Final Reflection
Maureen Daoud
Final Reflection Assignment
Upon declaring my Technology, Management, and Design minor, I was looking through the list of classes and the class “Design Thinking For Creative Problem Solving” definitely caught my attention. I think the most valuable part of this class experience was learning about the whole process of design research and the different methods of becoming creative and generating ideas. I think that the methods taught in class are applicable to different disciplines and I am sure that I will be able to apply that knowledge in any professional career path I choose, whether it is design focused or engineering focused. I definitely appreciated the human interactions we had throughout the class. It definitely made the class more enjoyable and engaging and dare I say, fun! I was most challenged by expressing an idea of a design through a sketch and then also expressing through a phone application. It was also difficult at first to come up with ways to test an app, since it doesn’t have a physical form. Prior to coming to this class, I had not drawn in several years, so my sketching skills were close to being nonexistent. But the class gave me a great excuse to get back to doing what I enjoy the most: sketch and draw. I would like to keep on practicing this skill and grow it because although it is different from what I am mainly learning in school, it is a great way to work on my creativity and artistic expression.
Additionally, I was able to learn a lot about the ideation process, how there was no such thing as a bad idea since those can inspire creative ideas. For the prototyping process, it was interesting to experiment with the different forms of testing and trying to figure out the best way to test an application.
I also tremendously enjoyed working with my classmates and group members since I was able to learn a lot from their different perspectives. I also learned how to compromise ideas and suggestions to reflect everyone’s needs and desires. These are skills that I am going to continue to apply in the future.
To recap, design research is a process designers go through to better understand the needs of consumers. In order to find a need, designers have open conversations with people in order to better understand the problems they face. It is based on the idea of Design Thinking, which unlike business thinking, places more focus on human-centered product design and innovation. In other words, it is about using empathy to learn about people’s stories and experiences (learning about the good and the bad times they experience) to uncover unmet needs. Systems thinking can be described as holistic thinking that looks at “the big picture” while analyzing the different relations between the subsystems. It is a great way to learn about the impact of different factors and to understand how these interactions lead to different outcomes. I believe that I am going to apply these concepts in my future classes as I choose classes to take for my minor. I am interested in taking service design innovation and design strategies and I am very excited to take these classes with what I have learnt about the basics of design research. I believe that the process of making something should always be based on what the consumer needs and not what the designer thinks they need. So I am excited to see how this is applied in different design classes. Additionally, I will continue sketching and working on being more observant and mindful about the ideas that already exist in the world and train my brain to think of ways to make them better and enhance them.
Throughout this semester, I have been talking about this class to my peers all the time and recommending this class because I think it introduces very important skills that every engineer should have. Though the way of thinking is a little bit different, having that exposure makes me so much more aware about not only the technical aspects of a design but also how it’s being used. This open-mindedness can help an engineer enhance a product even more. For anyone who’s interested in taking the class, I’d say that this class provides a different but important perspective when it comes to design. Not only do you get to learn about the different methods of brainstorming and the general steps taken when designing something, but also you interact with people in the real world to enhance your knowledge about a topic. It’s both fun and enriching.
