Design Thinking: Final Reflection
What is design thinking? For me, learning about design thinking is more than just learning about how to create a product or a solution, it gave me a new framework to tackle almost any issue I face in the real world. Design thinking taught me about the assumptions I make in my decision making, the biases in my thinking. I now understand the importance of considering these seemingly obvious facts in the design process, which would be anything from something as big as designing a mass market product to designing a study plan.
“Human centred design is common sense, yet essential in doing meaningful work”
This quote, I think, encapsulates what I feel perfectly.
The same can be said about systems thinking. I now understand the relationships and interactions in everyday objects, it’s part of an intricate system that I never really knew existed or was simply ignorant to. To me a turnstile, for example, is no longer just an object that I pass on the way to school, it’s an interaction within the overall experience of the subway system.
This semester we did a lot of research, which I found extremely useful in designing a solution that had the genuine human experience at its core. The research helped me realise how much bias was occurring in my decision making process and it helped create a clearer picture of the human user and thus helped us create a better experience for them. Through this better understanding of the user, we were able to create better potential solutions in the ideation phase. First of all, we used our data to pinpoint issues that our potential users face, and once we found out what their pain points were, then we were finally able to address them. There’s no point in creating a brilliant solution if there is no problem to begin with.
We started off with a number of different ideas such as creating common spaces, subsidising meals, reducing the cost of food, just to name a few examples. However we eventually used our data to narrow down our choices until we settled on our first prototype, which was an extension of an existing NYU app (fig.1). Although the app, we thought, solves the potential users pain points that were brought up through our research, our fieldwork and testing revealed that we did not consider the experience of using our solution. Many students don’t have the NYU health app, or don’t use it, making our solution inconvenient. Our final prototype (fig. 2) used our new learning and addresses this issue by using a platform that, through our interviews, most students are familiar with and use regularly. Through this process I learned two valuable lessons, among others: 1) As new information comes in, and as you understand your information better, it’s okay that your ideas shift. Your first idea is unlikely to be perfect and that’s okay. The important thing is to keep improving and using your data to keep refining whatever you have in order to 2) create a better experience for the user. The human experience must be central to the design process which we learned through our feedback from our first prototype.
When I say we, in many cases I mean my group mates for this course: group 343. I really could not have done this semester without them and to them I am thankful. I think that our collaboration was vital in our design process and I especially enjoyed the fact that, because of our varied backgrounds, we all provided different points of view on many issues so that we eventually were able to have a more well rounded approach. For example, Michael could provide his insight as an NYU commuter from union city, Irene could tell us what she thought from the perspective of an American student from North Carolina, and I could tell them about my point of view coming from an Indonesian who’s never lived in the states before. I think that our success as a team was largely due to our strong communication, which meant that most issues or problems that we faced were always swiftly dealt with. I also thought that being in my group gave me a sense of healthy competition in a sense that I wanted to be as productive as the other two members of my group.
Overall, this course has done more than give me four credits, it’s reshaped how I view the world. It helped build the framework to better understand the world around me, and more importantly to understand myself.
