#desn2002

For week 6, we decided it would be best to meet up before class to polish our presentation a little more with (mostly) everyone’s input. We further defined research and ideas for a design solution backed up with empathy and definition of our design thinking process, this included redefining our stakeholder interview with our created persona and their user journey. Identified other factors such as sustainability goals for our future prototype and created propositions of our ideas and prototype that reflected the brief and target users. Once we were happy with our draft presentation, we assigned everyone roles as to who will speak each slide/topic. After our presentation, we reflected on other’s input and feedback from fellow students and our tutor. 

www.slideteam.net. (n.d.). Implementing design thinking powerpoint presentation slides. [online] Available at: https://www.slideteam.net/implementing-design-thinking-powerpoint-presentation-slides.html. 

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During week 5 is when we began the draft for our presentation, within the creation of our draft, we also work on creating a target persona based on our brief, empathy map and user journey. A persona is a representative of a user, helping designers and developers empathise with their users backgrounds and views. Creating presonas grounded in user research, design teams can avoid drawbacks associated with designing for extreme user anecdotes. We also went through a design thinking process map, including empathising, defining, ideating, prototyping and testing, however we only went into depth with empathising and defining so we could provide a clear and cohesive presentation on our understanding of the assignment and make the ideating and prototyping process much easier for ourselves in the future.

For week 4, we decided our first approach to implementing an app would be to create an empathy map - this way we are able to establish common ground amongst team members, as well as emotionally connect and relate to our client and target audience. We explored things they might say about museums, how often they go etc. As well as their thoughts and feelings, and what they do. This way we were able to take a deep dive and identify things that they dislike about museum spaces to create solutions. Empathy maps allow us to remove any bias towards a design solution, as well as uncovers user needs and which needs are important or not to guide us towards a meaningful innovation. We also added new members to our team, so we caught them up with our ideas and how we were gonna tackle this brief.

When we met up for this week's lecture, we mutually agreed that we would be tackling the wicked problem of trying to engage a younger demographic into museums - titled “How can Lake Maquarie’s Museum of Art and Culture (MAC) encourage young people to be involved in developing relevant programs and exhibitions.” Our first move was to establish a brief for this problem, and we established a reverse brief - which is a brief for the client to expand on to create a strong connection with the client to build empathy; “How can we design and develop a socially available system that provides the MAC with sustained relevance, representation, and the promotion of inclusion and education?”

We also discussed the idea of developing an app for the museum, which can be both entertaining and useful for the user within the museum environment. We believed something as relevant as an interactive app would be a perfect solution for more youth engagement for quicker accessibility to information, and wanted to include features that could cater to a young demographic such as early teens, and features that are appeasing to late teens and young adults.

www.eleken.co. (n.d.). Design Brief Example and Template for Successful Project Execution. [online] Available at: https://www.eleken.co/blog-posts/design-brief-example-how-it-should-look-like-and-what-it-should-contain. 

Within this week, we were assigned groups at random to work in, this way we could have a mix of students in each group with different areas of specialty, such as similar to a real-world design team environment. Within our groups, we explored an empathy map, which provided us with a list of ways to empathise with a client emotionally and perceptively. We also dove into assessing different wicked problems for our assignment, and we evaluated each possible wicked problem through brainstorming amongst each other different solutions off the top of our heads that could work or be applied to the problem. We agreed to create a common language within each other to empathise with each other when picking a wicked problem to further discuss, and we identified 1-2 possible solutions per problem but kept brief, so others within the group can further brainstorm and expand on that possible solution. As we discussed it, we agreed to sit on our ideas for a week until we meet up again. 

Hambeukers, D. (2019). Design Thinking And Learning. [online] Design Leadership Notebook. Available at: https://medium.com/design-leadership-notebook/design-thinking-and-learning-fefd64f9bd1c. 

For my first introduction to this course, I attended the 1st lecture where we discussed how AI is incomparable to real designers, as it is a human-centred operation that applies a design thinking process to approach challenges to be overcome with ideas. We discussed further what design thinking is and how it is crucial to understand the development of an idea and address changes within design environments. We watched Paul Bennett’s TedTalk regarding design thinking, established a necessary sympathy between the designer and the client, and used that to reflect on innovations within the design environment. For designers to immerse themselves into the customer experience, designers are able to establish design criteria for brainstorming solutions, especially in a collaborative or team environment. I was not able to attend the tutorial, however, I did decide to immerse myself in the contents provided on Canvas to paint a clear idea as to what this course is teaching as well as the assignments I will be working on.

Bennett, P. (1175). Design is in the details. [online] www.ted.com. Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_bennett_design_is_in_the_details. 

IDEO (2018). IDEO Design Thinking. [online] IDEO | Design Thinking. Available at: https://designthinking.ideo.com/. 

And we’re done! Overall, the concept for this course was super fun, and there were a lot of moments of triumph, trouble solving, group bonding, and fun stuff that I loved. But I am leaving with a lot of regret with how my overall group dynamic went. I had to take on a micromanaging role to get everyone to contribute and do their work on time, and it ended up being extremely exhausting. For context, it led to me doing the presentation designing and the supporting documentation PDF entirely by myself, start to finish. I was hounding people up to the last minute to send me links, files, and it really made it stressful. Don’t get me wrong, I love this project, I just wish I didn’t have to manage it this way. But, in the end, I’m happy with the final product, so I’ll be staying positive about it for now.

For the class work this week, we made a quick presentation order to organise ourselves and ensure we had chosen the right layout for our presentation. After reviewing our google slides and the content, we feel that this is the right layout for optimal flow and cohesion in our presentation.

Majed has done an amazing job of jumping into our project right at the end, he’s got a great work ethic and is super engaged each lesson. I’m confident in him and I think with him added, we’re going to be great next week presenting. Right now, we are just finalising all our work and getting ready to practice presenting it! Homestretch!