Fern’s First Design Thinking Workshop (Fern)

Hello World (But Most Likely No One Except Maybe Sundi, Suzanne, And A Person Who Arrived Here Accidentally),

As I close out this week and begin the next one, I want to reflect on what it was like to do “design thinking” for the first time in class on Wednesday. I was a participant in my first Design Thinking Workshop. We’ve read a lot about Digital Humanities and the debates by now, learned about different designing tools and platforms, and are diving into our own digital research endeavors now. It struck how quantity was more important than quality for the workshop because I think this tendency comes almost a little to naturally to me and is almost my weakness. I can generate ideas rapid-fire style and I don’t quickly run out. Where I often miss out is sometimes my ideas aren’t the most well thought-out or practical. Depth isn’t my fortĂ©, but breadth is (is what I’m trying to say here). In that case, it seems that this exercise in “breadth” with coming up with as many ideas as I can to a given question or problem is almost like feeding the bad egg inside my system. I’m not sure what fruits it will harbor. I do get the point of the exercise: sometimes, when we think too much, we get so caught in having good or right ideas that we never give space to considering random, spontaneous, quick thought could actually be our “strike of a lightning bolt.” Now that I’ve kept all of my sticky notes from the Design Session (or most of them), I think what would be my step #2 is to go through and refine and comb them. We already did this partially during class, but I felt rushed and think sitting with my ideas more may be helpful. Perhaps, this will my own round two of the Design Thinking Workshop: Fern’s Design Mapping Workshop. I may sit down with all the sticky notes, my class notes, and an empty wall and map things out, like a true design thinker.

Going to my last process blog, I said I really wanted to figure out how to orient myself in the class space better & get into a rhythm. Well, the getting into rhythm became rather difficult because I became immersed in a work project for another commitment of mine and everything kind took a backseat for a week (besides doing the basics and going to class). However, I have become more intentional about my class space & note-taking. I think I’ve figured that out….and here’s to renewing my goal for getting into the rhythm of things, especially all the more timely because we are getting into the meat of our course: designing our digital research projects!

Until Next Time World,

(But Most Likely No One Except Maybe Sundi, Suzanne, And That Person Who Arrived Here Accidentally)

Fern

3 thoughts on “Fern’s First Design Thinking Workshop (Fern)

  • February 24, 2019 at 11:18 pm
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    Lol the opening and closing were so funny to me. I think we all knew we had to do comments but when there was no attached due date (like comments due every Monday) we all got behind. Anyway, you’ll be getting comments on your process blogs now so it really is Hello and goodbye world or at least ENG 306.

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    • February 27, 2019 at 2:33 pm
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      Haha! Yea, you’re right. I figured no one was ever gonna read it but me. you’re right, I’m going to change it to at least 1/12 of ENG 306 (if I’m lucky), hahaha. Thanks for your comment. It’s nice to know someone is reading my stuff.

      Reply
  • March 9, 2019 at 7:58 pm
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    I always feel rushed in design thinking workshops, and while I’m interested in testing their value for academic projects, I also think scholarly research requires slow, deliberative thinking and reflection. Here’s where iteration and empathy come in, though: in design thinking, you don’t just generate lots of ideas, you test them out and find out what your users want/need, cycling back through the process repeatedly. Hopefully that way quality will rise to or even exceed quantity by the time you get to an end product!

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