Review summary

As a member of the mace, I have studied for design thinking course at least six months. To be honest, I had a love-hate relationship with design thinking course.  Indeed, this course gave me a special experience, especially teamwork.  I remember that this course made me work with team to design a product and service. This is really worth activity. For example, simulating dragon den was helping us to understand real business. We cannot just design a pretty product. It also needs to satisfy business needs. If we did, our product could be successful.

Reviewing last year, we were required to find partners in order to design a product or service. I remember that I did not find teammates……, but I met very kind and passionate team to take in me.  Jennifer, Ken, Sam and Osman who are my teammates are my team. I was happy to do what I can do to this team.

I remember that Alice showed this IDEO video as a example in order to explain what can do for a new team. This video shows that everyone represents different role in the team but they can finish successful idea and create a practical product design prototype because of design thinking process. Certainly, every available method should be tested and tried to learn by ourselves so that we can design a great product or service in the future.

 

 

Indeed, understanding what to do is essential for design thinking process while it has been divided into five steps, namely Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test.

Empathise aims that we need to understand people by observations and conversations.    This is very important.  If we can understand what people need, we will be able to decide a correct and suitable idea to satisfy them instead of offering an correct answer which we thought.   Have a look this video, it showed what different between empathy and sympathy is.  This is really useful animation to tell why empathy is important.

Next one is Define. We need to define problems. Helping to give a definition to the challenge or problem is this step of aim. For some examples, what is the issue? And why is it important? Who is it a problem for? And so on. If we are aware what definitions we need, we will find a good solution to solve problems.

As a matter of fact, we depend on Ideate to think about what can we achieve idea when we have defined problems. This step should be focused on our final objective and the majority of ideas. We have to do some brainstorming to assume our solutions. Also, keeping to open mind is important. Reminding no ideas are bad ideas at this point. Every idea has a chance to be the most creative solution in the end.

When you are generating many ideas, you have to choose some idea to make prototypes so as to prove your idea correctly. This step is really visual and clear. Everyone can directly understand your idea and give feedback. It helps to revise your idea and be close to your end goal.

Finally, testing prototypes to your target is essential.  As you are running this step, you should test repeatedly to target customers.  In addition to you test prototype to them, you must solve extra problems from them.

According to short information of the design thinking model above,  let’s talk about what we did.

Firstly,  we named our company Yobbafic. Our inspiration was from our each capital last name, and these last names combined with each other. We hope that we can do a best one of teams. Due to our expectation, we kept going to have many discussions with my design thinking project in order to seek our target audience and problems.
However, Jennifer came up with an amazing idea. This idea was relating to hygienic issue. We found the majority of women find using public toilet an unpleasant, distasteful and unsatisfactory experience. Exploring this problems and audience looks forward to find a suitable solution to solve this problem.  As a result, we decided to be named our project Flushies.  You can see our logo design below.

 

Running the design thinking project, one of design thinking lectures mentioned the Bodystorming.  It was a really interesting topic lesson.  I remember that each team needed to be chose one of members to play a disable role, and this role should be sitting on wheel chair at least 10-20 mins.  Then, this role needed to go somewhere to observe what happens on users.   However, I was playing this role, and my teammates supported me to go around the Kingston hill campus.  Teammates documented what I was having problems with wheel chair.   This was useful to discover real problems.  This was useful to discover real problems. As the same thing, we also tried to use the public toilet to discover unknown problems and redefined it.

 

In Yobbafic team, I was playing a designer role. My duty was that I had to design our product and solve problems. Actually, it was really difficult what I did. Let me explain what I said.

We wanted to develop toilet cover papers to solve public toilet problems. No excuse, I can design practical product design by common materials, but I am not a inventor. I cannot invent a special materials. It is an impractical mission for me. Whatever I thought, I still did something product prototypes. However, it did not prove that we can continue on doing this project.

Even our team did a lot of experiments, but we cannot find an appropriate material for Flushies. We used biodegradable plastic powder to make a big plastic toilet paper so that it can be combined with biodegradable toilet covers.

Also, we were trying to do an experiment about mushroom paper to be toilet tissue papers. Have a look the image below. If mushroom papers combined with biodegradable plastic each other, it could be successful idea we though.  As a result, it was failure or just concept idea.  Because we need to find manufacturer to generate our product without handmade’s mass production.

Finally, we did not find a manufacturer, or we can say that we cannot find a manufacturer because we did not find correct method to solve some problems.  We were thinking about why people need to choose our product.  In fact, I don’t have any answer. Why our product is better than other brands? I don’t think our product better than someone, or this product even may be not a fine solution.

During the March, we ordered some similar products to redesign our product because of failed materials tests. we can say simply that Flushies was not an individual product, but an combined with others. It represented that we have to depend on other product to achieve our end goal. It is not a correct method. If we continued using other product because we need it, it would like to lose our product’s value.

Anyways, we finished prototypes which were attached in envelopes.  We wanted to offer envelopes to be our product samples for audiences because of Trade fair.  We have to be honest that we were not able to produce our products by mass production.   Only handmade production was what we can do.

After then,   one of Trade fair had been cancelled because of snowing. We lost one of chances to show our concept and product to audience. This was really disappointment for us. Fortunately, next Trade fair was holed in Kingston university.
We prepared something information about our Flushies such as posters, samples and display video. Unpredictably, no one did not come to look around our fair. It means that we lost opportunities to display what we did. Only one participant wanted to know our project idea.  At least we tried to do our best I think.

Certainly, the final trade fair was our end course. All of things were done. We experienced around the design thinking course, especially dragons den and trade fair. I believe that our team is not a best team, but we gained an unique experience for this course. Even thought we lost this challenge, we were confident about our business of concept.

If we had second time to do this project again, hopefully I could do well.
For some assumptions in the future if I can do this project again:
As a team should have the same end goal.
Teamwork is really important when a team is running the project. Everyone should have a reasonable objective in the future. Think about why we are here to be a group and how can we do the best? If we did not have a product orientation or time management, we would go into the failure in business war. This is one of reflection what I thought.

Second problem is capability of the team.
Initially, we did not care this point too much, but finally I think that it could be a problem. I can be an example. I can design product and try to developer something interesting. The most importantly, my teammates may misunderstand my ability. I am not a material developer. I really spent on this project too much time to do no meaningful things. We have to consider our capability whether we can be successful on this project.

The other word, we have to make sure what we can do. Ideal but impractical idea could be not realistic option.

Next reflective thing is that argument is unhelpful thing when we are doing the assignment.
I remember when we were doing the business report someday night, teammates had an argument about what report to do a best. One of teammate thought that everything should be perfect and without defective. The other teammate believed that we had focused on this business report too much time, and we were tired. As a result, there was a conflict between them.
In my opinion, both of them are having a different point but nobody is wrong.
I think if we can respect different opinions, it will be fine. One of true thing is that we are just classmates, but not business mans. As we finished our project, maybe we will miss each other. Another one is that we have to value our time because time is limit. We need to be patient with each one to help our end goal. It was really important thing as a group.

 

Finally, I think the most important problem is me. English is my one of serious problems. I have to say sorry to my partners. I was trying to understand what teammates said. No doubt, I still misunderstood meanings from them. I think this is what I need to reflect it. Anyways, I was pleasure to work with this team.

Reference:

ABC Nightline – IDEO Shopping Cart. (2009). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M66ZU2PCIcM&t=25s [Accessed 24 Apr. 2018].

Amazon.co.uk. (2018). [online] Available at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Polymorph-Thermoplastic-Powder-Biodegradable-Plastic/dp/B00UGHZ0LG [Accessed 24 Apr. 2018].

Brené Brown on Empathy. (2013). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw [Accessed 24 Apr. 2018].

eBay. (2018). GO HYGIENE ! – 3 PACKS of Disposable Paper Toilet Seat Covers BRAND NEW PRODUCT | eBay. [online] Available at: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GO-HYGIENE-3-PACKS-of-Disposable-Paper-Toilet-Seat-Covers-BRAND-NEW-PRODUCT-/201616124054 [Accessed 23 Apr. 2018].

Emma Cook<br />Spatial Designer. (2018). Bodystorming. [online] Available at: http://emmacookdesign.weebly.com/blog/bodystorming [Accessed 23 Apr. 2018].

Freepik. (2016). Hand drawn idea concept. [online] Available at: https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/hand-drawn-idea-concept_829848.htm#term=idea&page=1&position=0 [Accessed 23 Apr. 2018].

Fungi.com. (2013). Making Mushroom Paper – Fungi.com. [online] Available at: http://www.fungi.com/blog/items/mushroom-paper.html [Accessed 24 Apr. 2018].

MA Creative Industries and the Creative Economy. (2018). Trade Fair next THURSDAY – Instructions!. [online] Available at: https://macekingstonuniversity.com/2016/01/20/trade-fair-next-thursday-instructions/ [Accessed 23 Apr. 2018].

Starko, A. (2018). Design Thinking 1: What is it?. [Blog] Creativiteach. Available at: https://creativiteach.me/2014/10/08/design-thinking-1-what-is-it/ [Accessed 24 Apr. 2018].

Song, J. (2016). Trade Fair next THURSDAY – Instructions!. [Blog] MA CREATIVE INDUSTRIES AND THE CREATIVE ECONOMY. Available at: https://macekingstonuniversity.com/2016/01/20/trade-fair-next-thursday-instructions/ [Accessed 24 Apr. 2018].