Thinking Far Out
Ideating through design opportunities we identified
For the last few weeks, Team Far Out let their creative juices flow through a variety of ideation sessions and storyboarding.
But why though?
After weeks of analysis on our research data, we ended up with a range of interesting research insights and design opportunities. If we imagine the design opportunities as a bunch of doors in a closed room, then the ideation sessions were aimed at opening these doors to explore possible futures.
While we had a plethora of ideas to choose from, we extracted major themes and built storyboards that will allow us to engage with domain experts and validate needs. With the validation of needs, solutions breed!
If you want to see how we got here, take a look at how we analysed data from our research trip!
Sharing what we uncovered
We started out this sprint with sharing our research insights and the design opportunities we identified with our clients. This was done in the form of a “Discovery Presentation.”
We began this presentation by sharing our reframed problem statement that we pinpointed over the course of the project.
Initial Problem Statement
How do we help systems engineers know when they’re done with this stage of designing the rocket and, more specifically, understand complex information required to do so?
Reframed Problem Statement
How do we help NASA systems engineers understand the dependencies involved in the process of getting to “done” with the design of the SLS rocket?
During the discovery presentation, we also showcased an opportunity matrix based on the design opportunities we identified.
Following the discovery presentation, Team Far Out took a week-long, well-deserved break from the tireless struggle. What we did in this time period….
Spring Break was a nice time to experience long lost freedom. After break, we eagerly jumped back into our routines and were excited to begin ideating. To stimulate our creative juices, we broke out into smaller groups to conduct Reverse Assumptions analysis and 20 Questions, and then regrouped together to do Crazy 8's!
We had a lot of ideas. But now what? Are we sure that these ideas or idea themes are actual user needs? To validate these needs, we plan to conduct speed dating with storyboards.
Now that we’ve created the storyboards to use for need validation, we’re ready to speed-date with NASA engineers! We have been reaching out to our research trip interviewees to participate in future speed-dating activities and to test out prototypes. In addition to future participation, we’re also validating our sequence models with them.
Will the storyboards validate the needs? Or will they not? Find out more on the next post! 😉
We are 5 MHCI students at Carnegie Mellon University, currently working on our capstone project, where we work with NASA to help engineers understand being “done” in building the Space Launch System (SLS). We will be taking turns to write about our research activities and insights, design decisions and how we navigate through ambiguity in general.
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