We kicked off our first session by getting to know the team, sharing our architectural backgrounds and sharing our individual strengths, interests and perspectives. After getting to know eachother, we turned our attention to the brief. We spent time analysing the online resources and diagramming the project scope, identifying not just the bare minimum outcomes expected from us, but where we could expand the project by adding extra creativity and value.

Then, we worked on the collaborative design of our project poster. After sketching individual iterations and going over them as a group, we synthesised our ideas into a final draft that represented our collective vision. With several project names in mind, we headed into our first stakeholder meeting with Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM).

The presentation by the TfGM team was incredibly insightful, outlining the project trajectory and specific expectations. A productive Q&A followed, clearing up any potential ambiguities. As a group, we are really proud of the synergy we’ve built in such a short time, and it was rewarding to see that our excitement is shared by our client.

Our third MSA Live session focused on finalising our ethics application and having another site visit. We started by reviewing the ethics documents prepared last week, ensuring all our administrative documents were in line with the requirements. In doing so, we evaluated our planned community engagement activity and realised it required modification to align with our collaborator’s vision for the project. Taking this on board, we held a brainstorming session to develop a new engagement activity and updated our risk assessments to ensure it applies to our modified community engagement activity.

Once the ethics application was complete, we shifted our focus back to the site. The group travelled to Holt Town for another site visit, walking the stretch down to New Islington. This on-the-ground exploration was crucial; it allowed us to gather primary data for our site analysis and begin identifying the most strategic, high-potential locations for the new transportation hub.

Week 4 - 17/03/2026

In our latest session, we initially focused on responding to feedback from our mentor regarding our ethics application. Revisiting our community engagement strategy, which we modified last week to suit our collaborator's needs, we clarified the exact details about our activity. By clearly explaining the three distinct phases, we ensured that we clearly communicated exactly what we wanted to do.

With the structure of the engagement activity determined and explained in good detail, we shifted our focus to a brainstorming session to generate the content for the engagement activity. A major focus was on creating a list of design drivers for the project. During the upcoming engagement, we plan to use this list as a tool, inviting our collaborators to highlight the drivers they feel are most important and applicable to our project. We finished the session by identifying the remaining content required to run the activity, leaving us with a clear plan for the week ahead.

Engagement Activity - 24/03/2026

This week, we carried out our engagement activity with our collaborator! We came prepared with all three of our engagement activities ready to carry them out, and we held an interactive session in which we accompanied our collaborators through the activities to extract every bit of information we could for them. The information we gained during this session will be crucial for our design process, as we were able to clearly understand the collaborators' exact expectations and priorities for this project.

Throughout the activity, we understood the expectations of the collaborator in terms of design, functionality, materiality, community, and user experience. We will use this information during our design process to shape our design and curate an experience which satisfies the collaborator, the user, and us as the design team. We are really proud of our engagement activity, and we feel like the outcomes we obtained through this activity were successful beyond our expectations!