Businesses are created by an individual or multiple people because of an idea, an idea they believe in strongly because of the strengths they each hold as stated in the article, “10 Ways To Evaluate A New Business Idea”. These ideas are developed through sparks, which we learned from the second article, “Creative Sparks”, that there is a controversial thought on the nature of the creative process. The creation ideas that businesses have are through watching people’s struggles or their own personal struggles to realize what consumers will need. In the 60 minute video watched during class it was clear that being empathetic was the best way to understand what consumers truly value. These products or services are produced for consumers; therefore, we obviously need to understand these individuals in order to have them purchase these products or services.

During class we worked on an activity as a group to brainstorm needs that people have on the daily, we weren’t trying to create solutions yet because we didn’t want to narrow our brainstorming results. My group had come up with three ideas through the “How Can We” statements learned from the class that Design for America had spoken in. Our first idea was generated because we realized that many of our phones and laptops were being overcharged especially overnight as it was the best time to have them be charged but we wanted to figure out a way to time the charging so the product didn’t end up losing battery life. Thus, we came up with the statement, “How can we find a more efficient way to charge phones or laptops?” After discussing this first idea with an individual from another group we had changed the statement to, “How can we reserve battery life of an object to find a more efficient way to charge phones or laptops?” We agreed that the changed statement was still broad enough to solve the need in the future, yet had the specific details about the issue. The second idea was in regards to the need of better and cheaper public storage alternatives. Our last idea was to create a more efficient way to manage the PSI of objects. I believe our group did a good job on finding needs of individuals, but we do hope to continue thinking up of more needs in order to find a good product or service to solve for our final project.

After our class activity I wanted to find ways to come up with ideas for our final project. I had looked through various links and found two useful ones. The first one, “How to Find New Invention Ideas in Six Easy Steps” (http://www.inventions-handbook.com/new-invention-ideas.html) was helpful because it provided a list of steps to follow in order to create that spark of creativity. With this in mind, I plan on observing the niche I am and finding needs within the college sector. The second article, “5 Steps for Turning Your Invention Ideas Into a Product” (https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/77962) would be more useful once my group has found a need within the niche we are in. The one aspect that the article mentioned and I found particularly important was documenting the process. I like how Vishal had created a documentation process for each group on “Instructure Canvas”, I believe that it will be incredibly beneficial for every group to look forward and think back on future creations.