What happened to Round 1 you might ask? Don't worry about it!
So the first thing that I tried didn’t work, so I’m moving onto something else that is physical and affects, well, me: running gloves! I’ve tried several different pairs and they all kind of suck. It seems like they either wick moisture and aren’t warm, or are warm and steamy. I know pretty much nothing about fabrics and whatnot, but how hard can it really be? Basically what I’ve done so far this week is to research insulating and wicking materials and how they work, as well as what materials are usually used for what. It seems like most manufacturers decide to focus more on ventilation than warming, which is fine for the palms and backs, but sucks for finger (especially for people that have terrible circulation like me). So, yeah I’ve got some preliminary stuff done, so I guess it’s proposal time. Proposal will be posted shortly. Maybe I’ll throw a schedule in the sidebar or something. So elevator pitches happened this week and are going to happen next week. I think it is a great way to give a group of people a quick "okay, here's my idea" for when you don't really know what you're doing yet. It's kind of interesting because the idea behind it is (or at least the feeling I got) was that you aren't really trying to get the person you're talking to involved, but hoping that someone in the "elevator" will overhear and be engaged and maybe look into it later.
Anyways, moving onto how it went for others. People had a really hard time sticking to the 90-second limit and had a tendency to overexplain themselves. This is probably a result of us not quite knowing what we are doing. It was obvious, though, that pretty much everyone that presented had a passion about what they were doing and genuinely though that it was the best current solution. I don't really know how some people are going to further their ideas but, hey, that's not my problem. Obviously, the G.H. English for grades 11 and 12 was a good idea :) Actually it was well done, and I liked a lot of the things that we talked about. The Communicating through Motion one was also good. Granted, I don't really understand it, but I thought it was cool that they solved a problem in a way that I never would have thought of. So, the classroom redesign part (quarter?) of the course is over, and we've pretty much reached a consensus on what's going to happen. As a means of evaluating our process, I'll apply it to the D.School's seven aspects of design thinking and see how we did.
As stated, this is just my preliminary notes that I've not gotten around to finalizing for posting yet. This is solely to get points for the assignment. I know it is ugly. Weebly doesn't support charts without manual HTML formatting which I don't remember well enough right now to play with it. So, yeah. Sorry. It'll get fixed.
Also, I have no clue what week it is anymore. UNIQUE
COMMON
I'm trying out a new format this week. Maybe I'll stick with it. Maybe I won't. It's going to be three things I noticed that were notable, plus the weekly cynicism (yes, I'm going to limit myself to one. You're welcome. You can find these in the other tab. Y'know, if you're into that kind of thing).
RANT WARNING
The first week is over (the first full one, that is) and the thing that I don’t particularly understand is the teambuilding Tuesday “ritual” the other, I get. It’s nice to open with something like mindfulness or reflection, but teambuilding? That’s not how people get to know each-other. It feels forced, and ends up making everyone uncomfortable (and sometimes confused?). Maybe that’s the point, though. Everyone is feeling the same discomfort and empathises with one-another. I get it, I guess. I still don’t have to like it. Speaking of empathy, I find it interesting that the overall “goal” of this course is to design places for students to learn by empathising with them and meeting their needs. Clearly, what we have now is not what we are shooting for, but that is the industry norm. The big market in design isn’t exercise ball chairs and trendy standing desks, it’s white paint and square buildings. Why? Because a large portion of design is meeting the needs of people, specifically the needs of the financiers who would have to buy and maintain the above-stated ball chairs and trendy desks. They need efficiency, so we have small desks in grid pattern and windowless interior rooms (H footprints are space inefficient, after all). The big problem is that it’s cost ineffective to meet the needs of students. The even bigger problem is that the current system works. Sure, I’d be more comfortable taking notes in a la-z-boy recliner. But would it increase my test scores? Hell, no. So does anyone care? Of course not. Trendy, ergonomic, empathetic design is a cost with no return on investment, so to say that it will “bias students towards learning” is ridiculous. We already “bias them towards learning” by using the point grading system, the college admittance system, threats of discipline, and on, and on. At the end of the day, the only real way for this to increase student satisfaction and provide a ROI is to completely abandon the entirety of the established education system and substitute one based on discussion, exploration, and genuine learning. But: At the end of the day, you're dealing with over fifty million public school students, most of whom don’t actually want to be there. No matter how great Kumbaya Exploration Academy is, there’s no way that I wouldn’t rather take a day off a few times a month. So to cater to those that wouldn’t show up every weekday (most likely the vast majority), education has evolved to force-feed information to people who don’t want to hear it or couldn’t care to pay attention. End rant. Part two next week, probably. Hopefully not. Definitely pictures next week, though. Probably. It was interesting that what brought about most of our groups insights was just looking at the picture for a while and noticing little details and making things up about them, even if they aren’t significant (predictably, time management became a problem and this attention to detail took a lot of it). Something less predictable was the difficulty in empathizing with a character that is entirely new. Usually, things are designed to solve our own problems or those of like-minded people, but we had no relation to this character. Despite the copious observations, we could only assume that the person was similar enough to us that our thinking was valid (as an aside, it would be interesting to design for someone whose thinking and values are entirely different from those of human beings). Something else that presented a challenge was the “process” that we were instructed to follow. In insisting on sharp separation between “stages” the connection between them was stretched and ideas could not easily flow from one step to the next. A line of thinking would sometimes die because we “weren’t supposed to go there yet” and its intent would be forgotten.
As improvement for the next time, I would suggest placing emphasis on the “process” being a framework, not instructions. I would still focus on the small details, as the normal things of everyday life show how people really live. I found that we were good at this and that finding out how people lived is really the key to quick design. |
Welcome to Design Thinking: a half-year course guided by Garreth Heidt with a focus on fixing real-world problems by observing people and the challenges they face daily.
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