learning so far - neha

Design Methodology – Email Assignment

‘Get prepared to get confused’ – thats the brief we were given for our design methodology course. We had started our design methodology course fully prepared to get confused.

Our first week of design methodology has taught us to observe keenly and think right from the first day. The introduction session was quite unlike other classes, where we would introduce ourselves and give a brief about our educational background. Here we were asked to say what our greatest fear was and also repeat our batch-mates fear. To be very honest, this was not something I had really thought about earlier. So the first thing I learnt was to identify my fear. The more important thing was that we learnt more about each other. In order to recall everybody’s fears we had to concentrate when each of us were speaking.

This was followed by an exercise to design 3 varieties of combs for a venture capitalist. So the comb had to be a million dollar idea. Firstly, we had to identify problem areas which we could use as opportunities to develop innovative design for combs. The designs developed by each of us were presented. This presentation was very good fun, we could freely criticize or appreciate our colleagues ideas. I learnt to identify opportunities and more clearly understood the role of innovation in design process.

In the latter half of the day, we were asked to go to the market and buy a product for Rs. 10/-, but the condition was that the product had to be something special, something that would make us happy.

The next morning we were send back to the market to buy the product, because we had not successfully completed the above exercise. Our objective was not very difficult to meet, because Jaipur is a very rich city. Our observations were very focused on interesting thing which fit in our budget. On our return to class, each of us were to display what we had bought, choose any one product and discuss what we found interesting. We were to split into pair and each of us were to play around with the chosen object, while our partner would made atleast 20 observation. It was these observations that would later give us clues to develop our concepts. These observations were also to be presented in class

We concluded the day with a very interesting exercise – making pairs of people and observing how your partner eats ice cream. Initially the action of eating appeared to be very simple but then we realized that we really had to observe very keenly to make valid observations. The observations we made would be incorporated in the suggestions we made to the ice cream manufacturer, regarding the products, the packaging material etc. We learnt to make observation keeping the user as our prime focus, in terms of how the user feels, what problems does he face, what his reactions are etc.

We then saw a very unconventional movie made by CNBC, called Deep Dive, on how an California based company called IDEO uses unconventional way to develop innovate products for varied companies. The most important things I learnt from the movies was to think as wild as you can, as it is only through these wild idea that we can develop new products. Also that one can achieve wonders through team work.

This was followed by a talk on what affordances are. We also demonstrated the process of ‘Bissociation’, where we took a particular and brain stormed about objects we would not associate with it and then thought of way we could connect the two.

We also had a session where we had to thing of really wild product that we had never seen earlier. We had to make a prototype of the product we had conceptualized, by a process that is called QADP – Quick and Dirty Prototyping. We also discussed the various domains involved i.e. the user, buyer, manufacturer and entrepreneur and what are the concerns of each of these domains.