Day 2 was the day we were to get down and dirty with our ideas. We were to put them to action as best we could and use them and see other people interact with them. It was to be a very hands on and interactive kind of day. We started the day with another team building activity building a tower using spaghetti noodles, tape, a skinny cloth rope, and one marshmallow. The objective was to build the tallest tower possible with the marshmallow at the topmost point. Rules were that the tower should stay upright by itself, the marshmallow should be in one piece, and the tower could not be hung, that is to say to must be on the ground. The activity was to teach us not to fear failure and that the greatest failure was never having tried in the first place. At first building a tower out of spaghetti noodles seems impossible but with a little effort it can be done. This is a great lesson for people everywhere as well as for the students in Colón. Moving on to the next stage of creating ideas. This part was simply for delving further into the points of view and the people affected. We created another tool called the experiential script. This is a hour by hour script of what our person or group of people live in their day to day. This is to identify the opportunities and spaces of action in a sequence of activities carried out by the user daily. From there we did a brainstorm of ideas in the way of the party activity, not saying "Yeah, but..." but rather "Yeah, and...". The objective was to come up with a minimum of 50 ideas in each group. From there we were to categorize and sub-categorize our ideas. We were to select one idea that we thought could solve our problem the best. Afterwards we were to play the devil's advocate with our idea and think of externalities (both positive and negative) that could affect our idea with a special focus on the negative externalities. This is important in figuring out what could go wrong in our design process and trying to eliminate those problems ahead of time. We did an activity where two groups came together and criticized or called to attention potential problems they saw in the other's design/idea and gave suggestions on how to improve upon the idea. Next up was the following business model: This model is crucial in creating a foolproof plan for your project and aids in leaving nothing out of consideration. They highlighted that the customer segment is fundamental in the formation of our idea into a product, that is to say who is served by the product/service. The value proposition is the problem solved by our project and creates value for the customer/user. The channels are how we inform about our product(s)/services, how we our evaluate value proposition, how do our customers buy our products and services, how do we deliver our value proposition, and how do we offer our services post-sale. The customer relationships are how we interact with our customers/users. Finally the revenue streams are flow of revenue depending on the economic value a client would place on product/service and other forms of financing. Next step is prototyping our idea. The importance of the prototype is to evaluate how it works in a real world situation and to preview results, obtain feedback, fail quickly and cheaply and from there refine the design. We were presented a useful graph: The graph highlights the importance of early prototyping in order to have a refined product by launch time. We were taught useful ways to prototype a service which are: storyboarding, storytelling, and acting/role-playing. This methods give a visual display of what the experience will be for the customer or user upon utilizing the service provided. We can use any cheap material to prototype a product as long as it demonstrates the correct function. They showed the image below to give a better idea of how to prototype a product. The idea is not to build it up piece by piece but start with a simple design that has the same function and refine moving forward. Next step is to evaluate. This is what we learn from the interaction between the prototype and the user/client. We let the user interact with the product without instruction or correction. We observe and register. We then ask ourselves if the prototype solved the problem. We did an activity called the "Prototype Museum" between groups where each group went to each prototype "exhibit" and interacted with the product and asked questions to 1-2 people from the group. The presenting pair prepared 2 precise questions that didn't suggest an obvious answer in order to get documentable user information; that is to say that the questions were asked in such a way that the user responded in a way that gave us a clear picture of their experience with the product/service. At the end of the day everyone was given homework to work on individually that would make sure each group was in harmony with what they were doing. The questions we were to answer and bring back the next day were the following:
With our homework in hand and our ideas further developed we left the hotel feeling more motivated than ever. My group had created a Whatsapp group to continue communication through the night to be better prepared for the following day. Stay tuned for day 3! |
Archives
July 2020
Categories |