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Check out the "More to Explore" Padlet page. Watch or read at least one of the resources from Week 1. Post your reactions/thoughts on applications of design thinking, here (scroll down). Be sure to mention what resource(s) you're responding to!

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Reflect on today's class at the Xfinity Center for the Mission of Mercy (MOM) event:

1. How, if at all, did your findings from observation/interviewing differ from the assumptions you mind-mapped at the start of class?

2. Reflect on the observation process. What went well for you? What was something you struggled with?

3. Reflect on the interviewing process. What went well for you? What was something you struggled with?

4. Contribute to the "Humans of MOM" page, uploading the photos and stories you captured today.

5. Check out the materials on the "More the explore!" page.

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[Answer to Week 1 question goes here!]

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Overall, it was very interesting to see how design thinking was used to create a more vibrant and creative opera event. At first I was under the impression that design thinking could only be used for designing a physical, tangible product or service. However, after reading the San Francisco Opera article their design team was able to design and create a successful event under a short time constraint.

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I really loved reading about the idea of design thinking through a real and interesting real life situation. This was so detailed that I understood everything about the progression from start to finish of the planning process of the SFO staff. I loved seeing how they were pushed out of their comfort zones to really work together to really achieve something. It was very inspiring and I think I would genuinely love to work this way if everyone involved was equally invested. I also noticed and feel should stress the importance of how the SFO staff were guided on how to even begin thinking outside the box. I feel this would have had a very different outcome if the 2 students leading the project(?) had a more hands-off approach; which I realize now the whole concept of design thinking is to get rid of that approach. I really think I'm gonna love this class.

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Yazmeen Tembunde -  Design Thinking Ted Talk

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Yazmeen Tembunde -  Design Thinking Ted Talk

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Before this course I had never heard of design thinking. As problem solvers, design thinkers have come up with technology to accommodate disabilities, for example texting, that have actually become very popular and widely used. I found this pretty interesting because something disabilities sometimes carry a negative connotation, but they've inspired technology that many love to use. I think design thinking has great potential and is applicable in all types of industries.

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Shivani Talwar [Ted Talk Design Thinking]

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Shivani Talwar [Ted Talk Design Thinking]

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It was incredible the empathy that the speaker had for her problems. I feel like a large part of innovation and design thinking is understanding the problem that you are solving. Additionally, it was inspiring how instead of thinking of herself as disabled, she took her inability to hear as a positive to come up with solutions and actions to help all. Even in class, we discussed how when we make mistakes, we should say "ta da" and move forward to stay positive. This quality is certainly something this speaker has especially considering she understood how picking her self up and continuing forward will lead to success eventually; successful ideas do not come from just one attempt. Lastly, I admired how she recognized that designing for deviations from society gets people to better solutions than designing for the norm.

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Anuj Thakore (A.J.) - [Ted Talk Design Thinking]

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Anuj Thakore (A.J.) - [Ted Talk Design Thinking]

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I really enjoyed listening to Elise Roy’s Ted Talk on Design Thinking. Admittedly, prior to our first class, I never heard of “Design Thinking”, nor did I know that it could be utilized as a tool to solve some of the most complex problems that effects our population today. Even so, I left the first day of our class wondering how innovation and problem solving can be related to Design Thinking (yes, even after our in-class activities). However, Elise Roy’s Ted Talk provided me with in-depth explanations and concrete examples on how to go about Design Thinking. She brilliantly stated a simple analogy that each individual has unique experiences, which enables them to design unique solutions and make advances towards solving problems. It was right after Roy’s analogy that I had my “aha moment” on understanding what exactly Design Thinking is and how it involves me. I really appreciated Roy’s explanation on how Design Thinking not only encourages us to fail and then to re-think and re-evaluate in order to find a proper solution, but also brings together various disciplines to not only gain different perspectives, but also merges them together to form a new solution that is out of the box.

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It is very interesting to watch Elise Roy talk about being a design thinker while having a disability. She did not let this disability consume her to the point she would be unable to believe she create something beneficial to others. Outside of class, I was never aware of what design thinking was and how I can apply it to society today. Ms. Roy clearly elaborates that her coach believed if she did not lose her hearing, she would be on the national team. Instead of being broken by her coaches words, she realized losing her hearing made her hone in on her other senses and behavior. This is what made her break barriers as a design thinker. Lastly, she has taught me no matter what time of illness or disability you may have you are creative and capable of being a design thinker.

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Parastoo ZiaZarifi - Design thinking at the opera

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Parastoo ZiaZarifi - Design thinking at the opera

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"Lean into the discomfort" has been my mantra for the last few months, and when I read this article the heading "getting comfortable with feeling uncomfortable" really resonated with me. I think that the idea of starting something new in an establishment that has been around for decades is terrifying - and seeing how it panned out and worked is amazing and honestly inspiring. I loved the idea that the singers were in casual attire, and that the audience was so involved in the selection of the music. It is very interesting how the article mentioned that younger audiences may be too intimidated to come out to "the opera" but by changing the atmosphere, the opera was able to go out into the community and cater to needs of those who did not even know what they wanted. Really shows you what thinking outside the box can do for improving a tired idea.

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Malath Ibrahim-What Design Thinking Is Doing for the San Francisco Opera

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Malath Ibrahim-What Design Thinking Is Doing for the San Francisco Opera

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It was interesting to see that design thinking is relevant in every field. I often associate the term with academic/medical fields. I thought the idea of being able to dress casually to the opera was great. They were successful in making the opera more accessible to the average person while still maintaining it's essence.

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Rachel Kuipers [Design Thinking Ted Talk]

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Rachel Kuipers [Design Thinking Ted Talk]

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After watching the Ted Talk, I have a better understanding of what design thinking is and the ways in which it can be used to solve problems and improve our situations. Before I watched the video, I had a limited understanding of how versatile a tool design thinking is. It was also interesting to hear about the subject from the perspective of someone who doesn't represent the "norm," because it allows viewers to broaden their own viewpoints and encourages them to stop limiting themselves. I think this video shows how important it is to remain inclusive to all members of the community because as well as bettering the lives of individuals with disabilities--a crucial goal--it betters the lives of the population as a whole. As Ms. Roy mentioned, innovations initially made to meet the needs of those who need accomodations are often favored by the general public.

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Jasmine Coltrane [Ted Talk - Design Thinking]

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Jasmine Coltrane [Ted Talk - Design Thinking]

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It was interesting to hear about design thinking in terms of innovating products for people with disabilities. They way she explained how her being deaf forced her to be a design thinker allowed me look at design thinking in a different light. We constantly change and do things differently based on our specific needs. Some engage in this more than other based on their unique life experiences. The most important thing that I learned from Elise Roy's speech is that the best design thinking takes everybody into consideration, regardless of ability. As I continue in this class, this video will help me remember to think about other people with different life experiences as me when creating ideas. When engaging in the empathy step of the design thinking process I will try to make my ideas accessible to everyone.

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It’s really exciting to see someone who’s disable was able to used her talent to help others. Sometimes people give up in life because they have that perception in their mind they can’t do anything because of their condition. Someone like this can inspire them to get involve in life. Her enthusiasm to embraced what she is doing really motivates me.
LINDA ACHU.

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Unfortunately was unable to attend class due to a religious holiday

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As a detail-oriented person, it is often difficult for me to show a result that is not “perfect”, so I resonated with the opera's desire for perfection. However, the article made a good point that while perfectionism can improve quality in some aspects, it can reduce quality significantly because people do not get to the root cause of the problem, and end up making the same mistakes repeatedly. I also thought it was interesting how a majority of people connected strongly with the opera songs that were performed at less formal events. This shows that the core idea of opera is universal; it is just the way that it is presented that needs to be altered. This idea can be applied to projects in a wide variety of fields. For example, a majority of people could agree with a health clinic’s main purpose of creating a healthier community, but the clinic’s methods for achieving this goal might not be the most effective.

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I would have never thought that an opera house world take take part in this module of creative thinking, and shows how this idea is able yo be used in every type of setting. Also seeing that this, was put forth by such an amazing person who was disabled furthermore showed the ability creative thinking can have

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It's really cool to see how design thinking can keep something like opera alive and enticing for newer generations, we think about it like a dead genre but in reality, it's still alive and vibrant and design thinking really contributes to their ability to continually cater to audiences

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Reflect on today's Mission of Mercy exploration (observation + interviewing). Respond to the following:

1. How, if at all, did you findings from today differ from the assumptions you mapped out at the start of class? NOTE: You can find a photo of your assumptions mind maps on the "More to Explore" page.

2. Reflect on the observation rounds from today. What went well? What did you struggle with?

3. Reflect on the interviewing round from today. What went well? What did you struggle with?

4. Contribute to the Humans of MOM Padlet page, sharing the story (and photo!) of someone you interviewed.

5. As always, check out the More to Explore page to learn more about what we experienced today.

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[Answer to Week 2 quesions go here!]

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In response to the TED Talk, it is amazing to see how the speakr made use of design thinking to create and inspire others. Her point of how creating for disabilities can expand and reach those without disabilities is an important part of DT, things that usually work for one can work for others as well. She is really emphasizing how anyone can be a design thinker. Her words were very inspirational.

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~ I'm not sure if my assumptions were different than the reality, but I would say that the actual event was an amplified version of my expectation. I did not realize that there were going to be that many dentists and that many patients. I also did not believe that people were waiting for as long as they were. I personally could never imagine waiting 6+ hours. It was a lot more organized than I expected as well; this seemed as if it could turn out to be a disaster if not organized correctly. I was surprised to see how effectively the sections were used as waiting rooms and the system of the color-coded cards for communication.

~ During the observation rounds I was able to zone into one area and focus what was going on there. I do not think I would have noticed the one patient get up to shake the hand of a Public Health Official or turn around to applaud the dean if I had not been a fly on the wall. However, on the other side of this, I was in oral surgery and really wanted to know what was going on. I was really tempted to just talk to a few of the doctors or patients because I consider myself an interactive person. I had to almost hold myself back from speaking to anyone.

~ For the interviewing round, I had the opportunity to speak with both patients and a dentist. I was able to gain helpful insight from the patients to understand their perspective; it was incredible to me how thankful they were for the services provided and how long they were willing to wait. There was not much that went wrong with this round because the people we approached were more than happy to talk with us :) However, the initial approach was a little awkward because I did not know what to say when I walked up to the patients. After initiating the conversation, everything else was fluid though.

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The assumptions that my group and I had differed from the actual findings during MOM in a few ways. I think we (I know I can at least speak for myself)  thought that it would be a lot of low income to homeless patients, and mostly from around the PG county, DMV area. It was crazy to me to see that people had traveled from as far as Connecticut, and stood outside for 12+ hours just to get this care! It was absolutely insane to hear that because I complain when I have to wait an extra 15 minutes at the dentist in the waiting room. In all honesty it was very humbling. Reasons we had talked about for why people would be coming to MOM seemed to hold true - wanting to save money seemed to be the most popular reason for being there.

The observation round started off feeling a tad weird because I felt very uncomfortable about just watching people. To me it almost felt offensive as if I was treating people who are getting work done as zoo animals and I really wanted to go up to everyone and tell them “I’m not judging you this is just for a class and it’s amazing that a program like this exists”. I can’t say that that is what the people who were there were thinking, but hopefully they didn’t even realize we were there and out of place. What went really well was actually listening to the Dean’s speech which made me tear up at times. He was right - when things like this program exist it’s great - but it also shows us how flawed the system is. That stuck with me.

Originally I thought that the interviewing was going to be really hard and weird, but once my partner and I met a man Khaleel who was there with his mother, things really started to take off. He had brought his mother and although they had a few issues with handicapped assistance, they were both really thankful, and excited, and did not mind the waiting time at all which was amazing to hear. He mentioned how everyone had been super nice, and it was a great conversation.

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-After observations I noticed that there were more of Dentist and dental hygienist and not so much students observing as we predicted. We also predicted that the health professionals would be feeling overwhelmed, but after seeing them they seemed calm and not stressed. From the map when it came to guessing who was at MOM, we left out teenagers, students, and kids who may be getting treatment. After walking around, I was amazed at how many people were actually there. The coordination from the waiting area, triage, x-rays, to the dental floor was very well done. From our assumption drawing we did not mention coordinators and organizers, and they play a very important role in making sure he event ran smoothly.

-When we first got to our station me and my partner talked with the dental hygienist and let her know why we were there. After a few minutes we realized we were at the wrong station. We ended up moving to the right station once we realized. At first I struggled with writing, I just wasn't sure what to actually write down. But after sitting down and observing the interaction between the Dr and the patient it became easier. For me I thought it would be uncomfortable just sitting and watching a patient and the doctor but it turned out being okay.

-(I left early so I missed the interviewing round) I was able to take with a dental hygienist during the observation round. She was very welcoming and nice and really explained to me why she was there. Her short overview of how she felt about the program was heart warming. She genuinely enjoyed what she was doing and what MOM  was doing for the community.

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1.     My findings from Friday differed from my assumptions in that I assumed the patients would be either unemployed, homeless, or uninsured. I didn’t consider that people who have jobs, have homes, and have insurance might want to come and get free dental care. I did speak with some patients who simply didn’t want to pay for pricey dental care, and decided to get it for free through MOM.

2.     During the observation rounds I was able to understand the flow of patients from getting in the doors, to registration, to X-ray machines, and finally down onto the bleachers to await their dental service. At the oral surgery section, I was able to discern what the green and red papers being held up by dental assistants meant, after close observation, although I struggled a bit with what the red paper meant.

3.     The interviewing round was pretty interesting, as I was able to speak to a variety of different people who played different roles at MOM. It was fairly easy to initiate conversation with dentists, assistants, and patients about what they were doing and their experience with MOM. However, in such a fast paced environment it was a bit hard to continue a conversation and go a bit deeper with the people I spoke to.

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1.  My assumptions of who was going to be there were pretty accurate.  However, I did expect to see more children, but most of the patients were middle to older age.

2. During the beginning of the first round of observations I just recorded the things I saw.  Such as what the dentists were doing, the signs that were up, the health equity festival and other surface level observations.  At first it was difficult to find deeper information about how the interactions were going between the different types of people at the event.  Once I stepped away and viewed the event from the stands I could see things like visit interactions and times, peoples attitudes and interactions in the waiting areas, and other things.  It was easier to see general flow and mood of the event.

3. The two men we interviewed were very nice and helpful. They were the EMT personnel on duty, so in a way they were a fly on the wall for the event when they did not have emergencies to attend to. It was more of a challenge to focus on why they were at the event because it was for their job responsibilities. Despite that issue we discussed stories about their jobs, why they became EMT's , and their experience with health professionals interacting with people from the local area.

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- One thing that was very different fro my assumption is the distance people traveled and the reason they were here. I thought people just that live around here, would have came. Say a 10-mile radius but then I heard places people actually are coming from and it shocking. The person I interviewed made a 1 hour and 30 minutes’ drive and I heard other people came from different states for dental treatment. I also thought it would be only people in need that came, but I met people that came just because its free and they don’t have health insurance which is a reasonable reason.

- It was a huge event, on the first round where we had to try to observe everything that was more complicate, it was a lot going on and you couldn’t focus on one spot as much as you wanted to. In the observing one spot, it went well, because we got to observe what patients do the longest, wait for their turn but it was very uneventful but that was probably the most patient waiting room I’ve ever been in.

- I like talking to people and hearing their opinions so it went well, and I luckily interviewed two very open individuals that told my partner and I a lot about their situation. I think at one point when we ran out of questions, that when things got complicated but overall I just talked to the person as I would to everyone else and it went well.

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~ When I walked around and explored the clinic the demographic of people did not surprise me. I expected to see a diverse group of people from various socioeconomic status. After hearing that some folks had been standing in line since 7pm the night before, that really shocked me. I was expecting some folks to be cranky but a lot of the waiting patients were enthusiastic and grateful.

~I had difficulty at first to figure everything thing out, I wanted to go up and just ask questions, however this was the observation session where we could only observe. I was extremely curious and wanted to just ask questions. The second time going back out on the field I noted different processes happening that, such as volunteers holding up red, green cards communicating to other workers.

~ I don’t think the interviewing person was too difficult because I like to speak to people that I don’t know. However, the difficult part was finding folks who wanted to be interviewed. A gentleman who looked like he was not in the mood after we told him what we wanted to speak to him about.

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1. I found some assumptions we made during the mapping did differ from our findings when exploring the mission of mercy event. The assumption that stood out most to be different was the assumption that those attending the free clinic would be mainly be those uninsured. After interviewing people we found everyone we interviewed had insurance, but were unhappy with the coverage they were receiving. They also wanted to save money on the treatments they needed and therefore decided the 6+ hour wait was worth it.
2.  The observation round went mostly well. I was able to observe a lot and the map made it easier to find our way around. I think the only struggle was making sure I wasn’t in peoples way while trying to observe as much as I could.

3. I thought we’d have a difficult time interviewing people, as we didn’t want to ask questions that were too personal but definitely wanted to know more about peoples backgrounds. It turns out people were willing to be open with us and gave us a lot of personal information including information on their insurance and them being on disability. They even shared information about their families. I didn’t find anything to be very difficult about the interviewing round.

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1.)  To be honest, my group’s assumptions on our mind maps were not that different from what we thought the demographics and socioeconomic status of the patients and healthcare staff would be like in reality.  However, what did differ between our group’s assumptions listed on our mind maps and of that in reality was that there were other support staff, such as receptionists, U.S. Department of Health agents, sterilization and surgical equipment technicians, as well as a barber. Furthermore, in reality, the Mission of Mercy encompassed a broader and diverse category of patients seeking treatment, such as children of all ages, the handicapped, and countless other adults and elderly.  In addition, the Mission of Mercy also had various information tables with plenty of educators/outreach staff to help teach patients (and their family members) on living a healthier lifestyle (our mind map did not include educators/outreach staff).

2.)  During the observation round, I found that understanding the patient organization process became easier (admittedly, prior to the observation round, I was confused on how patients were organized based on their medical treatment needed). However, at first I did struggle with trying to understand what the different color wristbands meant. Yet, during the observation round, I was able to find out that each colored band not only represents the type of treatment going to be performed, but also if the patient has any allergies to medications and/or food. On the other hand, what I did struggle with was understanding how all the medication is kept secure, and if the patients receive any to take home. When I asked a patient this question (of whether or not they will receive some medication to take home) the patient had no idea if they would receive any. I was also struggling with how sterile and clean the environment (i.e., the indoor basketball court) in which oral surgical procedures were being conducted in.

3.) During the interview round, my partner (Ary) and I definitely found that it was easier to talk to patients that were waiting behind the black tent right before they go to receive their respective treatment. Many patients were engaging, open, and polite, which was awesome given that they’re not only in pain, but they have also been waiting 5+ hours. However, Ary and I did come across one patient that did not want to talk to us, nor answer our questions pertaining to his experience. He told us that he was already approached by 2 other students at 9AM that same morning who wanted to ask him similar questions, and that he had answered them. He also seemed very frustrated and tired. Ary and I decided not to push the gentleman, but rather thank him for his time. That part of the experience did not go as well as Ary and I had planned.

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1. I didn’t really know what to expect before exploring the clinic. I assumed that there would be many locals coming to the clinic, and there were, but there were also plenty of patients who traveled long distances. For example, one patient traveled from Delaware for the clinic. I assumed that there would be a variety of patient ages, and there were, but there were fewer children than I thought I’d see. I also didn’t realize how intensive some of the dental work would be—I didn’t expect surgeries and the creation of dentures.

2. During the observation round, I enjoyed seeing the clinic up close because I was able to put faces to the patients and volunteers who attended. I struggled sometimes with not understanding what I was seeing, and wanting to know more but having to assume.

3. Talking to the individuals at the clinic during the interview round really helped me to understand at least some of what brought the volunteers and patients to the clinics. Assuming what’s going on in someone’s mind can only get you so far; you need to speak with people to understand them and gain empathy for them. I struggled with the first steps of the interviews because I felt like I was overstepping and bothering people there.

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1. I expected chaos and a lot of traffic. Despite the large crowd, all of the different areas were well maintained with little to no crowding. everything was very well thought out and the volunteers did an excellent job making sure patients were treated as soon as possible.

2. I struggled with trying to silently observe without asking any questions. there were so many interesting procedures and patients and I wanted to know more about the people who were benefiting from this service. we were able to the patients and doctors the first round if we had any questions, but any questions we had the second round were deduced from our observations.

3. Everyone was extremely grateful. despite the long waiting time. It was difficult to imagine myself being as cheerful after waiting for that long.

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1) One of my assumptions going into M.O.M was that the people being helped would be grateful for the services they were receiving. However, I did not expect people to be so patient as they waited. The people I talked to did not seem upset that they were waiting for several hours, which shows how much they value the services from M.O.M.
2) One of the things that was helpful about the observation round was that I noticed things that I might not have noticed if I was engaging with people. For instance, I noticed how the organization that seemed to have the longest interactions in the resource fair had their representatives stand up and come to the front of the table. Also, I am a reserved and detail-oriented person so it was great to just stand alone and try to record all the details I could see. However, the observation round was difficult because there were many questions that I had that were hard to answer just by looking. For example, there were several stations set up where I assumed people could get physical exams.Seeing that many of the stations were empty (some had helpers but no patients) made me wonder why patients were not using this valuable resource. It was difficult to not just ask the helper if there were certain constraints that I could not see in that space, such as an issue with registration.
3) The interview round was great because it gave some information about parts of the patient experience that occurred outside of Xfinity, like people's commutes to get to M.O.M. The part that I struggled with was asking specific questions that could elicit stories from people at M.O.M. Many of the questions I asked would result in 1-2 sentence responses.

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1) At the beginning of class, I thought the process was going to be regular checkup and doing some cleaning. When we had the opportunity to see what was actually taking place I was surprised. They had various sections like cleaning, Endodontics, and oral surgery. sometimes you can’t go to a local clinic and find all in one clinic they always give you a referral form to get an oral surgery.
2) During the observation part I actually love what I saw, but didn’t have clue of what was going on. The X ray they were using is different from the one I know since this was the observation part I was curious to know the difference between the two X ray machine.

3)The interviewing part was different at first I was scared to ask questions, because I did know who I’m talking to they might be in a bad mood. later on I went bac to the x-ray section since I was curious to know the differences between the two I had courage to ask questions from one of the patients without hesitating since that was something I really like to know.

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~I expected to see a diverse group of individuals to come to the clinic, but I did not expect to hear individuals waiting just for this day to receive treatment. I could not imagine waiting this long to receive treatment for a tooth extraction nor having fillings for cavities. Hearing individuals tell us they were sleeping outside building before the clinic open the next day is surprising. I would never expect such dedication to receive free oral treatment. Each person had to wait a lot of hours just to be seen by a dentist to receive their treatment due to the amount of people already in front of them. I was very happy to see the clinic well organized and using color coded cards for communication to signal others.
~During the observation rounds, I believe it went really well just walking around the oral surgery area. I was able to see what dental work was being done with each patient and observe the interaction between volunteers and patients. I struggled with not noticing a lot that was going around me beside the oral surgery side. I was really focus on seeing what treatment was being done to patients versus walking around more to explore.
~The interviewing round went really well! Listening to Gary talk to me about waiting outside the clinic at 12am before being let inside of the building at 8am. He went into a great detail about where he was from, how he heard about the clinic, what dental plan he has, and the treatment he was getting done that day. I was amazed how comfortable he was letting me gain insight about his life. I struggled with not being able to come up with more questions to ask Gary about since I was running low on time.

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1. How, if at all, did you findings from today differ from the assumptions you mapped out at the start of class? NOTE: You can find a photo of your assumptions mind maps on the "More to Explore" page.

2. Reflect on the observation rounds from today. What went well? What did you struggle with?

3. Reflect on the interviewing round from today. What went well? What did you struggle with?

So I think our findings differed from what we mapped int he sense that there was a wider variety of individual present at the fair than we even predicted, from barbers to EMTs. We also saw fewer PR reps than we expected. The observation rounds were nice in that you got to objectively take int he environment around you. What was difficult was not being able to go up to someone to ask questions, to explain what they were doing. By contrast, when interviewing it was really difficult to strike up to courage to approach someone in the first place, but one we began speaking to someone we found everyone to be really friendly. Secondly, it was interesting to see how we'd push the interviewees in certain directions with pointed questions such as their favorite thing about being an EMT per say rather than whether they enjoyed being an EMT int he first place. It definitely took the objectivety out of the information we were receiving.

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1. It differed in that it was not nearly as publicized as we thought it would be. There were also a lot more people volunteering than we expected. The reasons people were volunteering were also a lot more honorable than we expected.

2. Observation felt very strange because I wasn't allowed to engage. I had to figure out and assess everything through observing it. I thought I may have missed a lot that I didn't understand or see and I also feel like I noticed a lot that the people working wouldn't have.

3. I really enjoyed the interviewing process. The ladies I spoke to had very interesting things to say about the place and process. She helped me fill in the gaps from the observation round. She didn't know the ins and outs of the entire event though so some questions were unanswered.

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A few reflections:

"...High cost is the reason most people give for not visiting a dentist. Volunteers like Maura make it possible to take care of some of the great unmet need through the #MissionofMercyUMD

copy and paste to see video interview:
https://www.facebook.com/UMD.SPH/videos/10156007293405579/

https://vimeo.com/233246927

confirm you can access...

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In the design thinking process, people are designing for strangers, so strangers play a fundamental role. I think we were sent out to speak with strangers in order to become better design thinkers. Being able to approach strangers and learn about their experiences can make us better able to design products for them.
Team Fours -- https://padlet.com/yazmeenlove/fours

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Talking to strangers is important in the design thinking process because they can give a varied view of the issues you are trying to solve. If we just talked to people we know, they might have very similar perspectives to ours, so we would not get an accurate idea of how people feel about something. For instance, regarding people's feelings about health on campus, it is possible that you and your friends all have rigorous course loads, so none of you go to the gym, but a stranger might go the gym regularly, so they could give you insight about recreation services on campus. You sent us out to talk to strangers to not only understand the necessity of these different viewpoints, but to also get a chance to practice our interviewing skills. We are naturally comfortable with people we know, but it can take a little while to get used to talking to complete strangers and building rapport with them.

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Strangers are vital to the design thinking process. Learning about their experiences and needs helps us tailor our designs to address them. They also offer a new perspective on issues. By interacting with people who actually live in the community we are addressing and benefit from our project, we can collect data on the issues that are of utmost importance to them and make sure to prioritize those issues.

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The stranger’s role in the design thinking process is the first step “empathize” because we are interviewing them. In this experiment, we were focused a lot of health, of the person, an example is the use of the health center. We were trying to learn about the audience, which were the strangers to be able to set up a design. We wanted to figure out who the stranger was, their beliefs, basically just learning as much as we could about them.

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I was filled with so much passion and empathy while watching this TedTalk. To see someone who believes that loosing their hearing was one of the greatest gifts that they could have every received is simply amazing. She puts emphasis on that fact that her disability is not a disability, it is an opportunity for individuals to see life differently and contribute to the creating and designing of a new world.

Today at MOM I had the same feeling as watching this TedTalk. SO many doctors, nurses, and assistants came out in order to give back to the community, which was amazing. Also, to see how appreciative and grateful the patients were was simply beautiful.

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1. Overall, My finding from today did not differ from the assumptions that my group and I mapped out. The only finding that surprised me was that there was a barber as the event. I assumed because it was a medical event that only medical individuals would be there however, barbers were there giving haircuts to individuals for free. This was amazing to me because they are not only helping ivnvduals physically, but mentally as well. When individuals believe that they look good, they begin to feel good as well.

2. What went well on the observation round was that I had the opportunity to actually sit and watch the event happening and simply take everything in without having to engage. What was difficult was not being able to ask questions. I had so many questions that I wanted to ask, so it was hard to keep those in.

3. What went well during rounds was actually having doctors speak to us while doing procedures. They were so willing and excited to tell us why they love MOM and how they look forward to it every year. What I struggled with was trying to engage the doctors in the beginning. I didn’t really knowhow to approach them.

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Strangers help allow the interviewer to gain a new fresh perspective on a topic that is being discussed. When you don’t know a person there is a certain level of awkwardness that must be overcome in order to get the true important stuff. Once being able to get the stranger to open up, there is a lot of experiences that can be shared amongst the two individuals. This information can really help with creating solutions and tacking obstacles throughout the design thinking process.

Team:

P.H. Mafia
https://padlet.com/akeemhenry/5s5suckseh0f

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1. I personally think that the role that the strangers played in the design thinking process was to help us get out of our comfort zone. Its very easy to start a conversation wth on of your friends however, it is much harder to start a conversation with a random person. Sending us to talk to strangers allowed us to practice on these skills and become comfortable with engaging with strangers so that when we actually go out to interview people, it won’t be as challenging .

2. One of the main tips that my partner and I used was to “go with the flow”. This allows us to actually have a conversation with the individual we were interviewing rather than just asking questions back to back to back. We also used the story telling skill which worked perfectly because the lady we interviewed opened up to us simply because we gave her the chance to tell her story. We were able to get so much more information about her and about her thoughts of health care at the University.

The Fours: https://padlet.com/yazmeenlove/fours

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Strangers are interesting. I think their role is to just be the wider community. They are, what my track coach used to call them, gen pop or the general population. They have concerns and ideas that us as a class, a group of undergraduates at the University of Maryland mostly focused on health sciences, may not have in our own lives or think of. Talking to strangers at UMD is also good practice for easing into the idea of talking to strangers in the wider community in the future.

Hehe the more to explore had soem interesting reads.

TEAM PADLET:
GROUP I FOR THE WIN
https://padlet.com/612miha/teamiHLSA484

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~ In the design thinking process strangers play a major role. To me, design thinking involves innovation that is out of the box and applicable to a lot of people. This is where strangers come into play because when we are coming up with new designs, we do not know who can benefit from our ideas and we have not met the people that we could be helping. This is exactly why we were sent out to talk to strangers. It is important to be able to learn how to efficiently gather insight on a person and their perspectives in a limited amount of time because in reality we do not always get a chance to meet and know everything about a person. Therefore, it is crucial to understand how to approach someone even if it feels awkward and learn something from them because the strangers out there are who we design for.

~ TEAM TIE DYE!! (padlet post to come soon!)

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I think that the roll strangers play in the design thinking process is bringing in new and surprising ideas. Going up to a classmate, or someone that we know well could result in us having a general feeling of what they are going to say, and it would not be as interesting of a conversation. With design thinking it seems as though the more “out there” and different ideas are, the better the result. I think we were sent out to talk to strangers to one - get used to the interviewing process, and two - to hear answers that we would not have thought about ourselves. Getting different perspectives and finding a way to cater to everyone’s problems and needs is what research is all about. Strangers bring that perspective that is needed.
Team Tye Dye padlet page coming soon to a computer near you

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In the design thinking process, strangers allow us to expand on what we already know and develop new ideas also. Interacting with strangers takes us out of comfort zone for one, and it also influences how we interact with people especially for the upcoming interviews. Moreover it allows us to understand other perspectives about different things which can influence how we think.

Team I
https://padlet.com/612miha/teamiHLSA484

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I think talking to strangers was great idea because people have a different way of looking at the same situation. They help us out to think out outside the box by identifying new solutions to the problems we are facing through out the process. The from there we can start to look for alternative ways of viewing the problem, and this can help us to speak to strangers.

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I think strangers play an important role in the design thinking process due to the fact that they may have different perspectives, backgrounds, higher levels of knowledge, different socioeconomic status and different outlooks on life than you might have. The strangers we interact with aren't in our familiar circles which means they may think in an entirely different way than we do. This interaction may provide a fresh approach to a problem we might be trying to solve or be the stem for new and unique ideas.  I felt the purpose of us interviewing strangers was to think outside the box we create for ourselves, gain confidence and to get comfortable talking/getting information from people we don't know.

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In the design thinking process, strangers are important because they can offer different perspectives. Whether that's from someone who is working on the project from another angle or someone who will be directly impacted from the project, their input is valuable to the process. When we’re speaking with community members to gain empathy, they’ll be strangers. I think that the strangers in this particular assignment were important to help us gain confidence speaking with strangers for when we do so later on. Later on in class, I know that we'll be speaking with members of the community about the clinic and those individuals will be strangers to us. Now that we'll have prior experience approaching and interviewing strangers, we will be better able to do so when it really matters.

Team Tie Dye paglet page https://padlet.com/jcoltran/5hfm11pbyk8

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I think strangers play a very important role in the design process. They allow us the opportunity to investigate new perspectives. These new perspectives are based on experiences that may be completely different than that of our own and thus allow us a better understanding of the interview topic. I believe the purpose of sending us out to talk to strangers was to allow us to get more comfortable with interviewing people that we do not know, aka strangers. This is an important skill as we will be learning how to fit the community’s needs. If we are unable to talk to the community, we will never be able to build what it needs.

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I think strangers play a very important role in the design process. They allow us the opportunity to investigate new perspectives. These new perspectives are based on experiences that may be completely different than that of our own and thus allow us a better understanding of the interview topic. I believe the purpose of sending us out to talk to strangers was to allow us to get more comfortable with interviewing people that we do not know, aka strangers. This is an important skill as we will be learning how to fit the community’s needs. If we are unable to talk to the community, we will never be able to build what it needs.

https://padlet.com/surayyah_khan/jir3y7po1bnp

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Strangers play a crucial role in the design thinking process. No matter what your'e creating or innovating, the end goal is that your product will have an effect on others that you don't know. When designing things you must understand the life of your potential user to make sure your product is effective and accessible to them.  You've instructed us to engage with strangers because the first step in the design process is to empathize.   Our activities last Friday will help us ease into this step so we can interview students to better understand their ideas and health needs.

Team Tie Dye padlet -
https://padlet.com/jcoltran/5hfm11pbyk8

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Strangers are a very important component in the design processes because they can lead you, the interviewer, to new ideas. Strangers are often unaware of the message you are trying to communicate with them, meaning they might have questions about the topic you are questioning them about. Their answers will also often, lead you to ask more probing questions. While I was not there on Friday, sending us out to interview others would force us to practice engaging with strangers as well as asking them questions about themselves.
https://padlet.com/arypapadopoulos1/kvtoukg2elpg

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1.)  Without a doubt, strangers play a critical role in the design process for many reasons. First, strangers are essentially the consumers that many innovators are targeting their designs/creations/inventions/ policies for. So in theory, strangers play the role of consumer. But also strangers play another critical role in providing their input for research, brainstorming, development, and/or marketing of a specific innovation. In fact, strangers provide great feedback because they may have a diverse background and unique experiences that may help those that are innovating combat design constraints. I personally believe that we were sent out to talk to strangers for a couple of reasons. First, I believe this exercise was utilized by the professors because it would help us get out of our comfort zone and practice approaching random people. Second, I believe that design thinking as a process in general requires one to step out of their shell/comfort zone and interact with all types of people to gather ideas in order to further improve whatever they are trying to. Third, I believe we were sent out to talk to strangers in order to hone and tune our question asking abilities, as well as converse more smoothly in a less awkward manner. In addition, I believe making us talk to strangers also allowed us to learn how to approach our audience with proper mannerism, as well as empathize with them.

2.)  An interviewing tip that I found helpful was to “Go With the Flow”. I found that not sticking to a script, but rather just having conversation flow between my partner, our interviewee, and myself made the conversation less painful and awkward, as well as more entertaining.

3.) TEAM PADLET:
GROUP I FOR THE WIN
https://padlet.com/612miha/teamiHLSA484

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I believe strangers play an important role in design thinking process because strangers offer their ideas and opinions in order to solve something we are trying to inquiry about. Interacting with different strangers help us gain an insight of each individuals backgrounds and their stories. I believe this helps us build confidence in the design thinking world since we are going out of our own comfort zones to talk to someone we have never spoken to before.

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Reflect on today's synthesis (define) + ideation (brainstorming) team work:

1. We did a lot today: What happened? What went well for you? What did you struggle with?

2. Add photos, notes, and artifacts to your team's Padlet workspace.

3. Check out the More to Explore page for the brainstorming rules, idea selection tips, articles, and photos from today's class.

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Reflect on today's "Talking to Strangers" Audio exercise.

1. What role do you think strangers play in the design thinking process? Why did we send you out to talk to strangers?

2. Check out the More to Explore page for interview tips, articles, and photos from today's class.

3. Create a team Padlet page where your team can dump all of your data (notes (even photos of notes is fine), videos, photos, etc.). Post the link and your team name, here.

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1. In todays class, we took all of the interviews that each team members conducted, and chose one that we thought would be best to work with. From there we started explaining who the interviewee was, something that took us by surprise about the individual, and conclusions we could draw about the individual based on that surprising fact. Then, we started brainstorming solutions to the issue/ problem that the interviewee was facing. We then took an extra step and created 4 different HMW brainstorming ideas for the interviewee . What went well for us was listening to everyones idea as a team, what I struggled with was tying too hard to "think outside the box."

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-In class we continued thinking through the design thinking process. As a group we were able to select a stranger from the interviews based on who seemed the most interesting. As a group we came up with ideas of how we can address the problem of our person.
- We were able to generate a lot of ideas and work well together as a group
- I struggled with coming up with 'innovations". But everything takes time .
hg

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Last class, my team and I were able to go through the design thinking process to better create solution for one of my  interviewees. It was a really interesting process because after conducting the interview, I realized that I wished I had asked some more question during the interview to open my person up even more to fill in some of ambiguous sections of process.

Checkout my video:

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~ In class we broke down the interviews we had. We started off by picking just two of them and narrowing that down to one to really brainstorm with. Our group selected the one person who seemed to be more representative of the UMD population and had a few good stories to share. I really liked the process of brainstorming since it was fun to throw ideas out there without judgment. Also, having at least a million dollars definitely facilitated more ideas. It was really difficult to even pick a person to begin with but also coming up with three different statements was tough. Two of them were practically the same because they were about motivating someone to go to the health center and about gaining confidence in the health center. A lot of the ideas overlapped. However, it was interesting to see all the ideas we could come up with by trying to get in the minds of college students and seeing how we could make the health center feel like a rage.

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In todays class we essentially went over the interviews that we had previously conducted, and found one to focus on. In our groups we brainstormed problems and solutions and found ways to "solve" the problem that our interviewed subject had regarding the health center. Using design thinking we came up with dozens of ideas (most of which probably aren't possible ie. putting a bar on top of the health center). In all honestly I think our group did a great job with coming up with ideas that were outside of the box, and we definitely had no issues finding quirky things to present as solutions. I think what we struggled with was actually coming up with plausible options to help out our selected human with his health center dilemmas.

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1.)   In class, our group dissected and organized all of our interviews that we conducted outside of class. This was by far the most challenging class that we’ve had so far. Honestly, wish that I could alter and re-ask some of the questions during the interview. It was also really challenging trying to come up with possible solutions for our interviewees. Many of the solutions either seemed really “out of the box” and other solutions seemed kind of harsh. Yet, we did generate a lot of ideas, but none of them seemed to be a “light bulb” idea. In fact, I struggled with trying to come up with “innovations”. That aspect was really challenging because we were under such a time crunch that I couldn’t formulate quality ideas that fast. Nevertheless, my group members and I were able to brainstorm a variety of ideas. I think it is going to get much more challenging as we try to focus on how to implement some of our solutions in a realistic manner.

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We each shared a bit about our various interviews that took place last week. We then choose to focus on two of the interviews, shared things we were surprised to learn, and tried to make inferences/conclusions based on the interviews. It was a bit hard for me to make inferences about people’s lives, especially concerning their health practices, based on the little information gathered in the interview. Ultimately, brainstorming ways to help our interviewee with her issue went very well, as we were able to come up with several ideas.

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In class, we shared our data to each other. We all listened and were interested in the experiences our other teammates. Organizing our ideas was good because we came up with some really cool ideas. I struggled in developing a something that would engage the person we are trying to help, yet still having it be something that was addressing the issue of the person feeling like they didn't have access.

What worked best for my team, was meeting during the week to refine the project details. We came up with some really interesting ways to address the issue of Alex feeling like he was not able to go to the Health Center.

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We were able to work together to trouble shoot and come up with a solution to remedy our interviewee's health concerns. We decided to help Alex and educate him about his options at the health center since he wasn't even aware that using the center was an option for him.  Brainstorming ways to help Alex utilize the health center was easy. We had a lot of ideas to choose from but we struggled in terms of making learning about the health center enjoyable. Finding ways to make talking about insurance and flu shots was difficult but our team was able to brainstorm ideas that we believe will be engaging and educational at the same time.

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In class, we decided to look over all the interviews each team had and chose which one is the best fit. I struggled with choosing which interview was the best for my team to decide on because the questions we asked were not a lot that we could fall back on in class. Also, it was very hard to brainstorm possible solutions for the interviewee in his mark to have a better health status for himself. The solutions we came up with were okay answers, but nothing really stood out as a great idea the interviewee would have love to hear. He could assume what he did wrong that lead to his poor health choices with his broken leg. What went really great for us as a group is we never once told each other our ideas were terrible nor would we talk over one another. We all had a group mutual respect for each other to conduct each interview and support each other.

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I definitely struggled with staying active within a group setting. It's like I know how to build off the ideas of others but sometimes I can't keep up fast enough to pull out my own idea, and if I do, I end up missing what the group was saying. Other than that I thought this was a great process to develop a goal and then several plans to achieve that goal (no matter how wild)

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Reflect on today's prototyping + testing process.

1. We did a lot today: What happened? What went well for you? What did you struggle with?

2. What do you think is the value of prototyping and testing in this process?

3. Add photos, notes, and artifacts to your team's Padlet workspace.

4. Check out the More to Explore page.

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We spent this week brainstorming ways to helps students lead and live healthiet physical and mental lives. It was really interesting how comfortable my group mate and I became after bouncing 2-3 ideas lff of each other. After that it felt like an open and inviting atmosphere and we continued to discuss many ways to try and solve our issue with fluidity and ease.

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1. Today we focused on bringing our brainstorming idea to life by making it into to prototype. What went well was being able to listen to everyones idea and work together as a group in order to figure out what the prototype was going to be. What we struggled with was actually trying to put the entire prototype together so that each part of our idea would be met.
2. The value of prototyping and testing enables one to see the flaws in their idea that they would not have seen themselves. Being able to prototype and test allows one to visualize what went well and what did not in order to better improve the idea and the prototype.

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~ We dedicated the class period to constructing our prototypes for our HMW statement. Our group worked to construct a life-sized rooftop happy hour health center to get people to feel more positively about their experiences. What worked was that we were able to work together to create this absolutely ridiculous vision. This experience was a lot of fun because personally I love doing crafts and picturing my vision. We struggled trying to get our life size model "to go." Even though we were told this needed to be portable, we thought that meant in the room and not actually downstairs or anywhere else. Also it was really awkward walking around with all these random supplies! It was also strange trying to get someone to test out our prototype. It was difficult because we didn't know exactly how our scene would play out so we did not even know how we were supposed to act or how our tester should respond.

~ The value of prototype testing is getting a second opinion. Sometimes a stranger can tell you exactly what you need to know; even though this may not be what you want to hear, it is valuable insight that others may think as well. In our case, it probable costed $1 to make our entire set up and prototype; being able to test this out also was not too tedious of a process, so this is definitely worth it to see how an idea would play out in reality.

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1. We did a lot today: What
I struggled heavily with trying to communicate my prototype idea with a stranger on Mckeldin. This was result that my group and I tended to focus on one aspect of the event that we wanted to have instead of the bigger picture idea. This made it a lot more difficult for the stranger to fully understand the meaning and purpose of the event.

2. It allowed me to put my conceptual idea to reality. Developing the prototype t also allowed us to test out the feasibility of the product to see if tests subjects could actually use it. When we went to go test it out in the field we realize that the straps were too small so we would have to increase the rise of the bands.

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Today we focused on bringing our brainstorming ideas and making something real out of it. Coming into class I thought we were going to do the logical idea, such educating on benefits of sleep. We did the most unrealistic thing possible with a machine that basically puts information into your head. This was extremely better than developing a regular education course, that would have just got me bored. The whole project went well because we were about to be creative and have fun while making out machine. The process of making our idea was good and went well, what we struggled on came when we had to find people to actually test our ideas. The people were discouraged because of how weird they would look in public but once we found cool people it was all fine.

Prototyping value comes in the form of just thinking of an idea and making something real out of it. Its the first step and we know it isn’t going to be perfect. The first iPhone had a prototype and wasn’t perfect but look at the new iPhone X. That is where testing comes in, where we try the prototype out and observe the flaws and advantages. Testing brings value because through test we can better our prototype, making it better than what it was before. We test go back to the drawing board and it will better.

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-In class we worked to create a prototype of our idea. We were able to convey our idea using the tools provided somewhat. On the bright side we were able to narrow down on an idea. We did struggle with making it a life-size prototype. Our idea was easier to imagine than to produce a prototype and we had to recreate the image during our set of interviews this week. Getting all of our ideas onto the prototype was difficult.
-Protyping is important tool because it gives you an idea of whether your design will actually work, to an extent. It also allows you to rethink things and to also find things that need to be worked on before actually finalizing the design.

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1. In class last Friday we turned our idea into a prototype in order to test it out on strangers. I think our group did well with making a prototype to exhibit our idea

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As a group we brain storm idea then make it into prototype. What actually went well for us we were able to work as a team to come up with our prototype. We had a disagreement on what was going to be our prototype.
Prototype allows us to bring ideas to the group then we can better understand them and share with others. Prototype can tell a story for example we did our prototype in the form of storyboard it helps us to think about our ideas throughout the day put our ideas in a story.

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1.     Today we figured out which idea we wanted to follow through with to help Brianna with her lack of sleep. At first, we struggled with picking a single idea to continue with, but then we all became in favor of one idea. We decided to invent an information scanning system, that scans the information in a textbook and puts it into the brain. Creating our prototype went well and testing it on students in ESJ allowed to get meaningful feedback on our invention.

2.     Prototyping and testing our invention is very valuable. By creating the prototype we are able to see some to extent the feasibility of our invention. Testing it out on others gives us feedback that can cause us to think of factors that we hadn’t previously. Hearing positive and negative feedback from potential users helps us to better create the invention, to suit them.

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1.) Last class, our group worked on trying to come up with a prototype that would allow us to test our ideas and designs. During our past interviews with strangers around campus, our group found out that the majority of our University constituents did not like to go to the University Health Center when faced with a medical issue, no matter how simple or complex the issue was. When asked why, we received two main responses: (1) It’s too expensive and (2) The health center is too outdated and ugly. In order to solve these issues, part of our idea was to create a brand new medical facility that was not only architecturally modern and aesthetically attractive, but also a state of the art, full service treatment center that was self-sufficient (i.e., a green facility). We wanted to create a health center that primarily focused on being a “healing environment” that takes into account all aspects of medical environment, treatment, and cost into consideration in order to make their patients healthier and happier. In addition, since the majority of our interviewees said that it was too expensive to visit the health center, our group decided to try an innovative approach that would allow prospective patients to trade a service (i.e., barter) for the healthcare services that they were in need of. However, prototyping these solutions was very difficult. First, how is it possible to prototype a state-of-the-art medical facility? That was our biggest challenge, and we struggled with trying to paint a picture of the most impressive medical center because we relied heavily on the imagination of those that we were testing our prototype on. Yet, we really received great feedback and ideas with regards to bartering for medical services. Even so, we struggled with what specific services that a patient could exchange with the University Health Center for medical treatment because the type of jobs/services that one could perform for the health center/University is still obscure.

2.) Simply stated, the value prototyping and testing is gathering a variety of second opinions, and testing the feasibility of the idea. With respect to the barter for healthcare services, our group got a lot of great feedback that allowed us to alter and tune this idea. Without prototyping and testing this idea of bartering for healthcare, our idea would have been one-dimensional, limited, and inadequate to handle the “too expensive to seek treatment” solution that we were getting from our initial interviewees.

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1) In class, we designed and built a prototype of our idea to make the health center more engaging and fun for the community. Specifically, "HMW make going to the health center more like going to a ranger?" Our idea was to implement a rooftop happy hour at the health center, with games and discounts for patients. It was fun to do and the aspect of fun definitely went well with acting out the prototype. We struggled with making our prototype clear to the people we tested the prototype with, but that improved significantly as we improved our prototype after each test.
2) it was very valuable to have feedback from people who were not part of our group or our class, because they were able to see our test with fresh eyes and give us good ideas about how to improve our prototype. Since these were individuals who would be our target population (students who may not like going to the health center, or who may prefer it to be a more enjoyable experience), it was beneficial to get their feedback. We were able to better see where improvements were needed, and then rest those improvements on other individuals.

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1. Our team worked well together on our class activities. Our team demonstrated the ability to distribute the work especially when it came to building the prototypes and we were able to come up with a lot of different ideas and scenarios for our prototype as everyone in the group had a different perspective. While our team worked well, I felt a difficulty we had was presenting our prototype. It took confidence to approach strangers with our  prototype, especially when the prototypes were made so quickly and aren’t as realistic as we’d hoped due to the time constraint. I think it was a good learning experience though as we were forced to work with what we had and needed to voice our ideas more in order to get our thoughts across.

2. I think prototyping and testing is extremely important in any process of invention. For our idea, it really made us realize what we needed for our idea to be realistic and showed us if there was anything missing from our initial plan. The fact that we showed our prototype to UMD students, who were our target population as well as specifically commuters (we were able to converse with non-commuters as well) proved valuable as they were able to provide their input on what they felt was lacking.

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-On Friday, my team developed a prototype of a Virtual Reality headset. The idea and concept were great but the implementation of the idea did not go over smoothly. When we went out to test the prototype, we saw that we had to repeatedly repeat the concept of what we were trying to achieve and how our "Virtual Reality" headset fit into that. Our goal is to educate students at UMD about the various resources the health center has to offer and show students how they can benefit from them. To do this we designed a Health Center Showcase that would include a "Virtual Reality" interactive game, yet our prototype was only one aspect and was not able to achieve our goal.

- Prototypes can show what does and does not work. By seeing the good and the bad of the prototype, we are able to continuously develop a product that can can eventually be developed into something that will help us achieve our goals to the maximum.

Since our prototype did not go well the first time, we  were able to see the good parts and bad parts of our ideas. We decided to try a different approach and design the entire health center showcase.

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I think our biggest struggle with prototyping last Friday was that we weren't quite sure how to put our idea into an actual prototype. Our idea is to have a health showcase on the mall where all the different services in the Health Center (nutrition services, massage services, etc.) come out to the mall and have interactive booths for students to learn about all the things the Health Center does. The main attraction would be a VR simulation that walks users through  the Health Center. We tried to create a basic prototype of the VR set, but when we interviewed someone, we realized we needed to have a core component that was missing: what they would actually be seeing in the VR set. Another issue we ran into was we had focused so much on the VR set that we hadn't thought about how to represent the other booths at the showcase.
I think one of the things that went well was when we did the scenario within our own group. It brought some smaller details to our attention, like if students should receive a map as they were walking in. That map ended up being a key idea that helped us get some really helpful feedback this week during our interviews.

2. The value of prototyping is being able to get feedback from users before you spend too much money and time on the idea. Getting feedback early on allows you to quickly modify your product or service so it can better suit users' needs.

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~Today in class, we had to bring our prototype to life by choosing our best idea. Our idea is really great but making it come to life was really hard since we could not create a physical health center to show to individuals whom we came across. Our vision was to create a health center with a privacy glass wall that separates each student when they pick up their medicine or either talk to the front desk receptionist to check in for an appointment. The goal of this is to prevent anyone from hearing what you are coming into the health center for. Also, we plan to create a job where students who having co-pay can work at the health center filling papers or helping around the center to be able to pay off the payment. What went really well was the teamwork in my group. Each one of us were explaining to each person we came across our idea, but when one of the individuals did not understand the concept of the idea, another one of my group members would come in and provide more of a background behind it for them to understand more.
~The value with prototyping and testing is extremely important when implementing your innovation idea. Prototyping gives you the hands on experience to create your idea and bring it to life to show to others around you. Testing is also valuable because you are able to receive feedback from others on how to improve your prototype.

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This week we got the chance to build prototypes of our ideas and test them on UMD students. My favorite part of the process was brainstorming how we were going to build the prototype. It was great seeing everyone come up with drastically different ideas and working to combine them in our prototype. The most difficult part of the process was trying to find a design to convey our idea in a physical prototype. Since our solution involved virtual reality, going out and testing out prototype was mainly getting our users to use their imagination so there weren't many

I think that value of the prototyping and testing is being able to test your  idea in the real world in order to get feedback on it then using this feedback to improve our design.  Presenting our prototype to strangers and possible users brings up flaws that we could've over looked in our project and helps us fix them.

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Today we created a prototype that resembled our idea for a rooftop health care happy hour. I think our initial idea went pretty well and creating the whole prototype was fun and looked a lot like what it was supposed to. We then went into the “real world” to test the prototype out on people which is what we struggled with. Its is ever so slightly difficult to create a rooftop with cardboard, and walking people through something that is more of an experience than a physical thing is a difficult task.

The value of prototyping and testing in this process is definitely important in the way that our ideas and drawings of a design can sometimes be very distant and difficult to translate into the world in which the product will be used. By creating a prototype, we make it possible to sit down with a real version of our idea and figure out which aspects are worthwhile and which parts need to be revised or discarded. it is also far easier to sell to potential customers when they have a prototype. The user can give feedback when they can see what we are trying to sell them on rather than just telling them an idea and hoping for the best.

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We prototyped our project last week and it was very difficult to actually implement the idea we had into a physical prototype. It was interesting to work with my team in coming up with creative new ideas to face this task with. We ended up testing a prototype and getting actually valuable feedback from people.

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Reflect on today's process throw-down/showdown, yoga session, and DP3 (Mona Center) project launch.

1. What (if anything) does yoga have to do with this course? The project(s)? Design thinking?

2. On your own: In your journal, jot down your observations relating to working with a creative team. What worked? What could you try for next time?

3. On your own: In your journal, jot down potential interview questions for the upcoming site visit. Consider the stakeholders you might encounter as well as what you learned about interviewing. For a refresher, check out Week 3 on the More to Explore page.

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1. What I personally believe makes yoga very relevant to this class is the fact that yoga helps one clear his/her mind. Design thinking can be a very challenging and frustrating process however, incorporating the skills learned from yoga will allow one to simply take deep breaths, slowly count to three, and realize that everything is going to be alright. Yoga will enable one to stay calm during a design thinking process.

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~ Yoga certainly has to do with this course and all daily activity in general. Specifically, with this course, when we are planning and working through the steps of the design process it is easy to get frustrated if something doesn't work. Taking the time to step back a little and breath helps us clear our minds and maybe even come up with a brand new idea with a new perspective. I think our yoga session was definitely a contrast from our showdown throwdown! When we first arrived we were all excited and cheering our teams on and getting competitive with each other. However, when we did yoga we focused on ourselves and remaining calm. I really appreciated having the opportunity to release everything from before and have a fresh mind for DP3. I am really excited for our new design project because this involves the Mona Center! I am so upset I will be missing our first trip and cannot wait to hear everyone's experiences.

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Yoga is related to the course in the sense that it allows you to relax, think, and breathe. In the design thinking process it is easy to get overwhelmed which is why it is important to step back, reflect, breathe. This will give you a fresh perspective and positively influence the outcome of your project.

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Yoga is definitely relevant to this course, the project(s) that we're involved in, and design thinking. Personally speaking, yoga can inspire one and cause the "creative juices to flow". Similarly, design planning is a complicated process that requires one to really work in unison with their respective team. I believe that doing yoga exercises together really bonds a team together. There is no question that design thinking (and this course) in general can be an exhaustive process that drains one mentally and physically. I believe that doing yoga helps to refresh ones mind and re-energize their body as well. I believe that the yoga exercises conducted last Friday will help revitalize us (both mentally and physically) as we prepare for Design Project 3. I will definitely be incorporating some of the breathing exercises we've learned in class throughout my lifetime.

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Yoga helps clear a person's mind and basically gives everyone a second. This exercies purpose is also to breath correctly consistently to relax even more. This can be related to our class because the design thinking process is a long process that can go on for a very long time, and we all need a second to breath and clear our minds. Stressed work isn't your best work. Just breathing in deeply can go a long way. Great creations come from fresh minds and we all can use this yoga technique to succeed.