Another week, another post. We’re in March!
Today, I wanted to write about the design-thinking workshop I attended last Friday with my friend (shoutout to Sophia, who’s probably reading this!). Design-thinking is a phrase I’ve always heard thrown around, and I never really knew what it was. Funnily enough, just yesterday, design-thinking was the main topic of focus in my Human-Computer Interaction class! It’s a buzzword for a reason.
For those unfamiliar, design-thinking is essentially creative problem-solving. A more formal definition: “design thinking is an iterative process in which we seek to understand the user, challenge assumptions, and redefine problems in an attempt to identify alternative strategies and solutions that might not be instantly apparent with our initial level of understanding.” Design-thinking emphasizes empathy, putting yourself in your user’s shoes, and thinking harder and deeper. As mentioned earlier, it’s an iterative process, not something that happens overnight.
A brief sketch of the design-thinking process.
During the workshop, we first began by identifying our users, and some daily challenges they faced. My team wanted to be bold, so we began a bit randomly. Our specific user population? Marine biologists in Cape Town. Niche, I know.
From there, we put ourselves in the perspective of a marine biologist named Nireia Smith living in Cape Town, South Africa (a persona, if you will). Our next step was to think of ten challenges a Nireia would face on a daily basis. We listed some potential hurdles that she would have to navigate, and from there, thought of various ways we could go about solving them.
Eventually, we narrowed our focus and formed a problem statement: Nireia is a marine biologist living off the coast of Cape Town who is looking to find resources and learn more about other marine biologists in the area and to share her own findings with the greater community in order to generate awareness around ocean conservation.
Our next step was to find a [wild, creative, fun] solution to this problem. We decided to go with creating a user interface (an app!) that allows for Nireia and other marine biologists around Cape Town to post about their findings and whether they are looking to collaborate with others, as well as organize ocean conservation campaigns, rallies, and lectures around Cape Town for the general public.
The next two steps would be to prototype our app out and test it with users, but the workshop didn’t get into too much detail about that. But, a large portion of my HCI class this semester has been solely about prototyping and testing usability, so I was familiar with the techniques.
Overall, I was glad I went and extremely happy with our processes (stay tuned for our app 😉). In such a short amount of time, our team was able to envision and achieve so much! If anything, design-thinking is not putting any limitations on ideas, choosing the best fit, and evaluating from there.
Tonight is Bollywood Pub Night at Punch’s Alley (the Pub on campus), tomorrow I’m going to the The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston for a special Yayoi Kusama exhibition, and Sunday I’ll be studying for my exam Monday. It’s going to be a busy weekend!
No complaints here,
Shreya