's and Matthew's internship blogs. It was really cool seeing the places they had traveled. New York and Liberia for example. It was cool seeing how much of an impact these students in particular were having on the overall work environment. The pictures especially really enticed me to read about what they had done over the past week or two.
After this first week I think I have a clearer vision of what I might want to study going into college and a possible career path. This week I've learned a lot about how a product is designed and how people come up ideas for certain products. I also learned the rules to design and why its so important to follow those rules when creating a quality product. This pertains to any product a shoe,car, phone etc. use these design rules. What really interested me was how the designers designed cases or box art and what tools they were using to create those renders. Most of the designers used a tool called a Wacom board, they used this board to add colors, materials or design small details on their rendering of a box, phone case, laptop etc. The program they use to design rendering is a photo studio similar to photoshop but with many more features. Hopefully during internship I'll be able to test one of the boards out. I think marketing and design are definitely possible career routes in the near future.
Each department at UAG has there own little areas spread out throughout the space. The design department all sits very close to one another so they can collaborate and share their ideas. Employees spend little time socializing mainly because everyone is focused on their own work but sometimes other employees will go to other peoples work stations to give feedback and share ideas. Everyone has their own monitors while the marketing department might be work on sales and UAG's social platforms the design department might be designing new logos or box art for different types of cases. This reflects the companies work because it shows all the designers, marketers etc. are in sync and are working together to create the best product/experience for the consumer.
A couple of the projects I will be working on while at UAG are both based upon marketing and sales. One of the mini projects I will be working on is researching what markets other competitors are in that UAG could potentially be apart of to grow their brand or maybe markets other phone case companies haven't quite explored yet. UAG could possibly try those markets and almost pioneer their own little market. The final product I will be creating is marketing matrix displaying the target item or user comparing our competitors to UAG. One of the main projects I will be working however will be growing UAG's "social army". Expanding to more popular social media platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and Youtube. This could potentially grow the amount of younger consumers being apart of UAG. The final product will potentially have UAG grow to be much bigger on social media. Currently UAG is only really at large in the Facebook community. By expanding to other platforms and reaching out to new audiences this could potentially grow UAG's brand as a whole.
The people who benefit from my work at internship are the people in the marketing/social media department. Creating posts about the time spent at CES gets people more involved with our social media presence and gives potential to grow that presence as a whole. As well as the fact that I know what a lot of what the younger generation is into and is using social media wise so, that gives UAG the chance to grow there brand on larger platforms and appeal to younger consumers. In marketing/sales I'm helping UAG get a gauge for how well products selling and what markets that their competitors aren't in that UAG could possibly create on their own. The majority of the day spent by the design department creating renderings for certain products whether that be individual phone cases or for UAG's website. The marketing side of UAG managing social media platforms and sales side of UAG.
Just recently got back from Vegas and I'm continuing to work on my marketing project but as well as taking notes on what I learned from CES and what stood out to me at the show. As a group we will go over some obersvations and experiences we had from this weekend. One of the topics I will be focusing on for my project is what will UAG be as a brand 5, 10 or maybe 20 years from now? What kind of products will UAG be producing in the future?
An employee I interviewed from UAG was one of the designers David Le. David has spent a decade designing gor different companies most noteably Oakley eyewear. In addition to designing with other companies David has a passion for teaching and returning his knowledge to younger up and coming designers. One of the things that stood out that he taught me was the rule of 3's. This rule is incoperated in all design whether it be a car, shoe, backpack etc. Anytime your designing something balance and simplicity is the key to making a great product. Another key tip he gave me for designing the product is the core ideas of why you want to design a product. If you know what you want to design what kind of product do you want to create? What kind of person would buy your product? These are all key questions you must answer when designing a product. CES was a really cool experience seeing all the different types of tech and exhibtors scatterd throughout the Las Vegas convention center. Each hall housed its own tech including virtual and augmented reality, drones, futristic cars and robots. At each exhibitor you could try out their product and learn a little bit about the purpose/specs of the products exhibitors had displayed at their booths. What I was most suprised about was seeing self driving cars because most of them looked really intresting from a asthetic standpoint. The fact that we will be seeing these cars on the road in the near future (Nissan self driving car pictured below). UAG's booth was in the north hall of the convention center where most car and iphone tech type exhibitors were housed. One of my tasks during the convention was to go to UAG's competitiors booths and study how they display their product and they had compared to UAG's display. I went to brands like Incipio, Speck, Lifeproof and Otter Box.
Today I continued to work on my marketing competitor demographic. I researched a lot of the more popular cases I saw earlier and reseached the specs/strengths of these phone cases. From my research I gatherd I noticed that a lot of these bigger companies such as Otter Box, Mophie and lifeproof are progressing towards adding more technical capablities to phone cases rather then just protect your phone. These cases include waterproof charging cases and cases with external adapters.
Urban Armor Gear's mission statment is to create state of the art products that offer the utmost protection with an affordable cost. As a company they really work hard at making sure the customer is getting a quality phone case. They really pay attention to the small destails whether they be designing a product, the graphics on the packaging or the overall layout of their website. My mentor Jay Veltz is the co-founder of Urban Armor Gear and has been creating phone cases for an array of Apple products as well as brands like; Samsung and Google. Jay travels from San Diego to Irvine Monday-Thursday by train to UAG's headquarters. UAG is a company that he has worked with for several years and has grown the brand exponentially. UAG's goal is to create affordable cases that look good but also protect your phone. UAG is definitely a company that is continuing to grow and a premier phone case manufacturer. Today I also worked on one of my mini projects. I went to Best Buy and looked around at the selection of cases they had. I was looking for ideas/markets UAG wasn't a part of and how other companies were utlizing these ideas. one market UAG is not a part of is 20-25$ case demographic brands like Speck have an array of cases in that 20-25$ cases. UAG wants to be apart of that marjer to compete with speck and also cater to the consumer that is looking for a functional phone case but doesn't want to pay the 30-50$ price tag. Another demographic I noticed UAG wasn't in but a cople of their competitors were, were cases that are waterproof such as Lifeproof and cases that offer charging and/or tech cappablities such as Mophie and Otter Box. We haven't discussed those markets quite yet but it could be a intresting endeavor in the future. Jay and I at the Old Town Transit Center pictured above.
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