Last week, I attended a meetup about design thinking in Blk71. It was interesting. We were instructed to come up with a wallet for ourselves.
The first step was to brainstorm and draft a wallet for oneself on paper. I drew a credit card with a universal sim card chip on it. The card can be kept at the back of a phone. The rest payments will be handled in the phone apps. That was a pretty futuristic wallet.
The next step was to get interviewed by a neighbour who just drew his/her ideal wallet. I was interviewed by a Korean manager from JFDI.asia. The neighbor was supposed to make the wallet for me. He first let me share my ideas and concerns. Then he asked me to take out my current wallet and categorize the necessary items. It turned out that there are quite a lot of necessary items in my wallet and they definitely cannot fit into one single card. Some items like coins and keys also need extra spaces to squeeze into a wallet.
The next step was to interview the other neighbour who didn't interview me in the previous step. This neighbour believed that his current wallet is the ideal one. I asked him to take out his wallet to see what are inside his wallet and whether any items can be removed. Then I asked him whether there are any pains or inconvenience about his current wallet. It turned out that there are two problems: 1. He puts his name cards together with reminder teasers and band aids. These small items sometimes drop out when he take out the name cards. 2. When he travels to another country, the cash height sometimes is different from Korean cash. The Singapore dollar is taller while some other cashes are shorter.
Then we were instructed to abstract and summarise the needs. My neighbour wanted a wallet which 1. has an extra small pocket to put small items. 2. has an adjustable cash layer to fit different height of cashes.
After that, we were given a paper to draw down the solutions for the neighbour and then briefly introduce the design. The Korean manager designed a very good phone case with its cover as a wallet. It turned out that there is already one existed commercial product named bookbook which is very nice. I myself designed a basic wallet with two additional features specially made for my neighbour.
That was not the end. We were actually given some minutes to really make a prototype out with some raw materials like scissors and color paper. Time was tight and the process was fun.
After making the prototype, we were instructed to listen to feedbacks from the client. Unfortunately, most of us didn't give critical feedbacks. Instead, we "haha" with each other's prototypes.
Then came the time for showcase and sharing. I shared two points learnt during the process: 1. No need for futuristic stuffs, things that fix problems will do. 2.Doing is somewhat more important than thinking
That was a fun experience. After the activity, I bought the phone case on Amazon together with some design thinking books. There happened to be an ongoing course named "design for everyday things" on Udacity. I found design thinking a really useful skill for industrial people.
Then we were instructed to abstract and summarise the needs. My neighbour wanted a wallet which 1. has an extra small pocket to put small items. 2. has an adjustable cash layer to fit different height of cashes.
After that, we were given a paper to draw down the solutions for the neighbour and then briefly introduce the design. The Korean manager designed a very good phone case with its cover as a wallet. It turned out that there is already one existed commercial product named bookbook which is very nice. I myself designed a basic wallet with two additional features specially made for my neighbour.
That was not the end. We were actually given some minutes to really make a prototype out with some raw materials like scissors and color paper. Time was tight and the process was fun.
After making the prototype, we were instructed to listen to feedbacks from the client. Unfortunately, most of us didn't give critical feedbacks. Instead, we "haha" with each other's prototypes.
Then came the time for showcase and sharing. I shared two points learnt during the process: 1. No need for futuristic stuffs, things that fix problems will do. 2.Doing is somewhat more important than thinking
That was a fun experience. After the activity, I bought the phone case on Amazon together with some design thinking books. There happened to be an ongoing course named "design for everyday things" on Udacity. I found design thinking a really useful skill for industrial people.
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