Design Challenge III - Final Performance and Final Thoughts

The Final Week and Workshop of Design Challenge III.
Compared to Design Challenge II, Design Challenge III was a lot more easy going. Instead of repeating another cycle of the Design thinking process, we merely continued improving our role play and putting the poster together

With the poster and the role play finalized and cemented, we requested every team member perform rehearsals of their performance for the workshop.
On the day of the workshop, the group had fun presenting and we obtained positive feedback for our performance. The group ended on a happy note.

Overall, In Design Challenge III, we were more focused on the role play than the solution and didn't rapid prototype and simply (in the end) combined our ideas together to create an overall giant solution. We lacked interviewing members for their opinion (Further Empathizing) and lacked further ideation. Again, we were caught working towards a solution.

Nonetheless, despite the lack of true design thinkers. The group, while the most incidents, was also one of the most fun groups where we all struggled on the back foot and the start and were caught during the rehearsals, but managed to pull it together with everyone assisting each other and helping each other pull their bits together (including scripts) to achieve the shared goal of a 6. I could've been a better team member this design challenge by implementing a similar tactic to Design Challenge 2 where we added 2nd team meetings. But due to the lack of people appearing for team meetings I was less inclined to do so. I could've tried harder to make sure the members appeared for team meetings or reschedule it if they always seemed to have something on to make the team and our final performance more productive.

Design Challenge III - The Great Rehearsal

This week, we had compiled our interviews from the "Empathize" design thinking mode and it had luckily related to our "Problem Definition" and ideas.
We were all already in the middle of the prototyping stage from last week and were able to complete it easily (Our various sketches and solutions to our problem).

 This meant putting together our solution and our role play ready for the rehearsal on the workshop.
While we realized the next workshop was a rehearsal, we did not know what to expect - nor properly understand what the roles of the narrator and problem definer were really meant to do. This was especially because we had an extra member of our team which meant we were unsure to have more stakeholders or split the problem definition and the solution to 2 different people.
However on the day of the workshop - ("Testing" Design Thinking Mode), we found we were supposed to produce the poster (which we haven't put together) and produce the full role play for the workshop. While we were supposed to go first, we had weaseled out and allowed another group to perform first. This allowed us to see an example of the role play we were to perform and understand the roles better.
Upon this discovery, a last second change was made (right before we went up) where I was to become a stakeholder from the student's perspective.
 The role-play went well except for some last second shuffling by the team which could have gone a lot better, but the feedback received assisted us in improving our role play for the actual performance.

Overall, this week, again we had a couple of problems. We could've been a lot better organized for the role play if we had properly asked and understood the task beforehand, rehearsed and organize scripts (My own role was speaking out of my own experience with O-Week with a couple points from the interview). If I had assisted my team in that area and helped one of our team members (he was absent for team meeting again due to job interview) to catch up to speed, it would have reduced a lot of hassle.

Design Challenge III - Here we go Again!

The third Design Challenge is underway, with the Team entering the "Ideation" design thinking mode, we had collaborated and discussed potential problems and solutions.
Sadly, our team meeting was missing a member for unknown reasons and we couldn't decide on a solution or the problem (as each one had a different opinion). As such, we re-entered the "Define" thinking mode and upon further reading the task sheet, we were reminded that we were supposed to role play and represent various members of the stakeholders.
This allowed us to narrow down the problems to the single which we thought would be the easiest to portray

• O-Week is clumped and too messy

With the problem re-defined from multiple problems to a single problem, we re-entered the "Ideation" design thinking mode and came up with several solutions including:

• Organizing O-Week (Separating it by category)
• A QUT O-Week Application
• Brochures (Maps) that are given out at all entrances

We decided to try the simplest of them all and simply organize O-Week. At which, we all agreed and began thinking of different ways to do it.

As we entered the workshop for the week, we were told we had to interview all stakeholders to "empathize" with their various viewpoints of O-Week in our particular problem. Considering we had already begun/finished our Prototyping phase we were fairly worried but not too overly concerned. As the week closed, we all split up to interview our various different Stakeholders. I was assigned to interview the QUT Success program on their advice on their O-Week experience

Overall, there were a few mishaps this week, the team member's absence was a great disturbance (although it probably worked our for the best) as well as during the workshop, we gained an extra member. This meant we had 1 more member than every other group. Aside from that, we all worked well and help both members get up to speed easily. I could've been a better team member by reading the task sheet and understanding the task clearer allowing us to finish interviewing the stakeholders without being reminded. This would have allowed us to construct our Design Challenge in a more productive manner.

I

Design Challenge II/III - The End and New Beginnnings

The end of Design Challenge II came as the final pitch was presented.

 Overall, the group was happy with our various performances, and we ended up all celebrating after the final pitch. The feedback received (after the pitch) was a great encouragement and are thankful that it is finally over.

Replacing it is Design Challenge III - Improving Orientation Week

 The new team formed under people who shared interest in doing the same task seemed dedicated and focused. We needed to create a solution to improve the university's orientation week. So we began by empathizing with the users by identifying the various stakeholders and how they viewed orientation day. Then we began to define the various issues with orientation day using those stakeholder's point of view and continued ideating ideas and problems. Thus during the time in the workshop, we had both accomplished initial "Empathizing" and "Defining" of the problems of our final Design Challenge.

We asked all team members to ideate several new ideas and problems for the team meeting that was coming, and overall we came to several agreed-upon ideas:

• The Pre-Orientation was not well enough advertised. With Orientation Day's "lecture" being on how to enrol in your course, many students would have found it more useful to go to Pre-Orientation if they knew about it
• The Orientation Week was too clustered and was not organized. 
• A Easily Obtainable and Accessible Brochure with the location of each individual stall was not available and needed to be available

Using those Problem Definitions, our group entered the "Ideation" design thinking mode and started to ideate ideas for our various problems.

Overall, our team was off to a good start with several good, but easy-to implement ideas coming into play. I believe I have performed well in the first week, with the organizing of the first team meeting (place, time and ensuring members got there). The team worked well and everyone respected each other's ideas no matter how stupid or silly it sounded. (Renting the Botanical Gardens to expand the area and decrease clustering). 

Design Challenge II - Week 4

This is Week 4 of the Design Challenge II - The Mobile App

With the holidays over, the group decided to finalize the Final Prototypes to be used in the speech.

The former prototype led to interviews with several people and obtaining user feedback to further improve our application. We entered the "Show, Don't Tell", "Experiment" and "Empathy" Design Thinking Mindsets to further our design. We went through the "Empathizing", "Prototype" and "Test" Design thinking modes all in the week due to time constraints we weren't really prepared for.
We thus went through several interviews and improved the application a little bit at the time -
Some of these changes included:

• Changing the Categories Button
• Improving the Overall Anesthetic
• Adding a Booking Feature
• Adding Hallal and other religious food search options

Changing our application based on the user feedback allowed us to empathize with users and consider problems we did not consider when first creating the application. The opinions from the surveys also made us consider re-defining our target audience several times across the project as it expanded from a student focused application to an application to assist everybody in Australia.
Luckily most of these changes were minor and began to go into the "Ideating" Design thinking mode to create ways to implement the different feedback and changes so that the application would be ready for the final presentation.
This week was a rush, as stated before, with the screens needing to be finished for the final presentation along with a new script. We recreated the idea of 2nd Team meetings to assist in transitioning the changes and completing the task to all of our liking. We could and should've started over the holidays but the lack of doing so meant the environment that we worked in wasn't the best. I could've reminded the team to have done some stuff over the holidays but it all worked out as we finished it on the morning of that workshop.

Design Challenge II - Week 3

This is Week 3 of the Design Challenge II - The Mobile App

The week, just before the holidays, I turned out sick and reported it to the team members as per our previously announced, Team Compact.
It also meant it was my responsibility to read up and catch up to the work that was meant to be done that workshop/team meeting..
We had just finished prototyping and testing our low fidelity prototype with the workshop and gathered feedback from each of them. Which meant now we had to work on beginning the medium-high fidelity prototype with additional testing with our target audience.

Finishing the "Testing" phase of our Design Challenge, we had reverted back into the prototyping phase to make improvements on our current design. We were focused on improving the current design and working towards a solution. While this was not a correct application of "rapid prototyping", we felt obligated to do so due to the "time constraint" and the group not wanting to do anything over the holidays.
We assigned each individual team member roles with me in charge of putting all the portions together. Since I had to wait upon everyone's part and I was sick, all I did this week was interviewing several members of our target audience (friends) to finish off the Testing phase for our low fidelity prototype.

Overall, this week, I hindered the group slightly due to illness, however managed to finish the interviews and enter the holidays with the first "cycle" of the design thinking process completed. The team went well as we kept each other up to date with the various pieces of information, things we needed to do and the due dates even during the holidays (although nobody did anything). I could've been a better team member by being more able-bodied and attended the workshop so I could join with the competitor analysis however the team had decided that they will finish it themselves. With my assistance I believe the team would have been more productive and be a better environment.

Design Challenge II - Week 2

This is the Week 2 of the Design Challenge 2 - Mobile App.

This week, we are officially creating and refining the paper-prototypes for "Are You Hungry" and slotted them into a Powerpoint Presentation for a Presentation.
With the group's final application selection chosen to be the "Are Your Hungry" Application, we continued to "Prototype" design thinking mode to enter the "Test" Design Thinking mode. Using the "Collaboration" and "Mindfulness" design thinking mindsets, we created a powerpoint presentation with the low fidelity prototype we had done last week.
This Presentation is considered a low-medium fidelity prototype to be presented or tested so we can obtain feedback to improve the application.
This feedback obtained from the presentation will help us when we ideate ideas on how to improve our mobile application.

Paper-Prototyping

Prototype Slideshow in Development

This week was fairly uneventful as it was mainly tying up loose ends. We each had to do a portion of the powerpoint and was rushing to get it done so we could co-ordinate our scripts. To do this more efficient and effectively we had organized a 2nd group meeting on most weeks so that we could coordinate our scripts and portion at the same place and time. Overall this 2nd group meeting was an idea that assisted our team in being more productive in this stage of the Design Challenge and was beneficial. I could've rehearsed and organized the team to rehearse our speech several times before the main performance however.

Design Challenge Part II - The First Week

This week, we have moved on to Design Challenge II - A mobile phone application.

 We've formed new groups for this Design Challenge - based on our personalities measured by the MBTI Test and a survey to calculate our respective "de Bono Hat" color.
In the first week, we have found our new team to work quite well, with the "Blue Hat" or leader of the group keeping the discussions alive with regular additions from everyone. There hasn't been any issues as of early on, which is always a promising sign for the success of the Design Challenge ahead.

This week we've started quickly with the "Ideating" Design thinking mode. We had briefly read the assignment and considered to brainstorm various application ideas using the "collaboration" design thinking mindset. We also utilized the "Empathizing" design thinking mindset as we thought of what iPhone users want or need in an application.
We continued to ideate ideas until the next team meeting where we pooled our ideas of the mobile app together and voted democratically on the two application ideas we believe to have to most potential to be popular and fit best within the user community.

The two application ideas were

1. Are You Hungry? - A budget food location service
2. Quick Details - A more grouped-based Contact List

After we had ideated our 2 mobile application ideas, we entered the "Prototype" design thinking mindsets where we were supposed to construct several low-fidelity prototypes of our respective application. At the next workshop, we will test our ideas with each other and the co-ordinator to decide on the idea to move forward with.

This week, the team had worked well together with every member doing their share of the workload. Our group had lacked the ability to correctly utilize the "define" design thinking mode as we brainstormed our application idea as we simply decided to create any application that would fill any need. If I had properly reminded the group to define a problem and create application ideas around that problem, the application ideas would have been more focused and be overall more productive.

The Great Angry Birds Project

Welcome back to Picture Pad!

Today, I'm going to share my thoughts (and terrible drawings) on a university project recently completed - The Angry Birds Design Challenge.

The goal was to create a new unique level, with new birds, pigs and scenes. There was also a physical portion of the Challenge which was basically crafting a catapult.

This Design Challenge was done in groups of 7 and we decided to split up the tasks amongst the group. My task was the Traversal Manager - meaning I was the one in charge of maintaining sketches of the physical portion of the challenge.

We began utilizing the "empathy", "mindfulness" and "collaboration" design thinking mindsets to assist us in designing our respective birds/pig and scenes (based on how we split the task). Using these mindsets we entered the "Empathizing", "Defining" and "Ideating" design thinking modes to craft ideas.

Our group had previously decided to go for a Medieval theme and having studied immensely of mythological history (Western, Norse, Roman, Greek, etc.) I decided to craft 3 birds for the fun of it.

Across a wide array of birds and pigs, our group decided to select the Knight Bird (Ideated by Alan) and the Dragon Pig (ideated by Neddy) to create the classic story of the Knight vs the Dragon.

We were further required to ideate and construct powers for the Bird and Pigs using those design thinking mindsets and modes.

The Final product was something the group could collectively be proud of. When we added the falling stalactites and the Knight Bird's power to teleport and swing with his Iron Sword, we knew we had made an amazing product.

However, I was in managing and keeping the designs of the physical catapult as well as creating new designs. We went through many different prototypes and sketches - From Slingshot designs to catapults.

Using the "Show Don't Tell", "Experimentation" and "Collaboration" design thinking mindsets, I had initially created several designs for catapults in the ideation stage. This was done before I had empathized or defined with the group on what type of device we want. The designs were intricate with notes on functionality as well as a list of materials required to build it.
Then entering into the "Empathizing" phase of the Design Thinking Mode, the group was asked if they rather a catapult more focused on power (distance covered) or accuracy (for consistent shots). The group agreed on a focus on power with us agreeing, we would have time to practice so we could get consistent on our weapon.
As I had ideated several ideas before I empathized with the group, we had immediate ideas to try and test. Thus we entered the "Prototyping" design thinking mode.
Using the "Collaboration" and "Experimentation" design thinking mindsets, we tried all different types of catapults and slingshots that was ideated. In the "Prototype" and "Test" stage of the design thinking modes, we tested each based on the criteria - power and accuracy. Most of the designs we created and built utilized pure power and considering accuracy second upon reflection.

Our Final result, was a more advanced version of a catapult - more fitting to the Medieval design, with a lot of power and admittedly slightly less accuracy than what we expected. It was by far the most powerful design we created and thus we chose to use this design. As stated before, the catapult had slightly less accuracy compared to what we expected, but during testing we found we could consistently hit a certain spot. This meant we were confident in using the catapult as our final product.

This Design Challenge had several positives and negatives. Due to this being the first ever Design Challenge, we had jumped around the design thinking modes (Ideating before Empathizing and Defining) which was disruptive to our progress.
Our Group's application of Empathy was fairly poor, as we were mainly designing ideas that would please us and we thought were amazing ideas.
Our Group's ability in the "Define" stage of the design thinking modes was also poor, as we had failed to properly redefine or even define a definite problem.
Our Group's ability to ideate ideas was well done, as we have created many ideas which we were able to prototype (draw them) and test them with the group.
Finally our group had performed "rapid prototyping and testing" as design thinkers as we created many catapults of different designs and failed fast. We generally did not try and improve an existing idea (unless it was minor changes) but worked on a completely different design.

The team had worked well together across this Design Challenge, we had chased each other on facebook and set deadlines on each portion of work. I could have been a better team member by following the design thinking process and remembering to both empathize and define the problem before beginning to ideate and prototype the various catapults. This would have allowed our team to be more productive at the same time as we would be testing prototypes that would have been on track on completing the task better.

And that concludes the thought process and the designs behind "The Great Angry Birds Project"

Malcolm.

Welcome to Picture Pad!

Welcome all to Picture Pad!

Picture Pad is a Visual Diary Blog where I record all my drawings, thoughts and in general anything.
All Pictures I post will come with at least some of my thoughts tagged along with it, so you can delve deeper into the mind that is Malcolm.

So pull up a chair, grab a cuppa coffee and enjoy!

Malcolm.