Blog Reflection 4
Before I enrolled for this course I had a mindset that as soon as I hear about a problem I would start formulating tech-savvy solutions. This course has changed my perspective and made me learn that solving a problem involves a creative process of human-centered design with a focus on different aspects of it: design, research, ideation, and prototyping rather than jumping to solutions directly so that we provide end-user and business value.
I found this course very action-based and experiential and would love to mention some instances of activities and my key learnings from them.
The first exercise that we performed in the class was to design a bag for our peers in pairs of two. It helped me learn that it is vital to understand the behavior, motivation, and inspiration of people to develop a human-centered solution rather than fancy solutions. I had to interview and understand what my partner wants or needed in her bag rather than imposing my assumptions of what a good bag is. It was the first stepping stone for me to get geared towards design thinking and overcoming my urge to just provide solutions based on my preconceived notions.
The session with Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg made me realize it is essential to reframe your problem, understand people’s goals, bright spots, analyze and ask ‘5 Why’ to turn the problems into opportunities.
The Question Party gave me the space to listen to my peers from various diverse backgrounds about their opinions, understand their thought processes, and have a healthy, judgment-free, constructive exchange of opinions among us. I learned to be open-minded and build on top of each other’s ideas and opinions
The class where we build 3D models using Lego made me learn how to collaborate constructively. Each team had the same last task to combine the tallest tower and fish into one super-system. What surprised me was that the combined model and the story around it varied for each team although the main elements remained the same. This made me realize team-based problem solving is not always a straightforward process as different personalities, working styles, and perspectives always come into play
Project: The best experience has been collaborating with my team members and going through the creative process of coming up with the ‘Revolve’ app. In the beginning, the problem statement seemed so vast and ambiguous. But at each step, we worked together to narrow down our scope, identify our target segment, research, interview, synthesize to come up with ideas, prototype, and test, and finally convey our journey through a presentation in the form of a skit.
I would like to categorize my key learnings from the team project into two parts. Firstly from the perspective of the design thinking process and secondly in terms of how to be an effective team.
From the perspective of the design thinking process, I have two favorite memories. Firstly our session with Niina helped me learn that it is important to dig into the root cause of the problem so that we understand the problem, evaluate whether it’s a painkiller or vitamin, and deliver a solution in its simplest form. This helped me and my team to s put users first, what pain point has the most impact on users lives and how it relates to the main problem statement rather than what we feel comfortable to solve
The second memory is when we did our prototype testing we got to validate the assumptions that underlie our solutions. If it is really helpful for our users? Are they willing to use it? I learned the key is to keep it simple and focus on our core idea of the solution. We utilized these learnings in our prototype and got constructive feedback from our users. We were happy to see their excitement for our prototype. It felt like all the time-consuming process we went through was worth it because our solution was something that they appreciated and solved the main pain point of our target users.
Now from the viewpoint of how to be an effective team I learned it is important to be open-minded and have clear communication about goals, tasks, and accountability to set up the team for success. We constantly communicated through our WhatsApp chat about our thoughts, updates, etc. Every member was responsive and most importantly diligently worked towards the tasks. Our weekly meeting on zoom made sure that we were all on the same page and addressed any challenges.
I aspire to be a product manager and for better-informed Product Management decisions, Design Thinking allows for empathy, research, inspiration, iteration, and reduced ambiguity. At the end of the day, design thinking makes it easier to find the perfect point of intersection between desirability, feasibility, and viability. It allows for asking the right questions that will help propel creativity.
As I embark on my journey to become a Product Manager one day, I would like to focus on two of the essential aspects of design thinking: Firstly, focus on what my user need and want rather than my needs and goals by a look around and trying to see things from a new vantage point, ideally from our customer’s view, to inspire new thoughts that might help me figure out what these people need. Secondly, validate my assumptions to check product/solution fit and it is solving my customer problem.
