To start on a positive note, I want to share my experience with the Stanford Graduate Summer Institute (SGSI) course on ‘Adventures in Design Thinking’. I enrolled in this course the previous year before starting my master’s. Coming from a strictly technical undergrad background, my experiences had been fairly unidirectional. The idea of design thinking was foreign to me, and I stumbled upon this fancy crash course by d.school. I remember brainstorming wild ideas with my teammates, designing their hypothetical prototypes, and marketing them to the other teams. I learned how to convey critical feedback, work in a group, iterate and improve prototypes, and lots more. However, it was made clear that design thinking supplements ‘practical’ thinking to devise cooler and possibly path-breaking methods. In other words, it does not replace conventional or pragmatic approaches, but these two methods work symbiotically to develop great products.
Shifting our focus to the Gainesville IDEO case, one of the most concerning patterns is the ideation of design thinking as the ‘better’ method. The Blue Ribbon Report was hastily documented in eight weeks, and aimed to gift-wrap the problems rather than treat them from the roots. Underlying problems like the prevalent poverty and lack of jobs were not handled, but they aimed to make space for new businesses and talents. A promising vision or design doesn’t need to be forced and should be open to feedback and iterations. However, there were various reports of forced resignation, high employee turnover, and disregard of experienced city personnel in Gainesville. “Black residents, who make up 22 percent of the city population, live largely in East Gainesville, where residents report severely limited grocery options, inadequate transportation, and poor street lighting” – it is interesting to note that the projected changes such as “beautiful graphic design, better web resources, and that friendly new office called the Department of Doing” were out of touch with the needs of a large section of the residents. So in my view, the failure was in the execution and failure to gauge society’s evils, not with the idea of design thinking.
To conclude, design thinking is not a panacea as it might be projected. It is important to iterate over prototypes, seek feedback, and evaluate them on consequential metrics, rather than overfixating on superficial values – especially when working in high-risk and high-impact scenarios.
Recently, I came across an eye-catching LG Wing phone and bought it on a whim. Yes, it is the phone in the picture- isn’t it fancy? This phone has more features than I can mention, and I absolutely adored it until college started. The battery is concerning; it can power the phone for a maximum of five hours. The UI is rich but unintuitive. The main problem is the insufficient hardware capabilities, given the lofty design and constraints of the targeted market-price bracket. The major design flaw is the bulkiness of the phone, its tendency to slip through hands, coupled with the unavailability of a compatible cover.
