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My name is Maram Nazmy.

I blow my candles on 9 June.

30% architect at AUC Sophomore.

I have passion for art direction, photography, makeup and business marketing.

Why this course?
I was looking for an interesting core course and my friend advised me to register it as the assignments are interesting and not similar to other academic courses.

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First Assignment
We were asked to read three short readings and create a concept map to demonstrate our understanding of the content.

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I think this concept map is very beneficial as it shows the design thinking process in a simple and easy way.

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- Revolving Wardrobe
- Plain Wardrobe where kids can    customize it and draw on it ( like a bpard)
- Turns light on and plays music
- Climb high shelves with ladder and get down on a slide
- Parents Control
- A place for them to hide while playing hide and seek
- Laundry Basket

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Done with our prototype!!!! First Challenge Done featuring masry's dab

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Another view of our Dolabco prtotype

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I will never forget this challenge because I was amuse by how create a group in the class manage to be unique and made the airplane by crumpling a paper instead of the traditional paper plane.

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After the career module I came up with this concept map which I will examine thoroughly during summer vacation to know more about myself.

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This is the funniest assignment ever. I felt I really know myself very well.

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Another Page designed by me for the second challenge

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I really enjoyed designing the mobile app infographic because I love digital design. I am glad that my teammate liked it too.

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This challenge proved to me that when I overthink and overcomplicate something it tends to fail. While my group and I where trying to win the challenge, we sophisticated things. On the contrary, another group managed to win simply. This taught me that I should not overthinkanything and let things flow smoothly.
Lesson Learnt:

You learn by doing, discovering problems you can’t predict in advance.

Don't over complicate your life

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The Ted talk ‘Do schools kill creativity?’ presented by Sir Ken Robinson , creativity expert, challenges the current education system and urges the educational institutions to rethink of the way intelligence is perceived. He emphasizes on the importance of nurturing creativity during school years at a young age. Sir Robinson believes that creativity is equally significant as literacy. After watching the talk, I started to think whether those 12 years spent at school where worth it or just a waste of time and money.
Ken Robinson lost me at this point where he thinks that art classes develop creativity. In my opinion, linking creativity to applied arts or music is extremely mainstream. One of the most stereotypes is that most people believe that being incapable of drawing means that you can’t be labelled as a creative person. For example, I see marketeers as one of the most creative professions despite the fact that their studies are mostly about theories and statistics but those people have the art of selling and convincing customers of buying products that you might not need or use. Also, scientists belong to the category of creative people; all these technological innovations are created by scientists. The point that I am trying to prove is that schools are not killing creativity because of not prioritizing the art classes but it is the way the education system is structured. The current education system makes student stress about their grades more than learning thus students end up memorizing the whole syllabus to pass the test just for the sake of grades. Students don’t have the chance to think about the content they are studying or either question it and look at it from a different angle.

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David Kelley’s speech at Ted is about building creative confidence and managing to break
the barriers that prevent us from being creative. Also, David and his brother, Tom, wrote an article
called “Reclaim your creative confidence” that presents the same idea as David’s speech in Ted. Kelley’s article and speech couldn’t be more accurate in describing confidence barriers. I think that fear of judgment and loss are the two main things that might hold someone back from taking the risk. Based on a personal experience, the best way to reach your goal is by showing, not telling. One must take a step even if it is a very small one because it is all about taking the initiative.

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The Ted speech by Carol Dweck and the article “Carol Dweck : A Summary of The Two Mindsets And The Power of Believing That You Can Improve” talk about growth mindset. It is about the idea that we can enhance our intelligence to respond to challenges. She classifies intelligence into two types: fixed mindset and growth mindset. Fixed mindset leads to a desire to look smart and therefore people with such mindset fall in the trap of not tolerating errors. On the other hand, growth mindset are keen about learning and challenging themselves. Carol dweck ideas are similar to what I have been learning and reading from the beginning of the semester. All articles I read in this course emphasizes on the importance of taking risks and building self confidence. Actually, I have been reading the same tips every time whenever I search topics on internet about being successful. It is actually easier said than done. Topics like creativity, intelligence and self confidence need to be perceived in a new manner other than the self help books that consume half the bookshop. Even words and tips used in this field are becoming a cliche like “discover yourself and try new things”.

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I like how people working in this firm are of different university majors like biology, engineering, psychology, marketing, and design. Part of being creative and coming up with ideas is having wide knowledge which comes from diversity. Also, the fact that they assign leaders by skills and not seniority is something that I appreciated while watching the video. In most businesses that I have known, people are promoted based on age and seniority.

I would definitely love working in such an environment.

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The gift giving design challenge requires partners to ask each other about the last gift they purchased and recall how the experience went starting from looking for the gift until giving it. Then each partner has to rethink of coming up with a new idea to improve this experience based on the feedback from his/her partner.

The gift giving design challenge made me experience an adrenaline rush that is similar to what I experience in last minute assignments submission.

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I was not sure about what we were doing at first because instructions were not very clear but later on things were self explanatory. The hardest part was the interview part because I had to think of questions that will help me understand my partner’s preferences in order to develop the design to satisfy her. It is very hard to build a conclusion after a short discussion that lasted 4 minutes only because sometimes people can fail to express their experiences thus they might be misinterpreted.

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My partner’s main issue was money and time. She likes to buy gifts at reasonable prices, she prefers gifts that have been put effort into and her main problem is that she lives very far from most gift shops. Coming up with more than on solution in less than 5 minutes was the most challenging part. Unfortunately, I felt that ideas I came up with were very weak and some of them already existed. I tend to panic when someone gives me a short time to create something or come up with an idea. However, my partner liked a certain feature in each proposed design.

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In the IDEO shopping cart, the firm came up with more than one prototype and they combined all successful design elements into a single shopping cart design. Hence, I thought of combining the most successful features in each proposed prototype and come up with a single design that has all the good features.

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This exercise was so much fun and it shows how our mind can function well under stress. Also, in this exercise we used many techniques that we took throughout the course till now like how might I technique. I like how we are applying what we are taking theoretically in real life experiments; this will make us adopt a creative way of thinking that will become a part of our daily routine.

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the picture of our beautiful members after the pitch

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I guess I need to develop my elevator pitch skills because these help us in seizing our opportunities.

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I always ask myself does looking from different angles that all absolute answers are correct. Can looking from different perspective lead to creative idea or can lead to misunderstanding.

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This quote and the one following it mean the same thing which is taking risk is a must. I have decided this summer to get out of my bubble and try new things to discover more about myself.

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I find this techniques is very useful because it makes you question yourself in a different way thus your mind perceives it differently and gives new answers

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I guess I always had traveler's mindset. Sometimes I try to forget the image I have for a certain person or space that has been a default and when I do this, I discover new things.

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I found out that portable think tank leads to the craziest ideas because you can put yourself in someone's shoes who might be crazy.

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I don't know why I feel it the least useful technique. Maybe because it requires lots of effort?

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I was really shocked in class when this example was given because I always had it in mind. I used to tell myself don't transform the pyramids to an amusement park with the pharaoh theme and host large musical concerts like coldplay.

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I really enjoyed this activity because it added to my general knowledge like what are the basic needs for an astronaut .

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I got money a one of top ranked values but it's not really everything for me. Sometime it might be an indicator for success but it's not the case.

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The results came as culinry arts in first place which is actually funny. However, I would love working with Gordon Ramsay

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This is the most motivational video I ever seen. The way the speaker delivers his speech gave me goosebumps. He was so passionate about it and his story is really inspiring.

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I remember that I registered this course because my best friend registered it too. However, she dropped it because it clashed with her major course. I was thinking of the dropping the course too but then I noticed that the course is called creative thinking which I actually found interesting. The fact that I am reflecting about this course  now shows how unplanned things are the most are the best beneficial. In this essay, I will be reflecting about the course in terms of content, atmosphere inside class, activities and assignments.

I was always told that I was creative but I never really understood the real meaning of it. This class helped in defining the term creativity. I used to think like other people that creativity is related to art only but in fact it can involved in anything. What helped my learning in this course was the challenges done inside class and articles posted on blackboard. The challenges demonstrated the idea that the professor is trying to explain and how it can applied immediately in our real lives. The articles posted on blackboard were short and straightforward to the point and is written in a simple language which made it easy to understand. I liked in this class the diversity of assignments. For example, there would be essays yet there are projects in order for people who hate writing can enjoy the class. However, I believe that there are some unnecessary essays that were written like the reflections. I guess two or three reflections would be enough and the word count can be 300. Reflections didn’t benefit me because I tend to express myself better in action and not writing. I would have learned better in this course if there was more challenges and group projects than reflections. Also, concerning the TED videos watched at class, they are very impactful and I suggest that a real guest speaker can be invited to talk to the students in class about their successful story. Moving to the career module, this was the most beneficial part of the course as it focused on individuals more. Having Mrs Dalia Awad telling her story was actually inspiring and that’s why I suggested above to invite speakers to class. Regarding the design thinking process, I partially disagree with the process because sometimes you can get an idea suddenly that is great without going through this long process. However, having a challenge concerning the design think process helped in demonstrating the process smoothly. Another suggestion for the class activity is actually having a class outside or field trips. Taking students to field trips can make the class more interesting and it will build a bridge between what is taken in class and the outer world.  For example, it would’ve great if the class went to the creative summit and other similar events.

The biggest obstacle in this course was not the the process of learning but the agenda of the deliverables. I believe that there is no even distribution of assignments along the semester. Risking the percentage of many assignments by the end of the semester makes it hard to handle all of them. For instance. currently I am having architecture jury submissions that clash with important assignments in this course just because the assignments with the most grades are left till the end of the semester which is unfair. Another obstacle was the activities that had time constraints. I usually panic when I am given a task to finish within a short time, my mine=d stops functioning. This the exercise that we used to do in class I fond it unfair because not all people work the same under the same environment. Not producing many words in the list doesn’t mean that I am not creating or that I am not learning a anything at class

The few last classes in this course are going to stick in my head for a good time as we discussed in class about career goals and its issues which is something that I have been thinking about lately. All tips given about the CV and interviews are very helpful. I remember we watched a video  of a scripted CV interview, I guess it would have been a great idea to make students act the interview in order to create more engagement in class. Regarding the padlet, I don’t really find it useful because it acts as a reflection paper but the difference is that it is more visually appealing. Moreover, working in group was a great feature in this course because it helped me in getting out of my comfort zone and work and share ideas with new people. Five years from now, I will remember about this course the debate of how much salary do you expect because most probably I will be asked this question during a job interview and I will not how answer it.

To conclude, this course was different from the other courses that I am used to because it involved all types of assignments and a new concept of thinking. I used to escape engineering courses by taking this course. Lastly, I prefer that this class is taken in a different classroom because the class requires lots of movement thus a larger are is needed with better lighting.