Happy Second Blog Post Day!
In non-marketing related news, this was a special week, because as soon as we finished up boot camp we got the message to evacuate campus to avoid Florence. So while that immediately detracted a little from the excitement of boot camp, I am now safe at home where I can put all of my focus into remembering my boot camp experience.
In boot camp, I learned what design thinking was, and then further learned what it was by actually utilizing it to come up with a new idea for the cellphone. It was interesting to learn about a method that seems to be intuitive but isn’t something I’ve ever been told to use before. The methods for design thinking seem to generate good ideas: it makes sense to generate a lot of ideas, and it makes sense to use narratives and stories to come up with an improvement or a product, rather than doing it without that knowledge. I learned that to come up with good ideas, you need to learn about the user, empathize with their needs, and think about solutions using their stories. I also enjoyed being encouraged to think beyond limitations and found the ‘create’ process to be enjoyable. I did find it challenging, however, to come up with a product that wowed my partner, despite taking the steps outlined for design thinking. I found that I was often imparting my own desires in creating a product, rather than creating something that stemmed from my partner’s story. I also feel as if I didn’t identify the correct problem when doing initial interviews, which didn’t help the rest of the process.
Over the course of the semester, I would like to better learn to utilize the design thinking methodology, because it sounds like a really efficient way to come up with creative ideas.