#processesandperspectives

I feel like coming off of last week, our team had a more solidified idea of what we wanted to design, as we set a target demographic and medium for how we wanted our product to be offered and implemented. After getting feedback from our professor, we realized that we wanted the product to enhance an already existing service, like an Apple watch, since there is already a lot of competition in terms of the product we are trying to sell. This made me feel really eager as we headed into this next phase of implementation, since it was nice to know that we weren’t starting totally from scratch. 

However, our group has a really difficult time meeting up to collaborate and sync up on what exactly we want in our design and how we want it to function, so the actual implementation process was rather stressful. We used Slack a lot, but it was hard to physically communicate the specs of my designs to the group since everyone had a different idea in their minds of how they wanted the flow of the product to be. While we all wanted it to be as simple as possible, what would the pages look like? Did we want the product to prioritize medical records? Or did we want it to mainly be an AI doctor? Even after our discussion last week, I was still utterly confused (which is rather embarrassing to say so), so I just went ahead and continued building off of my ideas from last week, while my group created a website that would contain our product and the necessary resources. 

As much as I love this project and am passionate about it due to personal reasons, I am finding it to be a huge learning curve in terms of collaboration to ensure that all of our ideas are as feasible as they are impactful. I honestly feel a little bit of imposter syndrome creeping in as I feel like I don’t know how to contribute to the project, since the rest of my group is really knowledgeable and has a wealth of information on how to implement and sell this product. These thoughts race through my mind every time I think about this project: How do I contribute and feel positive about my impact if I barely know the subject matter? How do I make my voice feel heard if we only sync up for 30 minutes after a long class, during which I struggle to understand the terminology that my group uses for the project? What will be my impact on this team? 

The ideation phase, to me, has always been the most exciting, but also nerve-wracking part of the problem solving process, as it is the place where we as a team and respective individuals can get our authentic ideas flowing. As a group, we came to the conclusion that we wanted to focus on wearable technology and how to incorporate them in the healthcare space, and shared our viewpoints on what we would hope to achieve and create by combining all of our ideas. However, even though our group had an idea of where we wanted to focus our energy, the brainstorming phase proved to be rather difficult, as we ended up going too deep into our research and uncovering other ideas that we wanted to explore instead of honing on the problem at hand. 

“What wearable technology should we use? What will it be used for? I want to solve that, but there is a product that already exists; maybe there is a way we could make it better though?” These were all questions that came up in our conversation and made me realize that coming up with just 3 ideas would be difficult, as there were so many problems that our passionate group wanted to solve. The ideation phase was slowly turning into the IDK-tion phase, since I was not sure whether or not we would be able to come up with ideas by the deadline. 

However, after much discussion and idea dumping in a Google Slides presentation, our group began to see some overlap in our ideas and narrowed it down to using wearable technology as our primary product. Since we wanted to keep our idea simple, but still innovative and unique, we decided to build upon the existing technologies and came up the ideas of creating an app that works alongside wearables to detect chronic disease in the early stages, an app that can be integrated alongside Apple Research and targets a particular health issue (i.e., diabetes, obesity, autism, etc.), and a medical records passport chip/transplant that “communicates with” other connected devices for doctors to scan. 

In order to turn our idea into a physical product that would have an impact, I needed to put myself into the mindset of an “imagineer” and look for ways to turn my visions into a reality. 

I began by finding articles that discussed the difficulties of medical records and the ethical issue that this brings to the healthcare system. After reading an article titled “Death By Thousand Clicks,” I learned that the current systems needed to share medical records are outdated and list medications that have been recalled, making doctors more prone to making mistakes through various misdiagnoses and errors. In one example that the paper shared, the doctors stated that “30,000 prescriptions in 2010 lacked proper start and end dates, introducing the opportunity for under or overmedication.” This statement stuck out to me because prescriptions are a key part of the healthcare system and if this basic necessity was not monitored properly, then what was? If only there was a way to ensure that this wouldn’t happen again.

When I was younger, I always thought of creativity as something that had to be taught. I would often associate creativity with school projects (i.e., book reports, science experiments) that were supposed to be graded and compared with others. If you didn’t have the adequate thought process or the grades, I assumed that you could not ever be creative. However, in 5th grade, when I joined my first choir group and began to collaborate with a variety of different people on songs, I began to notice that creativity is more than just grades and group projects. Through every harmony, every song, I challenged myself to utilize different aspects of what I’d learned in order to fully immerse myself in the experience and be okay with making mistakes in front of my peers.

As I sit here and reflect on the last 15 weeks of education, I am awestruck at all we have learned and accomplished.  Coming from an educational background nowhere near design, business, or technology, I was admittedly nervous about what the semester would entail.  From the appetizer for the creative problem solving process that was the Integrative Practices Residential to our final project, we began to unpack the concepts behind creative problem solving, the structural methods to approach problem solving, the ebb and flow of divergence and convergence as it relates to refining and focusing, and how to develop a strategy that can be implemented.  

Just a few weeks ago when we began to work in our groups, I wasn’t quite sure how we would be able to collaborate in three different locations to meet our deliverables; however, technology is an amazing thing.  From Zoom meetings, to Miro, to Trello, to Figma, to Google slides and back, we sought tools that would allow us to collaborate across hundreds of miles to focus on how we would improve electoral integrity.  As far as the steps we took, I think every step (accept>analyze>define>ideate>select>implement>evaluate) had a key part in setting up the foundation for subsequent steps.  If someone needed a “problem solving in a hat” list of steps, I think all of the pieces have value that are taken into how teams approach the next.  Even the process journals (personal and group) that felt extraneous at times, provided the rubric for us to build out our presentation from as we chronicled the process of coming up with our voter registration solution.  

Storytelling: Finding ways to frame your ideas.

Solving Problems: Exploring new ways to solve problems. Keep an open mind and allow yourself to let your ideas flow out without judgment.

Innovative: Don't let existing limitations block your ideas during brainstorming.

Emotional: The process has its highs and lows, just remember to enjoy the experience.  

Collaborative: You don't always have to solve creative problems alone.

Communicating Ideas: Don't be afraid to share your ideas, good and bad.