In class on Wednesday, we heard from the students involved with Design for America. They gave us a presentation on the projects that DFA is involved with including a stuffed animal that helps kids with diabetes adjust to their new lifestyle and health choices. They took us through the process of designing a product to fit a need. I took an industrial design class taught by Professor David Weightman and the concepts introduced on Wednesday were very similar to those used in industrial design.

We were given scenarios to address with our fellow group members. We chose to help Jess, a blind college student, who wanted to feel more at home at her school by going to football games. The process started by addressing who is affected by the design. Then we wrote down as many ideas as we could-no matter how crazy. This is particularly important as many ideas get looked over simply for being out of the ordinary. We discussed our ideas and our experiences with football games and came up with a rather simple solution. We decided to focus our efforts into more of an ergonomics solution instead of a tech heavy solution. Our solution involved installing pads into the ends of the bleachers and various locations in the stadium so Jess would be able to feel with her feet where she is. This would make it much safer for her to navigate the stadium. It would create a value add for everyone that enters the stadium. We used play dough to bring our idea to life before presenting it

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I think DFA is a cool organization. It is similar to an organization I’m involved with at school called Illinois Enactus. Enactus is a project based social entrepreneurship organization that works to empower people through sustainable solutions. Learn more about us here: https://www.illinoisenactus.com

Design for America

This week in class, we had the opportunity of having our University’s Design for America team come in a give us their very own workshop that involved creating potential solutions for real-life scenarios. The scenario that my team chose to focus on was a case involving a visually impaired mom that had a tough time identifying her daughter in crowded, public areas.

The Design for America team walked us through a step-by-step process of understanding and analyzing a given problem. We were instructed to write down all sorts of details on post-it notes. By doing this, we were able to make a poster filled with post-it notes that helped us come up with potential ideas for helping solve the problem. 

Our Idea

The idea that we came up with was a product that had a similar function to a Tile with the additional feature of google maps. Ideally, our product would be like the watch pictured above. We envisioned the mom to wear this watch to help locate her daughter. This would mean that her daughter would have to wear a tracker that the watch would sync up with. Through physical and audio queues, the mom would be lead towards her daughter in any public setting through a save route opened by Google Maps.

This week Design For America spoke to us about design thinking and conducted a workshop. This organization works together to create new solutions to problems. They talked us through their six-step process. We learned that identifying a need is an essential step. It is the first step that will lead into immersing, reframing, ideating, building, and testing. This class period was extremely hands on and active because we solved our own problem. The Design For America team walked us through each step and allocated time for us to brainstorm.

We were trying to help Jess, a blind college student, feel more comfortable at school. My group tried to imagine Jess’s world. We thought the social aspect would be the most difficult because in college it is important to meet friends and be apart of the college sports. Football games are a really big part of the college experience and football stadiums can be dangerous. We created an idea of putting pegs on the stairwell and stairs for Jess to navigate. This way at games she can figure out where she is walking and be cautious. We found safety to be most important for Jess.

This brainstorming strategy taught me to be patient and build on ideas. Your first idea is not always going to be your end goal. It is important to start with one idea and develop it into your final project. They gave us post-it notes and told us to use as many as we want. I really liked this because you were able to organize your thoughts on paper. At the end, we put them on a large piece of paper and were able to connect all our steps together. I am a visual person so this design-thinking workshop worked well for me.

This process will be helpful for our final project. I read an article about Mark Zuckerberg creating Facebook. Facebook was first called Thefacebook and he developed it into the site it is now. This is an example of Zuckerberg reframing, building, and testing an idea. I am excited to use what I learned this week for our project.

Our class was privileged to have Design for America as our guest speaker this week. Thus far our guest speakers have all been industry professionals. I enjoyed hearing another student’s thoughts on design and the digital making world. Our guest speakers reframed the way I thought about design and offered plenty to think about as I start working on my final project.

I always thought design involved either architecture, cars, or interior decorating. I quickly realized that design is an aspect of everything humans have made. It impacts effectiveness, aesthetics, user experience, practicality, etc.  Engineers and makers are continuously tweaking their designs to improve these areas.  A good design may make a product, but a bad design can break it. For example, take a look at these parking signs from Los Angeles.

How much time does it take to see if parking is free on Sunday? The second picture is clearly the better design,  but not every example will be this clear. How different are these pictures from each other?  Although they contain the same information, these pictures display it in vastly different ways. I’m mentioning this to show that improving design doesn’t have to be rocket science. Sometimes nuances make all the difference.

The city of Los Angeles has since implemented new parking signs. However, a key idea from the presentation is that innovation happens throughout the whole design process, not just implementation. One must think critically in order to understand and discover where the true problem lies in their design. In the parking sign example, this turns out to be information overload.

Understanding the true nature of the design problem is easier said than done. The design process is simplified into 6 steps: identify, immerse,  reframe, ideate, build, and test.  The first 3 steps are necessary for one to understand the problem. Much like consultants, designers must interview relevant individuals in order to gain new perspectives. “How Can We” statements are useful tools that help a team narrow down to a single point of focus.

Once the pain points have been identified,  the next 3 steps are turning abstract ideas into concrete solutions.  Although these steps are useful guidelines outlining the design process, the real process is far from linear.  You will be jumping forward and backward from one step to the next as the team generates new ideas and takes in more information.

My group designed an interactive railing to help blind college students feel more included on campus.  It was interesting to see the variety of designs our class came up with during our limited time. After each group presented their design, I wish we could have engaged in a class brainstorming discussion where we had the opportunity to combine all our ideas into one solution.

Thank you for reading. You can read more about LA parkings signs and other good/bad design ideas here.

Class Summary

This week’s class brought an important element to our understanding of 3D printing: design thinking. The people of Design for America helped me to understand the importance of knowing your user – in 3D printing and in problem-solving in general. This is a fundamental concept of business. Any strong business will be a solution to a problem. It should be no secret that the best way to solve any problem is to take on the perspective of those experiencing it. The solution must be designed for these people in order to be most effective. I experienced this lesson in full when we began the assumptions phase of our model solution for the visually impaired.

Building a Solution

When building a product for Jess to better navigate through large crowds (and lead a more typical independent college life), there were many details left unanswered. Is Jess completely blind? Are her other senses heightened? Is Jess used to her blindness? Without being able to interview Jess and discovering the answers to these questions,  we cannot build an adequate solution to her problem. If you make assumptions about the general population with evidence to support your claims, it can be easy to design a product that does not solve the user’s problem in the most effective way.

Ultimately, we made a model of an attachment device to a walking stick. The attachment would allow Jess to quickly send her location to friends, or send out a distress signal. I wish I had a photo of our model but I never took one.

In Class Readings

In our reading, Tim Brown discusses design thinking from a business perspective. We need to design effective products that address our customers needs better than any competition. The best way to grasp this, Brown writes, is through examining the pain points at a close level and prototyping solutions quickly to address them.

External Knowledge

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/5-stages-in-the-design-thinking-process

I thought this was an interesting breakdown article of design thinking in which the author breaks down design thinking into 5 steps: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test. This is essentially a summary of everything I’ve written above. Design thinking is basically problem-solving. In order to solve a problem, we must start with understanding it from the perspective of the entity that the problem impacts. Then, after we observe, we define the problem. Then, we ideate solutions, build a model of what we think is the best initial solution, and respond to how our customer engages with it.

I thought this was an excellent video on design thinking by Airbnb. Airbnb took quite some time to take off from the time it launched. Much of its newfound success should be attributed to a deeper level of design thinking. I think you’ll find the video to be intriguing.

Readings

This week, we read an article called “Design Thinking” by Tim Brown of the Harvard Business Review. I found this article to be incredibly insightful as it highlighted an industry leader in design thinking, a firm called IDEO. IDEO focuses on closely observing actual problems and creating innovative solutions from there, rather than creating a solution and trying to market it to the masses. The article cites how designers are now being asked to create ideas, not simply dress them up. This article really set the stage for the presentation we had in class from the student group Design for America. I understand that effective product design is about understanding the problem at it’s deepest level.

Furthermore, we watched a video interview between our very own Vishal Sachdev with Professor David Weightman, who has a background in industrial design and a wealth of experience in product design. He talked about the matrix between desirability, viability, and feasibility when determining where the “sweet spot” of good design resides. Furthermore, he focused on the responsibility that designers have to create not only effective products, but products that are mindful of our resources and planet. He summed about critical design thinking in a couple sentences, “Understanding what other people are about is a very important part of what a designer needs to do. Observing and inquiring gives you insights into unmet needs at the moment – and that’s the time you start ideating.”

Guest Speaker

As I mentioned, we had the University’s Design for America team come in and give us a workshop on the actual design thinking process that they go through when creating a new idea. They narrowed down our market to the visually impaired, and gave us four unique ‘clients’ we could cater our ideas to. My group chose a visually-impaired college students, who’s blindness affects her ability to attend social events at school.

The process they shared with us was truly eye-opening for me (and was completely relevant to the readings)! Instead of going straight into products, they had us spend time simply writing down our assumptions, pain points, potential solutions, etc. on sticky notes. By the end of this brainstorming process, our work station was covered in colorful sticky notes!

However, I saw how DFA’s process began to narrow down solutions and opportunities until our idea was right there in front of us. It was amazing looking through the DFA America page and reading their Process Guide which addresses how to apply the skills and values of human-centered design to address social challenges.

Prototype

We ended up creating a unique walking stick attachment for our client. We recognized that we didn’t want to ‘reinvent the wheel’ by creating an entirely new walking stick. Rather, we designed a modular attachment, that clips over the stick’s base, that can give it a wide new range of functionality, including Bluetooth, NFC, emergency calling, GPS, etc.

I realized that creating a unique prototype was only half the battle. As I explored the IDEO U homepage, I noticed how much emphasis they put on sharing the story, or crafting a production narrative to inspire others toward actions. Keeping this mind, we tried to present our product as not just a simple model made out of pipe cleaners and PVC, but rather a tool that could truly ease the life of visually-impaired clients everywhere. We wanted to sell our story, not just our product. This is an important lesson that I hope to carry into my actual semester project!

It’s been a while since I’ve gotten to engage my inner child and toy with playdough and pipe cleaners! This week’s workshop with Design for America gave us a chance to channel our creativity into solving problems and truly practice “design thinking,” as Tim Brown from IDEO conceptualized.

The theme for the workshop’s design activity was centered around the blind population in Austin, who were facing various challenges adapting to the rapidly urbanized environment. My group chose to focus on Jess, a college student at UT Austin who was excelling academically, but felt isolated from the campus social scene due to her blindness. We wanted to find a way to ensure that Jess felt safe and comfortable getting to and from football games on her own. We brainstormed all sorts of design ideas—from the most outlandish to the most obvious—and came up with an initial prototype for a smart walking stick that had GPS and paired with Bluetooth earphones. The walking stick could send GPS data to smartphones as well, in case Jess’s friends wanted to locate her, or in case Jess lost her walking stick somewhere.

While I enjoyed playing with the various art supplies and brainstorming, I think what really resonated with me was the process of empathizing. Quite often, problem solving is exclusively viewed as a highly analytical activity, and of course, that aspect is equally important. However, design thinking really emphasizes the importance of being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, and I think that’s a skill that’s often overlooked or taken for granted in many fields. Speaking from my own experience of interning at a large bank last summer, I feel as though “having empathy” is often synonymous with showing weakness or lacking objectivity in parts of corporate America. However, when properly leveraged, I think it can provide keen insights about any user/client and can drive tremendous amounts of change in the positive direction.

We had the opportunity to present our prototypes and receive feedback, which is an incredibly important part of the design process. It was helpful to hear critique of our design, because it forced us to consider things we hadn’t thought about, like how the GPS feature in the walking stick might be redundant assuming Jess’s smartphone already has GPS. Nonetheless, I was proud of the amount of ideating we were able to do within an hour (early in the morning, that too.)

The students from DFA did a great job of relaying the importance of empathizing, failing, collaborating, and communicating—they were also quick to stress that the exercise we did in class was incomplete without real user feedback, which is the most important part of the design process. I felt really inspired after the workshop, and found some other resources on design thinking:

1. I’m always on the lookout for applications to the financial services industry, and I thought this article on how design thinking is impacting banking was really interesting: https://thefinancialbrand.com/70152/design-thinking-banking-financial-innovation/ 

2. Here is Elise Roy, a disability rights lawyer who happens to be deaf, herself—in her TED talk, she talks about how designing for disabilities often creates better outcomes for everyone.