Theme 5: Design Research - Post-reflection

This week’s theme stressed the importance to evaluate the design process and ideas of any project in order to ensure quality outcome. During the lecture by Haibo Li we received recommend paths to follow and traps to avoid. Li presented how to filter ideas, which would be used to shape the idea to suit the context. He asked questions such as: Does it address a real problem? Does it appeal to the market? Is the timing right? Is it something we are good at? By answering these questions we can notice what precautions to take and what sub-ideas to focus on; to empower our strengths and discard our weaknesses.

Further he warned us for pitfalls such as tunnel vision. A concept although we, or at least I, already had heard and knew about but was still worth mentioning in this context. By doing so we had the warning fresh and in context which then lessened the risk for exposure in upcoming design processes. 

As to whether the idea was valid from the start, Li posed the scenario of the bear attack. What would be the strategy to survive if two people were chased by a bear? Well, one of the two would have to outrun the other, not the bear. A similar analogy is: a mother asks her daughter what she would do if she were to encounter a creepy man asking her to come with him. The daughter replied - I would pull down his pants and pull my skirt up. The mother raged back - Are you insane? Why would you do that? The daughter then confidently said - Well who do you think would run faster, the man with his pants down or me with my skirt up? Both examples reveal that the initial and often logical idea and solution might not be the best one. Think outside the box and re-evaluate each step to attack the task from different angles.

To re-evaluate your ideas is something I must work more on. It is often easy to get narrow-minded and stuck in your first decent idea. Even though you might get stuck with that idea it can be hard to step out of that mindset and try again from scratch. But that is exactly what you must do to come further. I’ve experienced this a few times during programming. When I’ve gotten stuck with but can’t find the faulty code, I open a clean slate and start from scratch. And in most cases it actually helps. Even though I might not have previously reflected upon it, I now have thanks to Haibo’s lecture which will make me more efficient in the future.