Design Thinking

Why do we design? For this question, my answer is to improve our’s life better. Thus, the target of the design is to improve our’s life better. Human-centered design is the most important step for me in the design process. There are many example of companies are get successful by using human-centered design. Facts proved that human-centered design is a big thing and influences many designers. There are many advantages of human-centered design. For example, it may save our testing prototype time and cost. This is because when we focus on designing the product which is connecting with our target audience, they must be attracted by this product. I believe human-centered design is helping us to solve the right problem that will make my target audience lives better, easier and more productive. Furthermore, this week’s reading also makes me understand every design will have its own risk, it is a threaten for the wellbeing if an organization. I think to challenge the risk, it may come out with the best solution for our product’s problem.

This week’s readings are more focusing on “what is the value of your design?” This comes from the shape fo design, chapter 10 “Give and Gift.” I think good design is quantified by the experience of its recipient and harkens back to the primacy of the listener or audience. This also is the gift’s real significance. If I design products that are trying to improve my target audience’s life, I should get a good comment from my audience. This is the value of design, I also believe the more time we spend on, the more valuable of the product. I also agree that a piece of tiny thing becomes something that is very very unique inspiring and very mine. Thus, I should stop and look around me. There must be something that is an aspect of the work’s value that can not be described in dollars and cents. These things may help me to improve my design ideas.

This weel’s readings are talking about how to test our prototype. Last week, I understand the importance of the prototype, so this week we have to test our prototype. The test is a chance to gather feedback, refine solutions and continue to learn about our user. Thus, the test step is inevitable in our design process. I think the test step is connecting with our user-centered design, this is becuase we want to understand deeply with our users and understand what they want and need is the main purpose of our design. We need to get a feedback capture matrix to record what our user likes, what user criticizes, what user wonders, and what user ideates? These are very helpful for our design and we may get new solutions from this step, and then we have a chance to rebuild our prototype. Thus, whether the empathy step or the test step, we need to communicate with our users and build a relationship with them to improve our design.

This week’s readings are good for learning why the prototype is important for the design process. We can get a connection with our target buyers by building a prototype with our target buyers. Furthermore, we also may meet more challenges and solutions during building the product prototype. I think consumer-centric and colleague-centric are the most important part of a prototype. I may also need to connect with the idea of “human-centered design” to fulfill the consumer’s needs. Moreover, prototyping deepens my understanding of users and the design space. After building the prototype, I should ask different users to get various answers and advice for my product, then I may refine some new solutions. I think the prototype is the main step to our design, and this step also indicates my ideas are working.

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This week’s readings are making me feel fresh. It is becuase I learn many new ideas from this week’s readings. For example, the article “Can 10 minutes of meditation make you more creative?.” I have not to think about meditation can improve our creativity. This article teaches me that we can take a short meditation before bed, this can help us to enhance creativity and innovation. Furthermore, mindfulness practice improves attention and makes it easier to register the novelty and usefulness of ideas. I also think the article “Better Brainstorm,” also makes me learn many new things. Most of us may hard to linger in a questioning mode, becuase we are conditioned from an early age to just keep the answer coming. Thus, I am so surprised in asking questions is so important for creativity. I should come up with more questions about my topic to have more deep solutions.

For this week’s readings, I found out most brands’ new products or services are connecting with work collaboration. For the article “Making Sure a Bank Stays Great as it Grows,” they provide opportunities for their staff to explore their ideas. This is the best way to plan, brainstorm, discuss and decide the ideas. Furthermore, Airbnb used “Snow White” this Disney movie to explore their new, design process. They would make sure “like are these hosts men or women? Are they young, are they old? Where do they live? The city or the countryside? Why are they hosting? ” I think this is an effective way to explore our creativity. When I meet barrels in design, I think this is a better way to solve my problem. There are many ways for us to choose, but I think there must have the best way for us to be successful.

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This week’s readings and observations made me learn a lot. Story shared by my classmate about the dressing room, and I also capture some interesting and useful ideas for myself. I plan to design the dressing room to be more technological. For example, my interviewers complained that they are lazy to fold the clothes. Thus, I plan to design a machine that can help people to fold their clothes. My interviewers also complained that their dressing room is too small, they did not have enough space to put their clothes. Thus, I want to design the wardrobe to be build-in, and the customers can choose the size and the arrange of space for the wardrobe by themselves. I also get some new ideas from these weeks’ readings. I would like to remember them to remind myself.