It’s the end of week 3 in our #DigitalMaking journey, and this week like all of the previous was amazing. Design for America, a Registered Student Organization here on campus- as well as a national one, came into BADM 395 to help us on our journey to “Making Greatness”; their goal was a simple one: turn our ideas into great ideas so we could create some awesome change. Basically, they provided us with a basic overview of a workflow, and guided us through the process from idea, to finished marketable product. How cool is that?
This week, I had the pleasure of working with my partner Gwen, along with Reid and Prithvi. After the workflow overview, we were tasked with creating a product for a fictional person with a visual impairment in the Austin area, to help them with daily life. We chose a female student who went to the University of Texas who felt that her impairment was taking a toll on her social life.
Our group started by tackling problems that weren’t necessarily problems; things such as crowd navigation and the like. We soon realized that this person would be able to manage getting herself to and from places, because she’s had to deal with this lack of sight all her life. So we focused on the bigger problem: social integration. Our move was creating an app with a service that matched people up to go to events for the day (think Tindr or Friendzie here). This app could be interfaced with technology such as a Blitab, to make it even more accessible. The very core of our dilemma was social in nature, so it made complete sense to us that our solution should be as well.
This workshop proved to be an extreme eye-opener in terms of how problems are solved by creative and purposeful thinking. It goes to prove the point: working on a team with people who have different experience, interests, backgrounds, and ideas is an extremely valuable asset any designer could have in their arsenal. With such a different make up of people, bringing in these aspects, problems are challenged head on, often in more than one direction; in my opinion this is how the best ideas happen, and the best projects created.
Really liked the ideas that you and your group came up with in this session.
Hi Steve,
I really appreciated your perspective about working with a team. I think that is a concept of the class that I entirely forget, but that is a great focus from the class. A great product does come from a well functioning team, so this was a great perspective to read about.
Heya Steve!
I totally agree that working with people from different walks of life bring in solutions from all sorts of directions, making the best projects! I guess that’s why this class is so enjoyable, being able to work with people from all around the campus.