Erin Young Design Thinking Bootcamp

 

  • After Wednesday's design thinking boot camp, I was interested to see how Ideo's process differed from ours when given more resources for research and building prototypes. When viewing the Ideo Shopping cart video, I noticed that the company follows a collaborative process of stating examples of problems found with the cart, similar to our peer-focused interviews on the issues with cell phones. However, the Ideo team references data and professional opinions on shopping cart issues including safety and theft instead of asking their group members how they feel shopping carts can inconvenience them. I think this approach fits the problem Ideo is trying to solve better since we have real attachments to our phones, but less emotional attachment to a cart we temporarily use at a store. Ideo's design thinking process emphasizes the quantity of ideas over the quality of them. It seems like a much more collaborative process with the ideas on the board for others to see and potentially be inspired by. Ideo's emphasis on "enlightened trial and error" may be more effective than our in-class exercise, but I can see how this process would be difficult to accomplish in a short period of time. However, I believe our approach better emphasizes meeting the consumers' needs by reviewing each other's in-progress problem statements before beginning work on the prototype.

  • Overall, I feel that design thinking's greatest strengths are its human-oriented nature and emphasis on encouraging all ideas. On Wednesday, I was looking at the prototypes presented to the class and contrasting them with the latest iPhone updates. I noticed that every design had an explanation for the feature added, a sharp contrast to the iPhone's updates that I sometimes don't even understand the meaning of. However, I can also see issues with creating a product to meet one person's grievances. Some of the prototypes completely redesigned the phone which might make that customer happy, but also feels unfamiliar to the current user base. I appreciate design thinking for its emphasis on creativity, allowing experimenters to think outside of a set structure for idea generation. When compared to previous problem-solving approaches I participated in, this approach resulted in a lot of different solutions instead of variants on the same idea. When the problem isn't suggested to the student, it allows them the freedom to think of more ideas than an obviously correct solution. Overall, I enjoyed the boot camp and look forward to seeing how design thinking can vary based on group size and problems.

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