Re-think

The past few days I have been thinking about why we are doing our project the way we are. Why do we, creative minds, have trouble to produce the things we come up with? Then I watched a documentary titled 'Design and Thinking' (find it on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_YwyMssN0Y).

I came across the theory of design thinking. Though I had never really thought of this before, designers think differently than most entrepeneurs and many other people. In design, it is expected that you come up with an idea, and make a million different prototypes, dummies, and developments before the final design is there and ready to be used or marketed. I think that we as designers are blessed with the ability to confess that something was not right about the way we approached a problem, and that we take the chance to start over many times. This is, as the film says, why students in little basements can trump multi-billion companies: we are not afraid to do it wrong, start over, and try again.

So let's look at the steps and think about where we are for a moment:

-We are currently EMPATHISING: we are trying to come to grips with the 'problem', and are trying to see our design through the eyes of the people that will be inhabiting our community campus

-We are trying to DEFINE the questions we have and the goals we are willing to achieve

-Soon, we will be ready to IDEATE; to come up with ideas to solve issues of community living and factory life.

-Many PROTOTYPES will be suggested, whether in the form of tools, models, or even mindsets that will help bring people in our community together.

-The TEST phase of this case study will be the trickiest: how can we test the tools and things we create when we know so little about our 'users'?

Perhaps we should keep this order of events in mind to help ourselves see what we are aiming for and how much we already have achieved.

P.s. for anyone interested, please visit the following website to look at the five stages of Design Thinking: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/5-stages-in-the-design-thinking-process