It is a great feeling finishing this project. Overall, the project definitely helped reshape my overall thinking process because frankly we should always look to improve and innovate. The project and group I worked with throughout the semester have taught me so much about what aspects of design thinking I am competent and confident in and what aspects I needed to work on more. In the end we all genuinely had an appreciation for the final product of our project.
Creativity
Going into this class I thought I was pretty confident in my creative abilities. I still think I am one who tends to think more outside of the box but being creative is not being the one who comes up with the idea. It is working collectively on an idea and contributing in positive ways towards advancing that idea. I think most people think creative people have all the ideas and through this class I found out that being creative is not just about creating ideas (although it is great for brainstorming) it is co-creating and collaborating on a set of ideas to create a great idea. It is also being able to encourage the disagreements and challenges to the idea so that more ideas foster!
Collaboration
This brings me to collaboration. The dynamic within our group was great I thought. We had very strong communicators and even though we were sort of in the forming stage of our group it worked well enough to the point where a ‘devil’s advocate’ role was encouraged and embraced. That helped throughout the different stages of our project as we met on Mondays and typically got a lot of the collaborative efforts done. There was a point where we thought working independently was more convenient but found out quickly that some things were much better completed in person. I personally have learned that sometimes a group process tends to wander off on a separate (maybe just as important) tangent and the original task gets delayed. The brainstorming exercise where we had time allotments for certain tasks and the process champion kept us in line was a great way to illustrate the necessity to keep things going to accomplish one task at a time. Otherwise we could have many open action items and not as many getting completed.
Comfort with ambiguity
There was a point in our project where we were prototyping and when we came together to discuss the focus group plan, we all realized that our agreed upon prototype had many different interpretations within our own group! Our visions for what it was varied drastically! This allowed us to unintentionally create a finalized version of the project vision and prototype going forward that we could all agree on because we all took different aspects of our interpretations. I realize that this doesn’t always work out as perfectly as it has in our situation because some people may be reluctant to change or even just not included in the final design but that discussion that resulted from the ambiguity is the most valuable aspect and it’s important to convey that as well.
Persistence
This is the key and was heavily alluded to in our project instructions. Where would our group go next if the ideation process were to continue. A majority of the groups said prototyping which was also true for our group however, where in the cycle is less important. The important takeaway from that action item in our project was that this process is continuing and it’s extremely important to be persistent in the efforts to create! I think our group would easily go back to prototyping and create an iteration (we created the website as an example of our ‘next step’) to test and validate! Some groups didn’t seem as close to going back to the feedback stage and I probably would have going back to definition stage to make sure the target market was right and the in ideation the problem statement still suited.
Overall, I enjoyed the class and have learned a lot about the process of design thinking instead of relying on creative ideas. After all, creative ideas are skipping over two key cogs in the design thinking process that help truly get a great idea. Another big takeaway was the power of a group, we worked extremely well together and ideas were shared and encouraged. The last big thing for me was that it was a continuous cycle and that good ideas should even be looked out through the lens of a design thinking scope!