iadp week 6 reflection

This is the week where the team was frustrated, lost & on the verge of giving up but somehow we got ourselves out of it, and are now excited for the following week!

The week started with the team unpacking the feedback that we received from the project partner, and other guests. We categoried the feedback, and started discussing how we might iterate our prototype. We were also reminded to iterate based on our user and not feedback of our project partner. At the end of the day, we were designing the prototype for our user and NOT project partner.


Empathy (iteration)
The team was questioning whether our prototype addressed the NEED of our user. And that the NEED is derived from our insights. We were considering going back to the ideate stage, define stage, and even empathy stage. We reviewed the list of insights that we had previously, and decided that we need to do empathy work in order to further confirm some of our insights, and possibly drill deeper to why. We also agreed that we wanted to help the "doers" and not the "wanters". Although we were supposed to test an iterated prototype, we felt that we were somewhat lost and didn't know what to iterate. The team headed to Mid Valley for empathy fieldwork.


Ideate (iteration)
We stopped by the Samsung outlet, and hoped to be inspired & energised for the rest of the afternoon. Who would have thought that dropping by an electronics store would inspire the team. We were excited with some of our new ideas e.g. board game, academy etc and felt that we should test these ideas out in our interviews later.


Empathy (iteration)
Coincidentally, a bank was hosting an event and we were drawn in to check it out. It was quite interesting to note that entertainers were hired i.e. clowns & magicians. It's not everyday that you see entertainers at a bank's event. Another thing we found out it that the public would need to own the bank's credit card in order to purchase various items at the fair at a discounted rate. Who says that banks don't help you save money?

We were talking about catching a movie, and to forget about getting work done but somehow our conscience was telling us that we had to just pick up ourselves and do work. We managed to interview a few Gen-Ys but it didn't really go as well as how we imagined :( Energy level was really low as we were unpacking our interviews although we got some new insights.


Empathy, Define, Ideate (iteration)
We were asking ourselves whether do we really need to do more empathy work? Energy & motivation level was at its lowest at this point. We were even wandering what if we were the "group" that was recorded in the history books that didn't make it in the IADP :( Really frustrated and lost. Some of us were asking ourselves why are we so frustrated and worried about this design challenge. It's not that we would be fired from our jobs right?! The coaches could tell quite easily if we didn't immerse ourselves in fieldwork just from our answers. At one point in time, we were even thinking of going home and rest, and just hope that tomorrow would be better.

However, we didn't. We found a place to sit down and had conversations of what we were doing. At the end of the evening, we discovered that our persona has always been a person in our team all this while - we were sharing conversations that we had with this person in our team, his facebook status, his aspirations etc. And it was clear enough that we were designing the prototype for this person. It was an AHA moment for everyone in the team. With that figured out, it confirmed all the empathy, define and even ideate work that we've done so far was not going down the drain. Btw, this person wasn't in class this weekend as he was in Terengganu for his convocation. The team was excited that we figured out all of these (even it took us longer than it should), and was ready to iterate our prototype the following day.


Prototype (iteration)
The next morning, everyone came in and agreed with a to-do checklist for the day. We started iterating our 4th prototype, and made sure that we tested the critical functions of the prototype. We even admitted to the coaches, and even the class how frustrated and lost we were the day before but was ready to move forward after our eureka moment last evening.


Test (iteration)
We tested our prototype internally after lunch. Another key thing which we learned was to reframe ourselves from telling what the prototype was all about, but rather have the users test our prototype and let them make an educated guess of what it was really about. We were really glad that our testers could actually share with us what the prototype was really about.

Another thing is that we made sure that we built tests where the user could truly experience our prototype rather than just a user interface of the service that we built. That also went really really well. The key question at the end of the day by the coaches is how does our prototype address the needs of our persona. We agreed that we need to figure out a "bridge" aka obvious connection. It was almost instantaneous we ideated few ideas and agreed on something really feasible which truly addressed the needs of our persona. What a fantastic feeling to end the weekend.

Other activities include:

1. Scream - a variation of the SPLAT game that we played last week.

2. Video on mitad at Ethiopia

3. Variation of SPLAT; and the same game that I've played at OBS. You have toaster, James Bond, washing machine, blender, and puking kangaroo

This weekend was truly a humbling experience, and we also found out that it's a natural phase that design thinkers go through. I am truly grateful for the project team that I'm part of as everyone is truly motivated and dedicated in making things happen. I have to also agree that we have come to a stage where we are able to recognise facial expressions of each other i.e. someone has an idea, someone has a comment, someone looking for prototyping materials etc. It's not everyday that one is fortunate enough to be part of such a team.

At the ILIW session - I like that the team was frustrated and lost on Saturday and somehow we managed to make things happen on Sunday. I wish we would continue to fail often, and more importantly fail early the following week before the official final presentation to our project partner.