At the end of April, following in depth research, brainstorming, planning, problem-solving and preparation, two teams of Lower Sixth students thoroughly impressed the Managing Director and Design Director of Envoplan, the company which has designed, and will produce, the interiors of Woldingham’s new Library and Sixth Form Centre, with their responses to real life business challenges set by Envoplan at the start of this year.

Oksana v R, Lower Sixth - 

In January, 12 Lower Sixth students visited interior design organisation Envoplan, which specialises in the education sector, to learn about the company and the field in which it operates. While there, we were split into two teams and briefed on one of two projects – one focused on marketing, the other on design. My team’s brief was to create a marketing plan to launch products suitable to sell to schools around the country with a zero-carbon footprint. The other team was briefed to develop a design for a central hub for a school to foster neuro-inclusion and wellbeing, including some core principles for wellbeing. 

Our team began by dividing up responsibilities and tasks to make sure we covered everything we planned to and didn’t double up. Fundamental to all our research was to explore what a good marketing plan actually consists of and what it should look like. The hardest part of the project was bringing all our research together and pulling out the key points and ideas.

The final part of the project was for both teams to present our response to our brief to the Managing Director and Design Director of Envoplan, which we did at Woldingham on Thursday 25 April. They gave us lots of very positive feedback, including how confident we were when asked questions about our research and the whole process and that we’d managed to gain really in-depth knowledge in a short space of time. They also liked our team’s approach of everyone working individually before coming together to collaborate. The design team was complimented on its very clever and achievable design solutions. Envoplan told us it will implement some of our ideas.

Overall, this was an amazing experience. We all learned so much and loved working on such a challenging business project.