Ideation
In today’s class, we all learned about ideation and applied it to our product designing process for Apple+Health. After the synthesis and clustering phase, we moved on to ideation wherein we used various creative techniques to brainstorm new ideas and develop them to generate fresh creative solutions. By discussing and identifying the most promising solutions, we can further narrow down our strategy to design the product. For our Apple+Mental Health activity, we generated a large number of ideas to explore various options and evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of each idea. Our primary concern is How might we help NYU students talk about loneliness in a physical setting. Hence after deciding on the “How might we” statement as the center of our ideation, we came up with the following ideas to mitigate loneliness:
1. Based on our interview experience, we noticed that most people are uncomfortable expressing their feelings about loneliness. Hence, they should be given a platform to talk and express how they feel. When we find something that we can relate to, we often tend to speak about it. My team and I came up with the idea of providing an anonymous board wherein students could jot down their emotions and pin them to the board.
2. Anonymous surveys can also be conducted to better understand the sentiments of people and how they react to loneliness.
3. We can conduct networking events like Pizza nights to create an informal environment where people can come together and make friends.
4. We can also encourage students to start journaling as it reduces anxiety and boosts health and well-being.
5. Create a channel for two people to anonymously chit-chat about their feelings and feel lighter.
We learned that the ideation phase is iterative, meaning that designers go through multiple rounds of generating and refining ideas until they arrive at the best solution. During the ideation process, it’s important to generate many ideas without judgment or evaluation. This means that all ideas are welcome, regardless of how feasible they may seem. The goal is to generate a broad range of possibilities that can be evaluated later on.
Over time, I have noticed that the team is becoming increasingly invested in the problem we are trying to solve, and we are making progress towards finding a solution. Our efforts to collect and analyze data have helped to clarify the assignment and provided useful tools for the team. I am attracted to the notion of integrating human quality into our product solution. This idea holds a lot of potentials because it allows us to tap into the emotional side of our users and create a deeper connection with them. By making our product more relatable and accessible, we can better meet the needs and desires of our target audience.
