Ideation & Prototyping Final Post

Wow. I cannot believe my first semester at NYU is done!

I’ve learned so much in Ideation & Prototyping, especially during the final group project. During our last week together, our team put a lot of finishing touches into our workflow. Most of the work really happened the week before, when we ironed out the inner workings of our service design. So, this week we finalized our presentation and rehearsed many times.

I put together a polished demo video to show off our workflow:

Reflecting on our presentation

We did such a great job! I really appreciated the complements from the NYU Langone panel on my video. Everyone was so lovely to work with and I’m so grateful to have made some new friends along the way.

Language barriers were difficult so I’m so proud of my teammates for making such detailed notes and rehearsing to get it right on presentation day. We had a few hiccups but overall it went well.

Sarah had suggested that we should put the demo video last, doing a more traditional research → ideation → final prototype style presentation. The majority of the group decided against it, so we kept the video at the beginning. After hearing from the NYU Langone panel, it sounds like Sarah was right! That was definitely a learning experience.

Challenges

It was difficult to narrow down our ideas to be concise enough to fit in a 15 minute presentation. We kept playing around with several layouts, until I made the demo video. That gave us some structure and predefined timing to work with for sure.

Future Directions

I wish we had provided our audience more context before jumping into the final demo. Also, I do wish we were able to include some direct quotes from the people we interviewed. I spoke to high up people at the NIH, and my members spoke with influential and informative people within NYC. It would have been great to share more of that.

We had also sent our final solution back to Kevin Moore, a coordinator within the LGBTQ+ Patient Relations Team. He gave us some really great initial feedback so we wanted to see how he felt about our final workflow. He didn’t respond but I hope to see what he has to say eventually.

Learning Outcomes

I feel really lucky to have been in this section of Ideation & Prototyping. I’ve learned so much from my classmates and about myself.

On this project, I got a better grasp of using Adobe After Effects, Figma, Sketch, and XD. These skills will be marketable for internship and job hunting! I also learned how to handle constructive criticism and feedback, taking it in stride to improve my work.

Finally, I’ve learned so much more about service design. I’m really interested in perhaps entering that field and entertaining it as a career choice.