From an Idea to a Scope

Making a Major Project; Episode 2: The one where she tries to solve an entire borough.

Hello beautiful people!

Welcome to Making a Major Project. A series where I document the long, winding, confusing, exciting and occasionally terrifying process of completing my Final Major Project as a service design master’s student.

I think creatives are often expected to wake up one day with one miraculous idea and magically know exactly what to do with it. But most good design outcomes actually emerge from long periods of uncertainty, research, experimentation and figuring things out in real time. And honestly, I think that process is just as worth talking about as the final outcome itself.

So as I take you along this journey, expect the ups, downs, lefts, rights and existential spirals along the way.

Get in, buckle up, and let’s gooo!

डर के आगे Scope है (Beyond Fear Lies a Project Scope)

Remember how I was scared?

Well, after the last class, I realised something important — Scared is not a problem that needs solving. Scared is apparently just how this whole thing works.

Because every time I think I’ve reached the edge of my comfort zone, there seems to be another edge right behind it waiting to say hello.

So if scared is unavoidable, there is only one thing left to do.

Do it scared.

So buckle up. Let’s go turn an idea into an actual project scope.

The Hunger Games (but make it academic)

Before I talk about the actual project, let me set the scene.

The first few weeks of Proposal Development felt a little bit like academic speed dating mixed with competitive sports.

We had our own research ideas. Three research canvases.

We had around fifteen supported projects.

And somehow we had to figure out which project aligned with our interests while also convincing organisations that we were worth taking on. In one week!

No pressure.

Naturally, I responded by writing four proposal pitches. Because moderation has never been my strongest personality trait.

One of those pitches was for Ealing Council.

My independent research interest was already circling around young people who are Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEET), and the Ealing brief sat surprisingly close to that topic.

The more I read, the more I wanted that project.

And spoiler alert.

I got it.

Cue excitement. Followed immediately by panic.

Great. Now what? Solve everything?

This is where my final in-class meltdown occurred. At least for that week.

I had a research canvas. I had a proposal pitch. I had a project partner. But all of those things were still just ideas. And ideas are sneaky.

They make you feel like you know what you’re doing when in reality you’ve only identified the rough direction of travel. To go from an idea to a project scope, you need clarity. You need to answer questions like:

• What exactly are you trying to do?
• What is actually possible?
• Can one person do it?
• Can one student do it?
• Can one student do it in five months?
• Can one student do it in five months in a country that is not even their own?

Suddenly the project felt a lot bigger. And unfortunately, my first instinct when faced with complexity is often: “Maybe I should map all of it.”

This is not always a good instinct.

My ecosystem map at this stage (I gave up on this after two days of trying to finish it and it never ending)

The Day I Tried to Narrow it Down

My original research canvas focused on NEET. Which sounds quite specific until you realise it absolutely isn’t. NEET is a national issue.

When I adapted my proposal for Ealing Council, I narrowed it down to one borough.

Which sounds more manageable. It was not.

Because the topic itself sits at the intersection of education, employment, opportunity, inequality, public services and economic development. In other words, tiny little things.

Education has been one of my interests for years, so I started exploring what Ealing Council was already doing in that space.

And that is when I found the Jobs and Skills Strategy. The strategy is ambitious.

At its simplest, it works something like this:

1. Create more jobs.
2. Help residents build the skills to access those jobs.

Simple in theory. Massively complex in practice.

As I worked my way through the strategy, I followed link after link after link until I eventually ended up on Learn Ealing and Work Ealing.

Learn Ealing Website

Work Ealing Website

And then something felt strange. The strategy and the websites felt like they belonged to completely different worlds. The strategy spoke confidently about progression pathways, employment opportunities and resident outcomes.

The websites felt disconnected from that vision. Like someone had designed the map and forgotten to build the roads. So naturally, I did what any responsible researcher would do.

I fell down another internet rabbit hole.

The Reviews That Made Me Go “Hmm”

At some point, I started reading reviews from Ealing residents.

This is usually where things get interesting. And by interesting, I mean mildly alarming.

People repeatedly described the council website as difficult to navigate, confusing and frustrating to use. One review described it as “almost unnavigable unless you know exactly where things are to begin with.”

Another called it — ”The website is chaotic on many levels.. I unfortunately don’t have any compliments to give, no one seems to care or look at the majority of negative reviews. It’s high time to act positively and improve massively the service for the general interest and the taxpayers who work hard and deserve a good quality service.”

Yet another one said — ”Their website doesn’t work, it looks like it was built in the 90s.”

Now, these reviews were not specifically talking about Learn Ealing or Work Ealing. But the complaints felt familiar and echoed my experience of navigating Learn Ealing and Work Ealing. Because some of the same friction points seemed to appear here too.

The more I looked, the more it felt like there was a gap between strategic ambition and operational reality.

The council had a clear vision. The resident experience felt less clear. And suddenly I had something that looked much more like a design problem.

The Very Humbling Realisation

Unfortunately, discovering a systems-level problem does not mean you should attempt to solve the entire system. Trust me. I considered it. Briefly.

Then reality intervened.

Because while “redesign the relationship between education and employment in Ealing” sounds exciting, it also sounds like the work of several departments, multiple organisations and approximately twenty years.

I had five months.

This is where the strategy itself quietly gave me an answer. One of the progression pathway actions focused on integrating Learn Ealing and Work Ealing. And that felt important. Not because it solved everything. But because it was specific. It was actionable. And most importantly, it was possible.

Then I narrowed it down even further. Ealing identifies the creative industries as one of its growth sectors. As someone studying design and working within the creative industries, this felt like a place where I could contribute meaningful insight.

So my focus became:

How might Learn Ealing and Work Ealing better support residents interested in progressing into creative careers?

For the first time in weeks, the project felt manageable.

Not small. Just manageable. Which is a very underrated feeling.

A Small Victory for the Recovering Overachiever

Something interesting happens when you finally define a scope. The problem becomes smaller. But the project becomes clearer.

And clarity is weirdly comforting. I have a tendency to be overambitious.

Which sounds admirable until you realise that overambition often means trying to do seventeen projects at once and completing none of them properly. Sometimes being overambitious is not visionary. Sometimes it is just delusional with better branding.

So learning to draw boundaries around my project was surprisingly difficult. But also necessary. Because a scope is not a limitation. A scope is a decision.

It is choosing what you will focus on and, more importantly, what you won’t.

And for today, that feels like a win.

A small one.

But a win nonetheless.

Winged Victory of Samothrace by Pythokritos

Next Episode:

Now that I finally know what problem I am exploring, I need to figure out where it sits in the academic world.

Which means it is time to enter the mysterious land of theoretical frameworks.

A place where everyone casually says words like ontology, epistemology and axiology as if they are normal conversation.

Pray for me.