Author: Matthew Lee

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Design Thinking = Human-Centered Design

What is Design Thinking?

‘Design thinking? Is there a specific method of thinking for designing? Is it about not liming yourself so that you can think of something creative? What exactly is design thinking?‘

These were some questions on my mind when I heard the term “design thinking” for the first time. As someone who does not believe in my own creativity, I thought the term must be about a specific process that the designers follow when designing something new that helps them foster creativity. I thought this must be the secret formula for being creative and coming up with innovative ideas.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t quite what design thinking was. However, it is a critical mindset to have for successful designing. In fact, this may not be THE secret formula for fostering creativity, but it is certainly a mindset that will help with the process. Design thinking is basically another term for human-centered design, which means that when designing a product, every decision made has to be based around the intended user of the product. This is a critical mindset to have because when you design for the intended users, it may lead to an idea that you would not have thought of otherwise. While you might be working on a design believing that you are providing what the users want, if you do not take an effort to reach out to those users and understand their motivations and desires, you may be going in a completely wrong direction.

An example of such situations was shared by our TA, Mehment Aydin. He shared a story of how for children, going through a MRI machine is a scary experience. It is challenging for them to stay calm without any movement while being stuck in a dark, narrow space with lots of noise surrounding them. Upon hearing this problem, we might jump straight into how we can adjust the machine to provide more comfortable experience. Perhaps we can find a way to decrease the noise level. Perhaps we can make the bed more comfortable. But what solved the problem was much simpler than those ideas.

Our TA, Mehmet Aydin, sharing examples of successful designs of providing MRI experience by going through design thinking

What was the solution? Turn the whole MRI experience into a fun role-playing game. Instead of having the children go through the MRI process in all seriousness, the solution was to have the doctors and nurses be pirates and have the children to stay hidden from them in the MRI machine, which is decorated as a ship, until the whole procedure was finished. Now, instead of being afraid of the darkness and the noise, the children were having fun and filled with excitement as they stayed in the machine, “hiding” from the bad guys. In fact, Mehmet shared that they had so much fun that they were asking when would be the next time that they come back.

How could someone reach such a solution without truly understanding the problem from the perspectives of the users? That is what a design thinking is all about.

Jeff Ginger sharing the importance of design thinking and how the intended users need to be on your mind constantly when designing

Going Forward

This mindset of design thinking is very important for my team as we try to design something that will allow the youth wheelchair users to easily customize their wheelchairs and improve their experiences. We really need to understand why the users may want to customize their wheelchairs and in which way they would like to. To find out all these different factors, we are in the process of reaching out to not only youth wheelchair users but also adult wheelchair users who have experiences of being youth wheelchair users themselves. We want to help them step into their childhood and have them share their “dream wheelchairs.” What is this wheelchair capable of? What does it look like? We want to bring out the child-side of the users to really dive into the limitless creativity we had when we were kids. By being in this mindset of children, we believe that we will be able to find a solution to help the youth wheelchair users enjoy their experience more.

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“Fail Early, Fail Often”

This is not the first time I heard someone say “it’s okay to fail.” I have always been told that as long as you learn something from the failure, it is okay to fail. But honestly, I would still rather not fail at all. I always thought that phrase was something that is easy to say but hard to put into action. In fact, I don’t like a failure so much that I would rather not try if I knew I was going to fail.

However, as I applied to be part of the course, I knew that I would need to have a different mindset if I were to be a part of it. When designing and creating something, you are bound to fail. I believe that if you don’t fail while creating, you most likely did not take enough risk. There is probably nothing innovative about it. Even with this understanding, I knew I would have difficult time coping with failure.

As if the professor knew this challenge that I was facing, learning from failure was one of the mindsets that we learned when the course began. However, it was the same thing that I heard before – how we should celebrate the lesson learned from the failure. But I wanted to hear more about it. I needed someone to convince me that you can eventually achieve success by learning through failure. This week, the professor invited Michael Hansen from EarthSense to do that exactly.

Michael Hansen from EarthSense talking about the importance of failure and learning from it

Michael shared about his journey through a startup business called EarthSense. The company creates a small autonomous vehicle that the farmers can use to collect data on the traits of the plants in the fields. Currently, they have a working model that can successfully collect the data for the farmers, but in order to create a working model, he had to go through many failures, especially during the design phase of the product. He would design a prototype, test it, learn about what is working and what is not, reiterate the design, and continue the process.

What I found interesting in his presentation is that in a way, he was telling us that there is a “correct time” to fail. This so-called correct time is when the product is in an early prototyping stage. The reason behind this is that the earlier you fail, the smaller the cost of failure is. Thus the reason he was telling us “Fail early, fail often.” I appreciate this mindset as he was saying that it is okay to fail early since the cost is low, but as you reiterate and continue the process, you should fail less and less. To me, that is more convincing than simply saying that it is okay to fail as long as you learn from it. Yes, indeed learning from failure is vital in creating a better design, but at some point, you should stop failing, right?

3D Printing for the First Time!

During the second part of the class, we had an opportunity to get into a team, come up with a name for the team, and design a logo to represent it. Just coming up with a name itself was already challenging for us. As soon as we gathered as a team, everyone, including myself, was claiming how bad they are at coming up with names. To solve this problem, we started throwing out what we were working with throughout the project in order to get inspiration: accessibility, affordability, wheelchair… and then one of the team members got it. ROTAM. It means wheel in Latin, which we thought was perfect since our goal is to improve the wheelchairs somehow. We even came up with a design immediately. We were going to have ROTAM with the O replaced with a wheel of a wheelchair. Unfortunately, due to the time constraint, we could not transfer that exact design into a 3D printed model.

Ultimaker 2 at work 3D printing the team logo
3D printed model of the team logo

It was very exciting for me to see that the 3D printing worked. The whole process felt more realistic now that I had an experience going through the designing, transferring the design into software design, and 3D printing the design to have a tangible model by the end. Although it will be way more challenging to do this for a wheelchair part that can actually be used, I am excited to see the potential that it holds.

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Finding Challenges, Defining Opportunities

Though we faced freezing weather that blocked the class from meeting in person, it did not stop us from continuing to explore the inspirations that we encountered the past week. With the representatives of the Milestone Studio Labs on a video conference with the class, we continued to brainstorm as a team regarding several ideas that we thought would improve someone else’s quality of life. From the stories that our mentors shared, we realized the significance of affordability and accessibility, which is why we decided that those two factors will be the center of our design. Whatever it was that we were designing, we wanted to ensure that it would be accessible to the people who we were designing for.

With that in mind, my team and I came up with three ideas that we possibly would want to explore further throughout the semester:

  1. Snow/sand tracks for wheelchairs
  2. DIY wheelchair
  3. Shock-absorbing wheelchair

These ideas were inspired by the mentors and the stories that they shared last week. Although with their experience and knowledge, they are able to find ways to get around these problems, we wanted to make the process easier for them. As our professor emphasized, we were not trying to solve their problems. We wanted to help with improving the process and making it easier.

Example of a wheelchair sand track (source)
Example of a shock-absorbing wheelchair (source)

When we shared these ideas with the representatives of Milestone Studio Labs, they were very supportive, providing constructive feedbacks that raised our confidence. However, what I found to be even more helpful came after that. They pushed us, as a team, to identify an opportunity that we wanted to explore and design for. That is when I realized that without having a clear goal, the opportunity that we are pursuing after, we would not be able to design an effective product. I was ready to jump into designing a product when we haven’t even defined clearly the opportunity that we were hoping to address with the idea.

To identify an opportunity that we wanted to explore as a team, we went back to our core factors: accessibility and affordability. That is ultimately what we really wanted to provide for the people in need of a wheelchair. For this reason, we decided to explore the DIY wheelchair idea further. We wanted the users to be able to customize and replace the parts of a wheelchair as necessary. However, we also recognize the challenge with this idea. With the time and resources allotted to us, we probably will not be able to create a whole DIY wheelchair, which is why we are looking to begin with a part of a wheelchair that commonly requires a replacement. To identify such a part, we will need to do more research and talk with our mentors to gain an understanding, but now that we have the opportunity that we want to explore clearly defined, I am looking forward to where the design will lead to.

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Finding Creative Confidence and Inspiration

Finding Creative Confidence

One of my biggest concerns of taking the Digital Making Course is my ability to be creative. There is so much fuss around the world about needing to be innovative; about how we should be changing the world. However, I never truly believed that I have the ability to leave such an impact through a creative idea. This lack of confidence caused me to feel nervous about the course. Yes, I wanted to learn about the overall process of designing a product. Yes, I wanted to learn how to use computer-aided design (CAD) software. Yes, I wanted to learn how to use a 3D printer and successfully be able to print an object. But I wanted to do more. With the help of the mentors, the professor, and the fellow students, I wanted to design a product that will bring a positive impact on someone else’s life. Yet, how am I supposed to do that when I do not even believe in my ability to do so?

Thankfully, the course began with learning about different mindsets necessary to be a successful designer, one of which was “Creative Confidence.” The concept of this mindset is that a designer needs to believe in oneself’s ability to have big ideas and act on them. Throughout the journey of designing, there will be many ambiguity and failure, but that doesn’t mean I should give up. I just need to continue to explore different ideas and learn from the failures. It may be easier said than done, but learning about such mindsets allowed me to be less nervous and be more excited about the journey.

Finding Inspiration

With my upgraded mindsets, I was eager to meet the mentors and learn about their stories. I was ready to be inspired. The meeting began with Adam, who showed the class around the Disability Resources & Educational Services (DRES) facility.

At DRES facility, you can find a wall of Paralympians who have competed in wheelchair racing.

It was amazing to see the training equipment that is used, a timeline of racing wheelchairs showing the evolution hanging from the ceiling, and a workshop where innovative ideas to help the athletes come to a reality. Along the tour, we were introduced to Ariel, who shared her story of 3D printing the wheelchair racing gloves and distributing them around the world at a more affordable price for the customers. Afterward, we were introduced to Ryan, Jenna, and Ron, who openly shared about their experiences with wheelchairs, prosthetic legs, and meeting others with similar experiences.

Even before meeting them, I knew that I would gain inspiration from them. But they surpassed my expectations. I wasn’t aware how much of an inspiration they would provide. I felt that every single experience that they shared were valuable, leaving me frantically taking notes throughout the whole session. One of the most important points that were brought up during the conversation was the problem of affordability. It is mostly not the technology or the idea that is lacking in today’s word, but it is more so that these innovative products are not really affordable right now to the majority of the people who they are created for.

From the conversation, I was able to immediately come up with several ideas that I would like to explore down the road. Not only did it raise my eagerness to dive into the project, but it also raised my confidence. Unlike my worry before, I was already developing multiple ideas, demonstrating that I am more creative than I think.

The conversation also changed my perspective about innovation. It’s not about changing the world. Rather, it’s about improving someone else’s world. Even if it makes a difference in a few people’s lives, that is completely fine. As long as you design for the people and create an idea or a product for them to improve an aspect of their lives, you are an innovator. After all, isn’t that what human-centered design is all about?