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Last Journal - Evaluation

This week was a very meaningful teamwork time to me. We opened our team norms and reviewed all lists and evaluated ourselves how well we did and how bad? we did.

First of all, we almost followed all norms without any conflict and arguments. Most people in a collaborative environment want to be told that all of their ideas are amazing and every thought they have is the best. That contributes to the challenges of collaboration. Style could be different, perspectives could be different and working style with others could be different. Our team also was different. Sometimes, we had thought our solutions differently and had a little hard time to figure out what the best solution was. We stepped back and found the solution which we all were on the same page. We had iterative problem solving processing time. 

Throughout the CPS process, our team learned different perspectives and respected each other’s ideas and feedback and communicated openly to find out the solution. No one is stubborn to listen to others. 

I think that’s the key result of our group work: how we make well-addressed solutions to our problems. So, overall, at the teamwork level, I think we have been doing well so far. 

After we checked in our team norms and made a list of team evaluation rubrics, we continued to discuss to prepare for our final presentation. Luckly, we got many valid and helpful, useful feedback about implementation during the class. 

We reviewed all feedback and discussed how we would revise and improve our solution. Then, we determined what action steps we need to add into the current implementation. 

during the final presentation, I hope we discover more desirable outcomes and continue reflecting on our solution if we have a chance. By the way, personally, once the final presentation is over, I would like to share with others out of class. I will update this PP class project as a part of my portfolio =). I really enjoyed working with the team. Thank you Delta members. I will miss you guys!

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Process Journal : Implementation Part2

Last week, we discussed the business model canvas items and workflows of our core features to make sure we are on the same page. Then, we visualized our ideas into low-fidelity wireframes. Those drawings were helpful for all of us to agree on the solution.

Then, this week, we spent time discussing how we could create a narrative to describe our solutions. During our group work time, we come up with enhanced and more ideas to enhance our solutions. However, we dropped the new idea because if we accepted the new features then, we might have to step back again, revisit and reconsider the solution again. So, we just wrote down the idea on the process documentation, but we didn’t apply the expanded idea to our solution.

This week, We focused on iterating wireframes and tried to put ourselves in the user’s shoes. We tried to create a more friendly experience to add wireframes to describe the solution, but we also tried to keep the experience as simple as possible and provide ease for our users. In order to empathize the users, I used real names and data in the product like that real people use in the wireframe.

For the team,I used the design tool,Sketch app to create wireframes based on team discussion and generate prototyping by InVision app which is a good tool to create quick and rapid prototypes that look and feel like the real app. For the final presentation, we will review all content again and try to deliver a seamless user experience to our audience.

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Process Journal : Implementation

I thought our team moved forward well step by step. However, in the last selection stage, we got some critical feedback from class. That’s our selected idea was too huge. I felt worried and like something was missing. I tried to put myself into the shoes of our first-time users to figure out our problem of the selection. Our team had a big picture of the selection, we knew well our product but the rest of them didn't. I noticed that’s the problem and I appreciate those feedbacks. By the way, to me, it was a good time to validate our ideas out of the team.

Users might not get what we wanted to address. Each feature sounded great and cool, but when we put all together, that makes it overwhelming. We stepped back and listed every task that we imagine will need to be performed and breaked big features into small piece tasks and discussed again to consider only MVP features. We defined our desired outcome first and we removed many of the ideas and features and kept core ideas which become MVP.

Our team discussed how to educate and prompt people to reduce organic waste. We put down all thoughts on the paper. I wanted to be a booster of our selected idea. To do that, I tried to visualize our ideas to double check if we were on the same page through the paper wireframe. I sketched out the idea on the paper and shared with the team. While reviewing the wireframe, we noticed that we had a little different view of each other on the one idea. We tried to clarify the MVP idea together again. Then, we came up with better solutions.

At the same time, we also considered the key items of business model canvas to develop new business models. we had first pass and second pass of business model canvas time over the week. The first pass of the template included all broad items, but the second pass had much clear elements to describe our product’s customers and value and it helped us a lot to define the product goals and directions.

The more we discussed actively, I felt like our idea was improved more.

Once we clarified the MVP features and user flow, we started to create a quick lo-fi wireframe and we edited more and more and re-ordered the flows as well. We tried to make our product user experience as simple as possible to focus on creating a minimum viable product.

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Process Journal : Ideation

In this stage, our group tried to generate many ideas during group brainstorming time. When we had our group team meeting during the class, our team shared our own prompts questions ‘How might we’ and explained thoughts. 

It was about a 20min How-Might-We brainstorming session. There were very interesting but also challenged questions on the list. We reviewed and discussed all the questions based on feasibility and viability. Then, if the ideas were not feasible from our side, we removed it from the list. We decided to individually brainstorm more and came back.

I exercised to generate some questions on my own to address our problem which is many Americans do not compost resulting in landfills that contribute methane gases in the world. I focused on the problems and questions at the individual level. 

My proposed prompts were : How might we reduce food waste otherwise intended for landfill?, How might we inform consumers how harmful food waste is to our environment?, and how might we encourage non-composters to motivate them to join organic waste diversion to avoid the landfill?

When we met again and shared our thoughts, we found out some prompts overlapped and similar questions. Then, we categorized questions by similarities. The organized the questions by categories were very helpful to guide us to solutions to problems. We had 24 questions and we reviewed all questions, discussed and voted 3 favorites questions and ended up with the following narrow prompts:

CONSUMER INCENTIVES: How do we create composting incentives to encourage user adoption of composting? (i.e. allowing consumers to monetize their own compost, etc.)

CONSUMER EDUCATION: How do we educate individuals on the importance and timeliness of wasting less food products and composting food waste?

BUSINESS OF COMPOSTING: How do we cultivate a marketplace for composting stakeholders?

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Process Journal: Definition

As we decided our team norms, we had two regular meetings on last Sunday and Wednesday to discuss what we found out the problems about our topic ‘Compost’. 

My initial problem definition approach started from pros and asked myself questions that there were many benefits why people didn’t take action for it much. Then, I created personas to imagine and put me into their shoes to have empathy. Who would be our target users? What would they have concern in their routine? What would grab their attention? Etc. Then, I felt that the core problems come from non-composters.

All people know composting has lots of benefits in environments and life, but they don’t know how to start and they don’t have time to maintain all things in their routine. From individual research, My first drafted problem statements were :

- Most Americans would compost if it was more convenient in their community, but people think individually composting is not convenient.

- Composting creates more jobs than landfilling and the state’s trash incinerators. That means the composting is complicated.

- People can get benefits from composting, but not everyone knows where to start.

- Home composting and small scale farm and community are the strategies of development of composting (ILSR recommends). However, people have a lack of composting know-how and skills.

Then, we gathered all statements together and made a list of major/common keywords from the statements. Based on the first meeting discussion, we had more deeper thought. I came back with the second version of the problem statement was “Composting is hugely beneficial to the environment, not only because it reduces the amount of food and garden waste thrown away, which in turn reduces the effects of global warming, but not everyone knows where to start.”

Among our problem list, we all had the consistent core issues which tend to show composting as a solution to the problems we mentioned. Only difference was different points of view, what we looked at the core issues and how specific we chose to be between a micro and macro view.

We need more time to define the statement. We asked ourselves a few questions to simplify , ‘Is the problem lack of composting or lack of education, awareness, action, support, or infrastructure, etc? Do we want to include the word ‘Compost’ in the problem statement? Should that be reserved for a more solution-oriented conversation?

Then, we come closer together into narrow problems. During discussion, we were a little bit struggling with our various problems to define the final problem statement. I felt that the discussion ran in a loop. We were almost there, but we felt it was not perfect. Then, we found one all agreed that the statement should be simple and straightforward to understand our problem and work toward finding a solution.

Our final problem statement : Globally, organic waste decomposition in landfills is the #3 producers of methane gases in the world with Americans wasting, on average, about a pound of food per person per day.

It was very productive discussion and convergent thinking to me. Let’s go for it, Delta!

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Creative Problem Solving : 1. Acceptance and Analysis

During the discussion with the team, there were a bunch of interesting topics that teammates came up with. Some topics were similar to my interests. Some topics were not interesting to me. While we reviewed all topics we created, I tried to imagine myself what opportunities would be lost if I didn’t accept the challenge like ‘Give it up’, as an acceptance method and how other peers think about each problem. And most of the challenges were quite easier to connect to the technology to find solutions and some solutions already invented in the industry. However, one topic was new to me. 

It is ‘Compost’. It helps to tackle global warming. That topic is interesting. I felt shame because I was not interested in the compost field in my life even though I worry about the global environment. There are some solutions to the problems, but they are not supported by technology. That grabbed my attention. Maybe, from that point, I felt like some technology could improve the compost field better. I would like to accept a totally new challenge even though I encountered difficulties. I would like to expand my area of interest and knowledge more. During the morphological analysis work, the analysis was a new way to explore and generate ideas. Usually, I look up materials/ subjects  on Google and make a list of attributes. However, when our group analyzed the idea using Morphology, it was difficult for me to fill out the components in the table because it was my first experience to analyze in that way. I didn’t know what values should be addressed in the cells. After completing filling out the table, Then, I realized that the list was a very useful method to see all attributes at glance to get ideas. I learned new facts and problems from the list. New group project just started. Maybe, the outcome could be not Aha idea, or maybe, our team solutions could really help to stop global warming problem. I hope I enjoy the solving-problems process more than having outcomes by step-by-step of the process. Let’s find out for us and the next generation!

To accept a problem  for a group project, I tried to find some topics from my professional experience to personal interest. I had come up with some familiar topics such as how would we reduce our plastic waste? How to protect our planet for future generations? How could we protect ourselves from online privacy? How would we reduce our/kids phone screen time? I am familiar with those problems and have experience researching things. They are fun topics to me. While I found out the topics, I already had some solutions in my head. I noticed there is an analysis method ‘Idea dump’ which uses ready-made solutions and ideas to solve the problem from my head. I thought I was going to use the method to analyze the problems/topics to pick. However, on the other hand, I was concerned about the solution proposal which could be just plain and not exciting solutions to the group because they might come from my stereotypes and my disciplinary background.

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What creativity means to me…

When I see the creative ideas and products, I feel like they are remarkable and impressive. Then, I am interested in their work process how they come up with cool ideas and products.

What I found out the common process is all people thinking new ideas, but few people take actions to create the ideas to become products. I wonder why people don’t take the action because they might be afraid of that if the idea failed. That’s the key point. Having creativity is important to have a great idea but the more important thing is taking action to create the idea no matter it success or fails. Even the ideas fail, people would learn from the experience and try in different ways again and again. Then, it will become creative.

People always want to have a better life. To satisfy them, creators always try to make cool things for them as entertainment, products, art, and so on. When they love the creative ideas, they love to adopt it to their life. Sometimes, they like the ideas, but not use it for themselves because it is not useful to them. 

At this point, I think that creativity comes from anywhere and anyone. However, the creativity should connect with human lives. The creativity can make our lives simpler, easier and better. Sometimes, creative art gives us lots of happy and positive impressions, but it is not usable to apply to life. Then, people would forget the clever ideas. The ideas could be wasted. That's a sad situation to me. 

To avoid the situations, I think creativity could have also useful functions for people to adopt their lives. Once creative ideas become popular, then, other creators will follow the ideas. That moment, I would say that the creativity is successful. 

As I am a designer, I would say we should have creativity in our work, but it should also impact the business to success. Then, others follow the ideas to apply to their business. Then, I would say the idea has great creativity.