Workshop Reflection :Service and Experience Design

Service and experience design was our 10 days’ workshop. The brief of this workshop was to build an ecosystem for people with disabilities which gives them a supportive environment to grow and treat equally.
We started our design process with primary and secondary research. For primary research, we went to an organization called ‘Enable India’. Which particularly works for people with disabilities. This workshop was more focused on learning by doing rather than only theoretical
learning. I majorly got three learning aspects from this workshop which are,

Learning about disability:

This was the big challenge for me to understand the person with disabilities, as I had never
been come across a person with a disability. To understand them this organization helped us. Generally, We lable someone as a disable by looking at their actions or body language. Society sees this kind of person through the lens of sympathy, pity and helpless.
In this workshop some unknown facts about them I discovered. Like, They have different abilities, not a disability. They have a unique set of ability which really matters, it’s all about acknowledging it.
Many times, in a way person with different abilities are able to do, think, see or hear, is not possible for one to do. After engaging with them I realized that it is an inability of the
mind it has nothing to do with disability.

Learning about Service system design:

After working on our project, I realized that system design link to change, innovation and improvement. To design any service, firstly we should study existing system then only we could design a better and improvised version of it. Designing any system is not just about how it looks or feels but, it’s more about how it works for stakeholders.

During this workshop, I learned to use many tools which helped me to present my ideas in front of class, ie. Subject understanding putting on paper with structured manner. Like, Journey Map, Stakeholder Map, Road Map, Blueprint, Storyboarding and Motivation Matrix.

Learning about the system and its sustainability:

Before this workshop, I was theoretically aware of the word sustainability. But when we actually worked on given brief, I got a clear understanding about it. Designing a sustainable service or system is also a major part of a design process. While designing a sustainable system, it is very important that what value your system is offering to stakeholders. To achieve sustainability, we must balance ecological and social factor equally, lacking a one-factor lead system to failure.

During the session our group choosen to work on special education from the perspective of a teacher, who is from a government school. During the process of designing eco-system for them, we were unsure about their ecological sustainability but after discussing this into the workshop we got clear idea about how to work on it - by managing a balance of funding in the system.

This workshop was very useful for me. Tools which I learned and knowledge which I got surely will help me in my future practice.

Thank you.