Design thinking critical reflection

What…

My goal in the empathy phase was to understand a specific instructional context and learner characteristics. In the define phase, my goal was to reframe my initial understanding as a clearly defined problem statement or design challenge.

In the first phase, I met with multiple stakeholders and developed a journey map based on interviews and observations, and in the second phase, I used a point-of-view madlib and how-might-we questions as techniques for defining the design challenge. Throughout both phases, I felt quite confident in my abilities, since I’ve previously used most of the techniques suggested through Stanford’s d.school and IDEO’s design kit model; however, I did feel somewhat constrained by the limited time available for me to explore the challenge in-depth.

I thought sketching out the instructional context and learner characteristics as part of a journey map went quite well in the empathy phase, while combining multiple point-of-view frameworks to create a robust problem statement went well in the define phase. I did notice though that I was uncomfortable sharing the outcomes of this work with the project’s internal stakeholders. The work felt unfinished and was not as polished as I would have liked.