Reflections on Design Innovation
Is creativity a talent? Before taking the course “Design Thinking for Creative Problem Solving,” I hardly ever questioned this. The reason is simple: I have always been seen as someone lacking in creativity. When my friends in elementary school were already drawing the sun with sunglasses and vivid faces, I was still wondering how to draw something so glaringly bright. Many things seemed unimaginable to me.
However, the Design Thinking course changed my perspective. I still believe that everyone has different creativity, but I realized it is a developable ability and mindset. Through a series of collaborative practices, our team went from proposing a simple idea about graduate anxiety to designing an interesting mobile application. This process was full of a sense of achievement and creativity stimulation. I was always able to draw knowledge and skills from each classmate, team member, and professor, such as using Figma to digitize sketches and iterating our prototype based on open-ended interviews.
The experience of continuously updating and refining the prototype impressed me deeply. At first, I was surprised by the idea of designing a mobile application because hardly any member had similar experience. As we began to conceive basic functionalities and interactive pages, a diary software with cartoon elements and personalized music gradually emerged in my mind. Although the first prototype was simple, it truly sparked my interest in designing our solution. As mentioned in the reading “Prototyping is the shorthand of innovation,” a prototype is not a perfect product; sometimes it sparks our muse, and sometimes it may build one aspect of a solution. As a diarist, our first prototype allowed me to better empathize with the user’s role and imagine designs that help me relax.
Subsequent interviews made me realize that the user’s creativity is equally important in the design process. Sometimes the ideas of end-users differ from those of designers, so listening to the user’s voice is crucial. Initially, I thought journaling was a private activity, so people might not want social elements in the application. However, user interviews revealed another perspective on the prototype. Social elements may sometimes bring comparison and pressure, but the collective wisdom and emotional support based on social networks are unparalleled. This discovery once again made me realize that creativity is a collaborative process. A good solution often requires communication with users, team members, and all stakeholders. Even individual innovation processes cannot escape inspiration drawn from daily interactions.
Furthermore, I believe the lesson of breaking down challenging goals will benefit me in future learning and personal life. Just as we organized activities in this course to cultivate creative thinking, many grand or even unrealistic goals can actually be simplified by breaking them down and building different components. In the future, if given the opportunity, I hope to learn more about methods of iterating prototypes. I am also interested in the ideas of Donald Norman’s “Emotional Design” discussed earlier. Even though I may not become a professional designer, I believe exploring iterating and emotional design will help “sell” my solutions in the business world.
