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For my final week of blog cards, I started to think about the design process as a whole and what it is like when I am a designer in the real world. Designing is hard, especially since it is an industry that comes under a lot of criticism and can easily be stirred up. I have to remind myself to push back against conventional opinions and thoughts, that even when things get rough and bad I should still design. Even bad designs help the industry know what they do and don’t want. Things arent set in stone, things can change and be changed by me. The process of designing is long and tricky but everything is more than worth it, the work I complete, the people I meet the knowledge I gain will all help me grow as a designer.

During week 8’s thinking, I encountered more prototyping and test phases of my insights project. I learned that in order to get accurate data about your prototype that it should be tested in a similar environment where the final product would be used. I also found out that to get even more accurate data that the situation in which you get the consumer to test your prototype that it should feel and below pressure to make the consumer more comfortable and more receptive to giving feedback and opinions. When building your prototype you should just create without boarders in the room and in your mind. test our the crazy ideas and innovations, after all the crazy innovations are the one that are continually used way after the initial product.

During week 6 in class, we focused on the ideate section of the insights project. During this week we explored a lot of sketching and drawing ideas. Sometimes words fail you can getting your idea across to other people can become difficult to do. Drawing out the idea can lead to less confusion and misinterpretation from your peers. A lot of the methods within this mode I found very helpful in building pre-existing ideas and for thinking of new ideas that had previously never come to mind. I also focused on the process of dwindling down ideas that I have created. Sometimes it is hard to see through the jumble of my mind but putting ideas into a tangible scoring system help with focusing on ideas.

This week in class we had a guest speaker talking about the importance of creating a stand-in persona to help identify the need to the business and how it can positively affect your business. I also began to think about the process of finding an idea in the jumble of ideas within my head. I should let the idea just come to me, forced ideas tend to not be the best ones out of the bunch. Sometimes to get the idea you need to go into the thinking of the consumer to someone directly related to the product. Ideas will come naturally and will grow organically.

(all cards created on Feb 2nd)

This week most of my focus was based on unpacking research and moulding it into tangible facts. I am trying to find a pain point or product within my topic of rain solutions for people, I started creating a narrative out of the interview I conducted. When conducting interviews I must remember to write questions that are built to be read like a story. I also have to remember that a wandering mind isn’t always the worst thing on the planet, it can sometimes lead you to an idea that I didn’t previously have or thought was impossible. Talk to people about my interviews and data too, they might be able to make me think in a different way revealing new motivators and nuances.

In week one I was just introduced to the concept of design thinking, I had only briefly heard the term since starting in college so I was interested to find out a bit more about the whole process. I learned that your initial ideas probably won’t be the ones that solve the problem, that you should ask deeper questions, to keep asking why to get to the core route of a problem. A complete redesign shouldn’t be crazy and scary it should be invigorating that you are creating something for the future. The process is long but interesting throughout and even if I don’t have THE idea now, I doesn’t mean I’ll never have it; I just need to keep thinking and trying.

Welcome to my blog where i’m going to emplore design thinking