This go around, I felt very confident about the whole Define phase. It’s a fundamental part of Design Thinking that I’m happy I’m getting to know more about both in and out of the classroom. Part of this confidence has come, I believe, from practice, but a large amount of it has come from the group I’m working with. We’ve been organized and have really stressed working together and trusting the process. The group work has come easily and it’s made it easier to really delve into the how and why we are defining the problem.
My favorite part of the whole experience was coming up with the HMW statements. Doing the LP analysis beforehand made it really simple to see which categories would be the best to really sort of focus in on, similarly to how a journey map highlighting pain points would help one focus in. Limiting our focus to three LP categories helped immensely I think at coming up with HMW statements that were specific enough but that would leave plenty of room for brainstorming. We converged on two, distinct statements, and I’m proud and happy with what my group came up with; I can honestly say that I don’t have a “favorite” problem and that I’m just excited to see what ideas come out of all this because the foundation we’re building from has been solid.
Post-definition, I feel very optimistic about how ideation is going to go. I’m writing this post a bit late (oops) so I have a bit of insight already as to how ideation is going, and I’m curious as to how my group can (or should) incorporate our persona. Cross-country Karen is a nice representation of the pains and gains of Delta’s general users, and is not super sustainability focused for a reason: it’s important to see where the intersection of desirability and sustainability lies for this class, and I think our persona and HMW statements are setting us up well to find out where the intersection lies.