MMM276 - Design Thinking Assignment

Description

Purpose

This task provides you with opportunities to apply the main principles and tools of creativity, innovation, and design thinking to design by empirically exercising design thinking principles and tools in a team context to solve complex and real-life problems (ULO1; ULO2; GLO1; GLO4). Moreover, this task allows you to Professionally communicate design thinking concepts, processes and products (ULO3; GLO2). By completing this task, you will develop your skills in researching, understanding, applying, evaluating, and presenting information required for Design Thinking principles and related concepts such as creativity and innovation in solving complex and real-life problems.

Context

For this task, imagine you are part of a team in your future organization and need to solve a complex problem that needs understanding your clients need properly and coming up with solution to meet their needs and demand.

Specific Requirements

In this task, you are expected to deliver a group presentation (Task 2A) and written report (Task 2B) on solving a problem using Design Thinking principles and tools. For this task, you need to form a group of 4 members latest by the end of week 5. Here is some policy regarding your group formation:

• Point 1: You must form groups with other students in the same seminar session as yourself.
• Point 2: If you do not manage to find a group (and then self-enrol yourself in one of the available groups via unit site) by the end of week 5, then the system will automatically allocate you randomly to a new group. There is nothing your unit chair can do at this stage unfortunately. Such random allocation by the system means you might end up being the only one in that group (and hence need to do the assignment alone). This also means you might end up being in a group with students from other seminar session, making it difficult to meet and work together. It also makes it difficult to submit.
• If any of the above two points occurs, you will lose 5% of your mark in this assignment per each point.

Below are the specific requirements for Task 2A and 2B respectively.

Task 2A

Task 2A is a group presentation and you will deliver it in week 8 during your seminar session (there is also an option of sending your recorded video only for cloud students; please see the below ‘Submission’ section). This task covers the first two stages of Design Thinking. In terms of the structure, please organize your presentation slides based on the following sections (1 to 4):

1. Introduction. This section is briefly about aim, team members, contribution percentage of each team member (total should be 100%), etc.
2. Customer segment identification. Identify and present a group of customers (i.e., market segment) that might have an unmet need or a problem to be solved. The market segment can be wide or narrow. For example, the market segment you choose can be as wide as adult population who use public transport in Australia, or as narrow as Aboriginal women in their 20s and 30s who go to music festival at least once a year. An important practical point is that, as a team, you also need to be able to approach and gather data from some (at least 4 people) of the market segment you choose. Define exactly who your market segment is in the presentation (estimated size, characteristics, etc.).
3. Customer sample identification. Identify and present 4 people within your chosen customer segment. These people are real people, and you need to have access to them to gather some data (can be your parents, siblings, family, friends etc.). These people are called your ‘customer sample’. Explain exactly who your customer sample is. You can refer to them anonymously as customer #1, #2, etc. but you need to briefly describe them, for example in terms of demographic characteristics.

   Important note: make sure your customer sample (and customer segment) are also the ones that are eventually expected to pay for your innovative solution down the line. If they are not the same people, go back and re-define your problem statement. Otherwise, you project will be complicated because you will have two types of stakeholders in your project and will need to collect data from both parties which makes it time consuming and less feasible for the purpose of this assignment.

4. Conducting the first two stages of Design Thinking. Perform the first two stages of Design Thinking (Emphasize and Define) with your customer sample. Explain the processes by which you have gone through the two stages with your customer sample. Be as detail as possible in explaining the processes in each two stages. Describe possible tools that you used in each stage. The outcome of your presentation needs to be a clearly defined problem statement that your potential customer is facing (to be solved later in Task 2B). The best way to formulate the outcome (or final section of) your presentation is to present the defined problem statement using the How Might We (HMW) framework.

Task 2B

Task 2B finalises your group work and you will deliver it as a written report. In terms of the structure, please organize your report based on the following sections (1 to 4):

1. Introduction. Introduction. This section is briefly about aim, team members, contribution percentage of each team member (total should be 100%), etc.
2. Theoretical literature review. This section is about theoretical background for the concept of Design Thinking. Use Deakin Library and materials on CloudDeakin for finding scientific articles and related materials.

   Hint: Focus on describing Design Thinking and its various stages from theoretical point of view. In doing so, compare various approaches (at least two) in conceptualising Design Thinking. Moreover, attempt to compare Design Thinking with other alternative approaches to solve complex problems or other approaches and toll to come up with creativity and innovation. Finally, elaborate on how Design Thinking can be useful tool and to whom it can be useful.

3. Identifying and solving a problem. This section is the core section of your report, and it is about using Design Thinking approach in identifying and solving a problem of your choice. You can borrow any materials from your Task 2A for this section naturally. That is fine because Task 2B is built on top of Task 2A. In order to proceed, follow the below instructions and sub-sections:
   • 3.1. Customer segment identification. Identify and report a group of customers (i.e., market segment) that might have an unmet need or a problem to be solved. The market segment can be wide or narrow. For example, the market segment you choose can be as wide as adult population who use public transport in Australia, or as narrow as Aboriginal women in their 20s and 30s who go to music festival at least once a year. An important practice point is that, as a team, you also need to be able to approach and gather data from some (at least 4 people) of the market segment you choose. Define exactly who your market segment is in the presentation (estimated number, characteristics, etc.).
   • 3.2. Customer sample identification. Identify and report at least four people (max eight people) within your chosen market segment. These people are real people, and you need to have access to them to gather some data (can be your parents, siblings, friends etc.). These people are called your ‘customer sample’. Explain exactly who your customer sample is in the report. You can refer to them anonymously as customer #1, #2, etc. but you need to briefly describe them, for example in terms of demographic characteristics.
   • 3.3. Conducting Design Thinking stages. Perform and report the five stages of Design Thinking with your customer sample stage-wise. You may use further subheadings to pinpoint each stage (e.g., 3.3.1. Emphasize; 3.3.2. Define, etc.). Explain the processes by which you have gone through the five stages with your customer sample. Be as detail as possible in explaining the process in each five stages. Explain how findings in each stage acted as an input to the next stage. Describe possible tools that you used in each stage.
    
   • Hint: Provide a summery or synthesise of your finding in the body of your report for each analysis, while keeping and presenting all raw data materials behind such analysis in the appendix of your report. For example, present the summery of your empathy mapping as one map in the main body of your report present, while presenting all the filled empathy mapping for each of your customer sample separately in the appendix section of your report. This way you will show that you have collected detailed data (in the Appendix), while such presentation does not eat up your word count in your written report.
   • Hint: Regarding data collection and interview with your customer sample, a good idea is to use the combination of direct quotes from interviewees (documented in Italic font) and your own wording on elaborating what the interviewees said.