Collaboration and Creativity
I took this class because I wanted to be a better designer. Working in digital product development, it is easy to get caught up in everyday tasks to keep an application functioning and to neglect the process of improvement. This class helped revitalize my interest in human-centered design. It gave me the tools to incorporate a democratic design approach into my day-to-day work. I now look forward to leading discovery sessions with my team, and I try to encourage a creative, collaborative culture wherever I can in the organization.
On the first day of class, when we had to sit in a circle and talk about our feelings, I was skeptical that I would do some serious learning in this course. Looking back now, I can say I was wrong at that moment. In fact, now I understand that design revolves around emotions. Another misconception I had was that people designed only for people, but now I realize everything that humans create impacts not only other humans but also the ecosystem around it, be it the earth, air, or other living creatures. Our climate change project helped me realize that best designs account for human emotions and sustainability. Below is a video from a Business Insider YouTube series called “World Wide Waste”. Doing research for this class steered me to find these videos and discover a community of intelligent designers working towards making the world a better place.
Another important lesson I took away from this class was that more perspectives serve for better problem solving. I appreciated all the different insights each member contributed to the team during our climate change project. When we had people from other teams contribute their ideas and weigh in, it proved that multiple sources of feedback were incredibly valuable for design. The Lego activity perfectly illustrated how different people could come together and collaborate ideas to build and create stories.
The last major takeaway I had from this class was that creativity is abundant, and in design, we must create an environment for it to flow freely. I thought our class contract served a critical purpose to foster creativity as we agreed that all ideas were to be respected. Our class was more open by removing perceived barriers, and every idea seemed worthy. When the guest speaker Thomas Wendell-Wedellsborg did the nightclub and elevator exercises with us, it really opened my eyes that the best solutions do not come out of the box. Great solutions require creative work. Sometimes that entails observing out in the field, talking to strangers, and building scrappy prototypes.
I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to take this class because I learned a great deal and met some great people. I would also love to see more classes take a hands-on approach to learning because it was fun and something many of us missed out on during our last year of all remote classes. I will take the concepts I learned in this class with me through my product career. Currently, I work in fintech, but I am interested in eventually doing work to promote ethical design and travel. Until then, I plan to apply the skills I learned from this class to my work and even the design of my life.
