Time to zoom out!

Imagine you are walking into a classroom full of Master's students at a Business School. What is it that you are thinking of? When I would ask that question to some of my friends back home, they would immediately have a picture in mind: A couple of slightly overdressed students standing in front of a class trying to find big words for the PowerPoint presentation they put together the night before. Well, if you had walked in on one of my classes over the past 12 weeks you would have been surprised. A group of students standing in a circle all cheering for 2 electric toy dogs fighting or students competing in who can build the highest tower with Lego bricks. Yes, this is part of what I’ve been doing the past semester, and I am very thankful for it!

I remember well the first Design Thinking class when our professor introduced us to the basic concepts. I was excited to see what the course would be like. After all, I took it because I was told it is something different from your other classes. However, how true that statement would be, I first realized when I heard that we have migrants coming to class. It was two weeks later that me and my group got to meet Mercy, a Nigerian woman who had just moved to Portugal. I admit at first, I felt a little overwhelmed. How do I talk to her respectfully, knowing that I simply cannot relate to some of her experiences? How do we get to the core of her problems without asking questions that are too personal? Just a couple minutes into the conversation it was clear that my doubts were completely unjustified. I was immediately amassed by her openness, positive energy, and enthusiasm. Throughout our meeting, she was openly sharing her experiences coming and now living in Portugal. Before the meeting, my team had prepared some questions we wanted to ask but soon we decided to let the conversation go its natural way and see where it leads us, something I used to not be a big fan of. Throughout my bachelor’s in economics the structure was clearer — there is a problem, you identify it, you calculate the answer, and done! However, when you bring in the human component things change. When you move away from numbers and get to talking, contextual aspects become more important. Considering the overall setting and environment you are in, beware of how you frame what you say and sometimes just listen instead of asking.

>> Be open & flexible while considering contextual aspects <<

Over the next weeks, the course started to unfold. One session is especially present when I think back, it is the one where we equipped toy dogs to battle each other. Having talked about the importance of contextual factors before, this is one case where a little bit of context helps put things into perspective. The whole session was under the theme of prototyping our ideas. We were told we need to prepare our dogs to compete with others. It was about coming up with a first idea, seeing how the ideas performs, and then adapting to the new information. Although this was done in a very playful way this loop of trying and receiving feedback holds for any kind of idea that is about to be implemented in the real world. In the case of my group, our dog performed rather poorly, and we ended up in the last place. What went wrong? We had an initial idea of how we wanted to design our dog which made a lot of sense to all of us. However, we failed to properly implement the feedback we got from the first trial round. Instead of completely revising our idea we were too attached to it and only made some minor adjustments. To me, this does not come as a surprise since I tend to stick to ideas and plans when I am convinced by them. Nevertheless, when real-life feedback proves you wrong it might be worth starting again from scratch or at least adapting accordingly.

>> Pay close attention to feedback and be open to adjust or completely start from scratch if necessary <<

This important lesson turned out to be very valuable when working with my Team on our course project. After meeting with Mercy, we had a good understanding of her everyday struggles. To us, it appeared that the challenge of finding employment is a common denominator among all other difficulties Mercy experiences. The idea of developing a job platform specifically for migrants seemed like a natural consequence. Even though we were not aware back then, we arrived at that solution using a design thinking approach. After all the idea was the result of an existing problem and we thought of solutions always having Mercy in mind as our potential user. The basic idea was clear, and we were all eager to explore the potential of the solution. Nevertheless, it took us many weeks to get a clearer picture of what exactly such a platform could look like. Many times, we went back and forth discussing details related to design, legal issues, or feasibility. The real breakthrough happened when we decided to just go with one prototype and get into testing. As it turned out some points, we were discussing previously were completely irrelevant while others we had not considered before were very relevant. So, what is the real learning from this? For me, it is that having an idea is always the starting point, but the real work begins after that. Developing prototypes, receiving feedback, and implementing the findings to sharpen your idea are key. Also, I started to believe that this process has no real end. It naturally repeats itself with external factors changing. Frustrating right? Not really otherwise we would be forever stuck with the same solutions and trust me this is nothing you want!

>> Trust in the process even though things seem blurry at times, if you keep it up it will lead you somewhere <<