Personal Reflection
Design thinking taught me how to think from the user's perspective. We're all designing for someone else, not for ourselves, so it's critical for me to get out of my comfort zone and see what else is out there. We can't just make assumptions based on what we know about a problem. This course is different from the design courses I've taken in the past because it is heavily research-based. I've spent more time on the solution than the research in the past. However, the solution isn't as important in this course, so I have more room and time to focus on research. I already had something in mind when the design problem was given at the beginning; I could picture something in my head without doing any research. However, after some research, I quickly dismissed the idea and cleared my mind so that I could concentrate on my research. I thought it was interesting that we kept changing our design questions. When I try to guess what our target user wants, the research results often send me back to square one. I enjoy the sensation of proving myself wrong and changing an incorrect assumption into a correct result.
To me, design thinking is more of a way of thinking than a method to employ. To be critical when observing what is going on around us. I hope it will become a habit that will enable me to think critically. When I was a freshman in college, I was introduced to design thinking, which helped me along the way; there is no such thing as "how designers think." It's more like putting ourselves in the user's shoes and having empathy for what we see around us. Although the design thinking process is important to a designer, I do not believe it is a rule that must be followed every time we design something. Instead, learning and applying the method appropriately will be my approach to further developing my design thinking skill.