I apologize for not writing much in the last week. We’ve been crazy busy. Partly as an excuse but mostly because I think you might find it interesting, I’ve outlined the cool projects my teammates and I are working on. It shows the breadth, the real-world application and the problem-solving ability of design.
Design Planning Workshop
As I mentioned before, the DPW team of eight students is working on a project to help a major retailer better understand Generation Y and their shopping/retail habits. We were lucky enough to visit their headquarters last week where my teammates put together a killer presentation, we got a tour of the offices and were able to meet with members of various departments. This project is a full semester, starting with ethnographic research and ending with design concepts and broad strategic recommendations to the client.
Observing Users
For this class, our team of four chose car-sharing services, specifically IGO. We spent the first part of this semester-long class on learning and practicing the tools and methods of observation. The last ten weeks of the semester are focused on doing user-centered research for our project, gleaning insights and translating those into meaningful concepts.
Design Planning
For Design Planning, we broke into groups and were tasked with choosing a topic related to 19.20.21 – an initiative to address issues surrounding the 19 cities that will have 20 million residents in the 21st century, such as health, food, water, infrastructure, information flow, and more. My team of three is focusing on talent, specifically the migration of knowledge workers across cities and how a platform for tracking these knowledge workers will help cities cultivate, attract and retain talent. Attracting talent is the bedrock of a city, providing a solid tax base, new businesses and industries, culture and more.
Service Design
For this class our group of four students chose FedEx Kinko’s as our topic. We have two professors for this class, one is the vice president of innovation and concept development at McDonald’s, and the other is head of the service design practice at IDEO. They asked the class to find an opportunity to innovate an area within a service business and build that out. We feel FedEx Kinko’s has some great strengths to leverage and areas for improvement.
Of these projects, only the Design Planning Workshop is sponsored by a client. The others we selected. It’s great to apply what’s learned in the classroom and in the readings to the real world. Obviously in some cases we have to make assumptions but it allows us to put methods into practice, learn more, and also create portfolio pieces to share with prospective employers. I'm really getting a lot out of this and my appreciation for the power of design continues to grow. After all, what's great about these projects is the breadth. We're using design to understand Gen Y for a brick-and-mortar retailer; explore services with IGO and FedEx Kinko's; and how to improve the quality of life for people in megacities.
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