My design thinking journey
At the beginning, after reading the syllabus for this course, I expected a different content from it. However, I was positively surprised, first and foremost by the approach used for lectures, using circular tables where students can interact with each other more proactively rather than the classic desks used for frontal classes it was something totally new for me in the education world. In fact, I think this type of teaching is totally underrated since it is used rarely, and at the same time it makes lessons more enjoyable and interactive.
Nonetheless, my sensations during the first two weeks were rather confused regarding the assignments and the project that we were supposed to develop. However, I think this somewhat confusing step was positive as overall, since it challenged me to think outside the box, forcing me to experiment and test new approaches, as if it was a first test to experiment my design thinking process. And now having concluded this course I think I have understood this concept, since as repeated many times in class “it is not important WHAT you think but HOW you think”.
Regarding the course in general I think that although it’s pretty far from my other Business Analytics courses it still imparted me new knowledge and soft skills such as teamwork and creative writing, as well as developing critical thinking especially in the design phase. This was due mainly to the many readings and podcasts recommended to us by the professor, but also thanks to the group project we were assigned, which included research (interviews, web research and observations), ideation (consulting with the team and get conclusions from the research phase), design and implementation of our project (prototype, testing and deploy our idea).
On the other hand, I think ours it has been a very challenging project, as we didn’t get positive feedback from the beginning, and I also wasn’t very convinced about our app. However, after clearly defining all the steps and the business problem, improving the features of the app, I consider myself definitely satisfied with our project.
I am also well pleased with the team I’ve worked with. However, I think I personally still have room for improvement from teamwork point of view, as I have good listening and analytical skills, I also can get into team dynamics without any difficulty but at the same time I think I am not very proactive and I also lack in leadership skills most of the time. Nonetheless, these shortcomings of mine were compensated by my team, in which everyone had different strengths than others, making sure that we complemented each other.
To conclude, I would like to add that this course helped me understand what ideation and prototyping really mean and what they consist of practically. Since having had the opportunity to move freely and create your own idea from scratch by giving space for creativity rather than a classic group project with questions to fill in, really stimulated me and made me understand what the design thinking process really means.
