Project Reflection

Hey everyone! After a while, I am back on the blog. This blog post will be my last one for the course but I might think to continue blogging on my own. Today, I am going to provide my reflection on the design-thinking project. I will try to reveal as much information as I can within the outlined structure to help you make the course and the project better.

To begin with, this project was full of interesting insights and small discoveries. It is rather difficult to outline one major concept or skill. But if I were to pick one, I would choose the generative research techniques. As most other business students, I was well aware of the traditional segmentation-targeting-positioning approach. However, I did not know that the companies go that far to create personas. Similar to that, I had some prior experience with survey research, focus groups, and interviews. Ethnographic, netnographic, and generative research seemed to be buzzwords that were underdeveloped and difficult to apply. I used to support the opinion of one of this project’s research participants: “These techniques are impossible to evaluate. Hence, all the insights you are trying to gain, will be lost in these maps, diagrams and sentences you gave me”.

This project helped me change my mind. The first extensive exposure to generative research techniques helped me to gain a better understanding of the concepts. In particular, while working on the second stage of the process “Emphasize Part II”, I learnt who to structure these tools to answer the big research questions. I learnt the guidelines for application of generative research methods outlined in the lecture on gaining insights. Specific examples were very helpful in enriching my understanding and getting inspiration for the project’s research design. Finally, I learnt how to evaluate the insights gained using generative research tools and turn them into actionable information. This was probably the major lesson I learnt during the project. With new design-thinking experience, I have changed my mind to become a supporter of generative research techniques.

Visualization is the next skill/concept that I have learnt thanks to the design-thinking project. I have been always a supporter of the idea that appropriate picture is worth a thousand words. However, prior to the project, I believed that visualization was the field of designers and not managers or entrepreneurs. I also had a feeling that I could create something visual but I lacked creative ideas and tools to implement them. The book “Business Model Generation” outlined the importance of storytelling for business and the course book “Designing for Growth” suggested storyboarding as a visualization tool. Using these insights and the technique, I volunteered to create a video for the first project update (“Emphasize Part I”). I was excited to test whether I could record my series of sketches and create a good-looking video. The implementation was challenging, though. Despite the fact that I wanted to become an artist till I was six, I cannot say that I am good at drawing. Therefore, the sketches were less visually appealing than my mind was visualizing them. Nonetheless, it was as good experience. You can take a look on this video below. Since it was largely assumption-based and was created prior to the actual research stage, it should not contain any proprietary information that the project's client might consider as data leakage.

In addition, the fifth blog post, though not directly related to the project, provided another opportunity to practice my visualization skills. Creating infographics in PowerPoint is definitely not the best way to create such documents but it was worth a try. Although my attempt resulted in a mix of infographics and infauxgraphics, I learnt the distinction between them. I used these insights to enrich the third project update (“Define”). And I felt that I learnt from my blog mistakes while creating visuals for the update. Finally, I had a chance to visualize the prototype of our solution. Using the tools discussed in class (namely, AppCooker and several screen recording programs), I aimed at creating a tutorial/promotional video of a high fidelity prototype. The tools turned out to be very useful and I can envision using them later in my career if I decide to stay in the mobile app industry.

Despite the overall positive experience and great lessons learnt, there are some minor points that could be used to improve the design-thinking project in the future. In particular, I believe that the abundance of generative research techniques played a trick on me. I completely agree with Professor Walls that we learn by doing things and the best way to familiarize ourselves with different tools is to apply them in the real life. It would be a perfectly valuable argument if the application of the tools did not depend on other people, namely research participants. Encouraged by the positive feedback, we included nearly a dozen of different research techniques into our research design. This way, we ended up demanding considerable commitment from the research participants. Not all of them were willing to commit substantial amount of time to complete all of these tools. Different timing for research tools also did not help much. Some of the participants gave their consent to take part in the whole project but only completed the discussion log and the shop-along. This created additional difficulties for the research team, since we had to find a replacement within very short time period. In the end, these high demands and expectations lead to concern and slight disappointment.  

The things did not go as they planned and I felt that certain artificial constraints might be useful. I would have really appreciated if the feedback contained a warning with regard to the number of research techniques applied. In addition, encouragement to focus exclusively on the most interesting and promising techniques based on the expert's opinion might have been beneficial. I might be wrong with this suggestion since I do not have substantial teaching and research experience. However, I believe that this way, expectations management could be improved which might result in enhanced overall learning experience.

I believe that this suggestion has close connection to the last part of the blog post, my emotional state during the project. I would like to say right from the start that I was very satisfied with my team. Random team assignment was definitely a good idea and gave me an opportunity to learn from different people with different experience, expertise, and opinions. I was lucky to be in a hard-working team and really enjoyed working with my teammates. Experience with the instructor was also very positive. All of my questions were clarified in an expert and prompt manner. I felt that this guidance significantly enhanced my understanding of the class concepts. The openness of the instructor to spend time to clarify challenging and complex issues was also very helpful. The team and the instructor provided a very good combination for good learning experience. Apart from the above mentioned slight disappointment with participants’ willingness to complete all research steps, I am very satisfied with the project. Looking back, I believe that I have taken a lot of tools and concepts from this project. Now I feel much more creative and innovative than I used to. In a word, design thinking has become an integral part of myself. And this is a good sign and my personal measure of a successful experience.

That’s it for today. I would be glad if you would post comments, make suggestions and provide constructive feedback. Take care and see you next week in my blog or in person.