creative confidence

Personal Creativity Reflection

Course Activities 18

Design Thinking

For the first three weeks of March, the Academy for Entrepreneurship

and Innovation came to our class to do an exercise in design thinking. I

had read about the design thinking process in David Kellys book,

Creative Confidence, but it was a completely different experience to

actually go through the entire process with an idea that our group had

created. Our task for the next three weeks was to design a solution for

University of Maryland students to become less stressed. With that simple mission, we had begun a

weeklong adventure to develop our app, RemindMe an app that syncs to the Enterprise Learning

Management System, or ELMS, to remind students when their assignments are due well in advance of

their due date. By pushing them not to push off their homework and quizzes by constant text message

and notification reminders, students would not procrastinate as much, and would not be as stressed.

The first step to design thinking is to empathize with your end user. We watched a video of an IDEO

team going through the process to learn how to do this. The IDEO team went straight to the customers

and brought them into the

design process. They did this

through conducting interviews

to construct a point of view for

the end user. They were very

mindful of the questions that

they asked, and kept it casual;

its not a survey, its a conversation. They used a technique called anchoring, where they asked the

interviewee about a specific moment; its much easier to get your interviewee to open up if you ask

them about a specific moment or detail. The questions were open ended, and ensured that the

information was accurate by restating the critical information that was received from the end user.

Asking these questions allowed for a breadth of ideas that would late aid in the problem solving. The

most useful step of this for me was the workshop on how to interview people. I believe that I can

empathize with the end user, however asking the right kinds of questions, and completing the



interview in an ethical manner were techniques that I simply hadnt thought about before, so this

section was very helpful to me. When I interviewed a few friends for the process, it was interesting to

really sit and listen attentively to what they were

saying. I talked to a couple of different people, and

they had different perspectives on how to stress less.

I asked an engineer, an architecture major, a

journalism major, and a cell biology and genetics

major, so I had a diverse range of opinions that

varied wildly, except for one common fact every

single one of the interviewees procrastinated, and

that led to their stress. However, they all had

different strategies for dealing with stress, so though I had narrowed down the problem, I still did not

have a solution.

Once the questions had been gathered, it was time to define our problem. This is the key step in design

thinking that leads it to be such an innovative process. The interview had given us our end use and our

need we need a way for University of Maryland Undergraduate students to stress less. However, we

still needed the insight that would help us to develop our problem.

Defining our problem would also allow us to focus on the users point of view,

and to do this we used a ladder technique. We took a few key points gathered

during our interviews, and broke them down, asking why at every point.

Continuing this process, we finally ended up with the answer to our Why do

students procrastinate? problem. Ultimately, they dont have the self-control to

sit down and do work that they dont want to do. Now that we had defined our problem, it was time to

figure out how to solve that problem! Like I mentioned in my introduction, I have a commitment to

lifelong learning, and I am always asking why. Seeing how to actually make use of that information in

why ladders was a particularly useful skill to me. I will definitely be using why ladders in the future

not only for design thinking purposes, but as a study guide for my exams!

User Need Insight

Verbs, not

nouns

Not too broad

(overwhelming

solution) or too

narrow

(youve

already solved

your problem)

Grounds

itself in

Empathy



Ideation was probably my favorite part of the exercise.

Ideation is similar to brain storming in that it is a session

of rapid idea generation, but ideation is not structured

the way that brainstorming is constrained.

Brainstorming has a very structured feel to it, and it

forces participation and shuts down ideas that arent

feasible. Ideation encourages any and all ideas; creative,

ridiculous, impossible, and the tame. To help open our minds to the world of

ideation, we all planned a game called Yes, and, which was a stoking

activity. The point was to encourage us to open our minds. The longer the

game went on, the wilder and crazier our stories became! Then, we all grabbed

post-its and got to work on our ideation session. We built off of one anothers

ideas, gave feedback, wrote ideas down, and differed judgment. Our goal was to generate as many

ideas as possible, rather than one good idea. There was no hierarchy of being shot down, and because

we were writing down everything in sticky notes, we could form a sort of web of ideas that were

sparked off of someone elses sticky note. We did three rounds with constraints and leases to help

broaden our minds to different possibilities.



After the rapid generation of solutions, it is time to select an idea to work with. The ideas were selected

specifically for potential, not for feasibility, thereby assuring we did not get the same result we would

have from brainstorming. Continuing to develop the solution, and iterating the selection process would

allow for selection of the best possible solutions, not the ones that were simple to do. Ideation was

particularly helpful to me because I have a tendency to shoot down ideas that arent immediately

feasible, but I need to learn to open my mind because maybe someone else will find a way to

accomplish what I think is impossible.

While ideation was probably the funniest,

prototyping was by far the most useful and

exciting step. Once we had narrowed down

the idea and solution, we were able to create

our prototype something that our end users

were actually able to interact with. It was

slightly crudely made, only drawings on a



whiteboard, but we were actually able to create an interactive surface on a phone that behaved like a

real app!

Check it out at ter.ps/remindme

To be able to click different places on the screen and actually have it move

was so incredible, it gave you a real feeling of how the app would eventually

look and feel. We also had a diverse group of people with a range of ideas

about how to design the app, but we felt that it was pretty intuitive. When we

presented in front of the class, we were the only ones with a real, working

prototype to show, and it was apparent that many people were much more

interested in our idea solely because they could actually touch and see it.

This became much more important as we moved onto the final stage of our

design thinking program test. We actually had the app created, so we could

gauge users reactions while using it. We asked for feedback, suggestions, and

reactions, but, most importantly, we took the app back to the people that we

had originally interviewed. We thanked them again for interviewing with us,

and asked them to look at the app, interact with it, and asked if this would help

them to control their stress levels. One user feedback that we had gotten from a

similar app that blew up her phone with notifications, was that she had

eventually started even procrastinating putting in assignments! Our app had

fixed that problem by automatically syncing with Enterprise Learning Management System (ELMS).

Assignments submitted on ELMS automatically close at times that the professors designate, so ELMS

would have the due dates for all assignments already. Additionally, if a student wanted to add

assignments that are not for school, such as job applications or even a reminder to call home every

week, the student would be able to do so. This app received such great praise from everyone who

tested it out, one of the people in my team and I have even discussed fleshing out this project into a real

app available on the App Store. I was so excited to show everyone I knew this app, and it was such a

success due to design thinking. Now that I am in the QUEST honors program, I know that I will

definitely be using this technique in the coming years to help me with my projects.


Creative Confidence 23

Creative Confidence

Creative Confidence has had perhaps the most profound effect on me more than any other book we

have read this semester. Two of the biggest obstacles I face are my lack of self-confidence and my

tendency to procrastinate. Creative confidence has helped me start to tackle both of those weaknesses

this semester.

Firstly, Creative Confidence has helped me to just do it. Being confident in my abilities is not always

easy, but this semester I took a big leap. My honors college, Digital Cultures and Creativity, requires

four specific classes for the program, culminating in the last semester with the capstone course. My

Digital Cultures and Creativity capstone2, the DCC ETC, integrates the concepts I have explored in my

time in Digital Cultures and Creativity, both in class and the workshops held outside of class. DCC ETC

is a data visualization project that attempts to change meaningless information as a thing and turn it

into something much more impactful. Many introductory biology students are often baffled by,

arguably, the most vital, yet abstruse function in living systems cellular respiration. My capstone will

attempt to convey how one of the parts of cellular respiration, the electron transport chain, operates

through an interactive model of the system. DCC ETC will utilize 3D printing and an Arduino to

ensure that my model is more accurate, engaging, and interactive than other models that Ive come

across in my career as a biology student.

While this project may sound interesting to an onlooker, it becomes far more complicated by the fact

that I have very little experience with CAD or Arduino. In a semester where I am absolutely swamped

with schoolwork, I have had to teach myself how to 3D model and how to code and integrate a

microcontroller with all of the components necessary to set up a model for a very complex process. The

old me would have given up and picked an easier project, but the person who read the book Creative

Confidence was able to convince herself that she would be able to complete the project, and I stuck with

it.

I expand upon this idea in my conclusion, but I have never been very creative when it comes to artistic

talents, however, when I was forced out of my comfort zone into making a cooler last year, I became

2 There is more information regarding my capstone presentation in the conclusion section.



more confident in my abilities and I now enjoy making art, though Im still not that good at it. I have

continued to make art, with my confidence boosted, and Im very pleased with the result!

Creative Confidence has also allowed me to stop procrastinating as much as I used to. The action

catalysts listed in the Leap chapter have helped me on numerous occasions, including this PCR and

when we worked on our design thinking app challenge.

Get Help.

Create Peer Pressure

Gather an Audience

Do a Bad Job

Lower the Stakes

These five steps will help me in my academic career as well as my professional future, and this book

has certainly helped me to improve myself for the better.