This past week in class we participated in a three hour design thinking simulation called Design Thinker. Now, since everyone else is writing about it too, I wont go into much detail and just share my feelings on the experience. As I am a fan of good news first, I will start with The Great:
The Great
1) It was fantastic to break down what design thinking is into little morsels that fit into a bigger picture, it gave a great big picture of what design thinking is and the process we are all engaging in as part of d-studio.
2) It was great to work with a team (woohoo Team Fabulous!) and compete against other teams (this is probably my competitive side that really only emerges during boardgames talking). While design thinking isn’t really a competition, it gave us the ability to quickly see if what we were working on was effective compared to what others in the class were doing.
3) It was fun. It allowed us to put all our design thinking skills we have amassed so far into a little project that moved quickly and let us know if we were succeeding at the process, without losing grades, or getting caught up in a massive project.
4) I finally felt a more firm grasp on what we are learning in the course. I was able to take the skills I practiced during Design Thinker and easily apply them to our third assignment, which I thought was really great.
The Okay
1) It was nice that it was only three-ish hours, but even that seemed a little long near the end. Especially since there was a lot of time dealing with introduction concepts we had covered in class.
2) For something that encourages creative thought, it certainly pigeonholed you in terms of how that creative process occurs. Normally, this would have really bothered me, but since it was overall a good teaching tool to grasp design thinking, I was willing to pretty much overlook this short sight.
The Ugly-ish
1) I did not at all think the first hour was structured well. It had way too many discussion points and intro. concepts, and not enough necessary content. It felt like we spent a really long time discussing views on information that they probably could have just handed us off the bat.
2) I noticed people getting pretty tired and start to disengage with proceess (myself included), as it ran on for quite a while without a break. If this is done in d-studio again, it think it would have been better to just add a little time to class and have everyone know in advance, so that there is time to go through the whole thing properly, with breaks.
All in all, I thought Designer Thinker was a really fun, efficent way to look at the whole process of design thinking. I think it would be a great tool for any group about to embark on a large project, or for any student or faculty to experience during their time at UBC, as there are a lot of great takeaways!