Stepping Back and Say Goodbye
“Design thinking re-frames the problems in a human-centric way, creates many new ideas, and adopts a hands-on approach to prototyping, testing, and trying out problem-solving concepts.”
Design is relevant to me because it influences me on different levels. Aesthetics, time savers, and usability of tools can influence how I feel, improve my daily life and make me more productive, while tools that are not well designed often do the opposite. I am curious about the approach to design and it makes me realize that it’s a practice and you can improve yourself if you keep practicing. So, why not starting my own design thinking journey and explore my potential design thinking skills even further? Therefore, I decided to join the course of “Design Thinking for Social Innovation” in this semester and I am so glad that I did. In the following, I would like to ellaborate on my learnings, strengths and weaknesses, and future development goals.
Firstly, one of the most essential concepts to me is embracing ambiguity– in other words, it’s the quality of being open to more than one interpretation; uncertainty. Ambiguity is a common thing among design thinkers due to the fact that innovation itself is a messy, ambiguous process. Coming up with breakthroughs often comes with lots of uncertainties. In the course, we had the chance to learn how to embrace ambiguity. Personally speaking, being uncertain about decisions is what I try to avoid at all costs. However, it is crucial to realize that as innovators, ambiguity is something you cannot and should not avoid. For example, thinking that we should have an answer to every question is exactly what is stopping us from releasing our creativity. It is time to shift it to the word “could” in order to get lots of answers and move forward. Design Thinking helps us to emphasize with others to gain a fresh perspective and thus, be open to multiple interpretations at the same time. Moreover, it emphasizes complexity and uncertainty.
Secondly, one of the most valuable parts of the design process is to start finding the problem. But even once the problem is defined, we’re still just getting started. So instead of proposing a possible strategy and organizational structure right away, my team and I had to conduct a discovery process to identify the biggest problems we are dealing with and figure out how the innovation unit needs to be designed to solve them. We went through the process of defining questions, observation, brainstorming, and feedback sessions. In addition to finding an appropriate process, we were concerned with really emphasizing the need for innovations. From this experience, I have learned that design development is a process that usually involves many iterations and feedback from various stakeholders. Accordingly, I also learned that the first idea, the first draft, when faced with a new task or problem, is unlikely to be the final product of one’s work. You have to experiment and learn and start it all over again. I actually found it quite satisfying that my first thought was so different from the final product because it showed me that my team and I had put a lot of effort and thought into the design process. Consequently, design is fascinating to me because it is also a personal process that can be learned and improved upon, but still, a design development process will never be the same and thus is always challenging. Therefore, I am curious about my future learning experiences, developments, encounters, and successes in this field.
Thirdly, I learned a lot about creativity through collaboration and trusting the process from this class. During our project, I saw that our teams’ unique perspectives and thought processes influence what details we pay the most attention to and the conclusions we reach (e.g., interviews). By working in a diverse team, we widened the scope of our research and ultimately the creative solutions we were able to generate. Thus, the group dialogue allows opportunities for everyone to share thoughts and insights. From here we went through rounds and rounds of ideation, prototyping, and testing. Consequently, taking feedback, stepping back, and figuring out what can be done next are crucial factors for a successful design process.
Lastly, preparing our presentation for the final exhibition preparation was an appropriate way to reflect my learnings from the course. During the process, I often thought about the insides of the TED Talk (TedxEast, Nancy Duarte uncovers common structure of greatest communicators): the speaker emphasized the approach that an idea is powerless if it stays inside of you: what counts is the way how we communicate our idea. To do so, a good way to convey ideas through stories that can be injected and afterward recalled. My team and I decided, to carry out our idea by authentic storytelling in order to create a personal and emotional connection with as many people as possible in class (always keeping in mind that the audience of our idea is the hero). Our main goal was to build credibility, reveal powerful emotions, and persuade them from our project.
Lastly, from a retro perspective what I would do differently for a future project, is constantly documenting and keeping track of the feedback when doing user research (for prototyping testing and primary research) like stating verbatim quotes from the primary research. Instead of lacking in incorporating original interview data into our writing, we should have developed new ideas by using quotations from interviews which would have liven up our writing, and grounded our big concept within the specific circumstances of individuals. Therefore, the generality and applicability of our findings and the development of new knowledge through the process of integration would have been improved. Although, it is important to remind yourself that it is about the process and the practice — the best way is learning from your own mistakes and avoiding repeating them in the upcoming process.
All in all, I loved the unique methodology of the class towards all assignments. This course introduced me to the various tools that can be used in the process of collaboration (e.g., brainstorming, lego ideas generation), and using tools like sketching took me back to the basics of creativity and inspired me to embrace it even more in my professional and personal life. It was incredible to experience that design thinking has endless possibilities and application in any particular area (e.g., product, industry).
It has been a pleasure working with you Anne and I enjoyed every part of our class (especially the interactive practices). Thank you so much and I wish you all the best!
“Design is everywhere, inevitably everyone is a designer” Tim Brown of IDEO
