Since day one of the semester, this class has been frustrating, mind-boggling, maddening, and above all, illuminating. Every week, I found myself grappling with a new obstacle, whether it was overcoming my own biases, finding the creative energy needed to complete the work, or learning to trust the design thinking process. Below are some of my final thoughts and my personal takeaways from Customer Insights.
- Design thinking requires PATIENCE. Patience with yourself, with your teammates, and with the process itself. There were so many times I felt like I wasn’t quite doing what I was supposed to do. I felt like I was always just missing the insight I should have gotten in each step along the way, like everyone else got it and I didn’t. After a while, I realized that the insights come with time. You cannot force the process to go faster or force yourself to create better ideas. If you give your all to the work and trust in your teammates, the ideas will come together in the end.
- You have to set aside judgment, not just in design thinking, but in any research process. This includes judgment of your ideas and of the process. For the first third of the course, I thought design thinking was somewhat overrated. I didn’t yet understand the possibilities it created, so I judged it and dismissed it and didn’t get as much out of it as I could have. There was also the underlying self-judgment that pervaded my approach to the class, the ideation portion in particular. As I’ve mentioned in blogs before, self-editing was a major roadblock for me during brainstorming. After the experience I’ve had during this class, I’ll be better prepared the next time I have to generate ideas for a project.
- Ambiguity is frustrating but LIBERATING. Despite the very specific instructions for deliverables for this class, the design thinking process leaves so much open to interpretation. We got ourselves in trouble in the first half of the class because we failed to sufficiently narrow our scope and research. There were so many possibilities to explore within the category of housing and we didn’t know enough about the nature of the project to understand how specific we needed to get. On the other hand, design thinking allows, even encourages, tangential conversations. Jumping around and piggybacking on each other’s ideas is how we generated our personas, our problem statement, and ultimately, our solution. When we deepened our trust in the process and in each other, we had the freedom to explore every possibility and find the one that best suited our needs.
- Customer insights is fun! I had such an amazing team for this class. We brought out the best in each other, even when we felt like we were hopeless individually. When we let loose and relaxed and just chatted, we often produced the best and most creative output. Despite the heavy work load this class demanded, we were able to stay stress free and have a good time because we depended on each other and learned to trust the process.
I am incredibly thankful for everything this class has taught me. The introduction to the design thinking process and all the discoveries I’ve made along the journey will definitely stay with me as I move into my last semester and the start of my career. Thank you, Professor Luchs, for making this class one of the most rewarding of my time here at the college.