Design Thinking- Looking Back

In Design Thinking and Innovation, we've learned about several ways to approach problems, to think deeper and unearth the true solution, and brainstorm to create solutions. Each project I did this semester touch on one or all of these points in some way. From understanding a business using a Beginner's Mindset to repurposing objects, I learned a great deal about design thinking is used to approach problems and create effective solutions. Listed below are reflections for each of the projects I was assigned.

What if Main Street?

Our assigned business was Bloom, a small women’s boutique in the middle of Main Street. Through our research, our goal was to understand their business, and to create a persona that represented Bloom’s main customer base. Our chosen methods of user-centered research were to conduct employee/employer interviews, conducted observations around the store, and also conducted research on social media. We used social media services like Yelp for reviews and the Bloom website to acquire information about the business.

The owner, Mimi Sullivan, explained that she see a broad age range of customers (ages 20-65), but she’s looking to target young women in their early 20’s who are young urban professionals. She was welcoming at first, but became guarded when we asked her about Bloom as a business. Each time we visited, there were few to no customers in the store. In addition, she didn’t not want us to interview customers, out of fear that we’d impede on sales that she could capture, because of this, we had a tough time receiving the customer’s perspective. Interviewing customers suddenly became a large hurdle as Mimi was against it. The interviews that we did get however, were insightful, but were not structured well due to the fact that we did not have a structured list of interview questions. As a result, I believe we most likely left information that could have been useful to us. This is something I would change next time around.

As the single male of our group, I felt that I would have the most difficulty trying to interview customers and employers. As a result, I decided to visit Bloom under the guise of a shopper buying something for a relative for Valentines Day. I figured that if I positioned as a shopper instead of an interviewer, Mimi would be more open to conversation. When I visited the store, she quickly moved me around as we explored all the different types of products her store held. I told her I was shopping for my sister and she quickly showed me to things like photograph frames, socks with funny quotes and pictures, soaps, body washes, perfumes, and scented candles.

With each new product came a story of where the product came from, the different elements that it consists of, and what made each product special. The time I spent shopping around with Mimi allowed me to discover the myriad of products around her store that I was previously unaware of. I learned that in addition to clothes and jewelry (which is her specialty), Bloom has a lot to offer customers that I think they may be unaware of. Using the information from our interviews and information gathered from our observations, we were able to build our persona and gain a clear understanding of Bloom's goals.

Bad User Bad!

The Bad User! Bad! assignment explored bad user experiences and solutions that could be made to remedy the problem. I had a hard time conceiving an idea for this assignment, because I wasn’t quite sure what I would consider a bad user experience. I spent hours scouring the Internet for an example, to which I had little luck finding something. Instead, I decided to review the past couple months of my life to see if I could find any bad user experiences of my own. A problem I experienced recently had to do with automotive maintenance and finding a quick solution. When cars break down or have unexpected problems, many times the driver has limited resources and no knowledge on how to diagnose the issue. Without any feedback or information, dealing with a car issues can be a pain and significantly stressful. Is there a way that a driver can receive information about their car when a problem arises and be able to efficiently make a decision based on the number of options available to them?

After conducting some research, I learned that a solution to this problem existed. It’s a product from AAA called SmartTrek. It comes in the form of a small receiver that plugs picks up information sent from your car and sends it directly to an app on your phone. A classmate of mine used to work at AAA and when I asked him why I had never heard of it his response was simply, “they don’t market it enough”. In addition, some of my classmates were AAA members and had never heard of SmartTrek.

So one problem was solved, but a pivot was necessary. How could AAA go about increasing awareness of the SmartTrek app and drive more members toward purchasing it? My proposed solution was to using positioning to place the SmartTrek app in the AAA mobile app as a locked feature, and also redesigning the AAA website to make it easier to access. By repositioning the SmartTrek feature, users will be exposed to the service and driven to learn more!

Super Glue Workshop

The Super Glue Workshop incorporated brainstorming, ideation, and storytelling to encourage divergent thinking. A key factor to this exercise was learning to understand the features and attributes of a particular thing and use them to create new concepts for it.

Our class was assigned the task of redefining super glue. Using brainstorming and storytelling we were able to create and build stories around the concept of super glue to resolve political conflicts and bring people together.

In using the concept of glue and defining it’s uses, our team was able to create abstract relations between it’s attributes and circumstances where conceptually it could be used.

Repurposing Objects

From this workshop, we were given the task of taking an object we use normally and use the same tools to repurpose it. The object I chose was a Bluetooth mouse that I use with my laptop. Using mind mapping, storytelling, and ideation I created relations between the mouse and other objects and concepts, and created storyboards for three I chose.

Mouse Mind Mapping

Mouse Storyboard 1

Mouse Storyboard 2

Mouse Storyboard 3

Using the tools provided in this workshop helped to actively practice brainstorming and ideating. By encouraging this form of divergent thinking, it helped me to move outside how we define objects and things we use on a normal basis and to breakdown their elements to see other ways we could potentially use them.

Social Gaming

The goal of the Social Gaming assignment was to choose a business from the What If Main Street assignment and implement gamification to improve a particular part of their business. Our solution using gamification could be used internally, externally, or both.

My group chose to implement gamification at the 5 and Dime on Main Street. In the beginning, we brainstormed about ways to gamify they business. We had trouble due to the fact that we could not get off of the idea of using a reward system. Our group found this idea boring and was looking for a more creative way to implement gamification. As we analyzed 5 and Dime we discovered that they have a lot of obscure items that students may not be aware of. In addition we discovered that one of their problems is that there is little to no communication or feedback between management and their customer base.

The 5 and Dime store has a strong customer base in college students, and other people to buy clothing and apparel. In addition, their central location on Main Street has makes them easy to find on UD’s campus. We considered the 5 and Dime to be an unofficial fixture of the UD community that has a relaxed atmosphere and environment. We saw the 5 and Dime as a business that doesn’t take itself too seriously, or the “fun uncle” of stores, when compared to similar businesses like Barnes and Noble- “the rigid uncle”. How could we implement gamification in a way that is as relaxed and loose as the 5 and Dime?

Using the game Cards Against Humanity we created the Brain Board, a sounding board geared towards the UD community that acts as a way for customers and management to interact with one another. The Brain Board is a whiteboard located in the center of front desk, between the two cashiers in the store. Using the concept of Cards Against Humanity, an obscure item is chosen and management creates a sentence with a blank or asks a question for customers to write their answer on the Brain Board. Students or customers would write their answers with their email address and signature, and at the end of the week, the 5 and Dime staff will get together to choose their favorite answer and the winner receives a prize or the obscure item. The Brain Board can also be used by management to post questions for their customers. Management can then gauge feedback on something customers might like to see and can make a decision from there.

Revised Solution

Overall, the Brain Board was well-received, but there were some improvements that could be made on the concept. First, the location of the Brain Board being at the cash register should be moved to another area of the store such as the walls on the side of either entrance, or maybe towards the back of the store. Placing the Brain Board in between the cash registers would no doubt create unnecessary traffic in front of the register area and may even dissuade customers from using it. Customers checking out would have to step inward to sign the board and would then have to fight back through a sea of angry, disgruntled customers in order get out of the line and leave. Using Cards Against Humanity would be a fun way to use obscure items and funny jokes to build customer engagement, but is there another way that the Brain Board could be used to gain meaningful feedback from customers? This is an area of the concept that could be further explored.

#designthinking