Design Thinking

The Double Diamond from UK's Design Council with the idea of divergent and convergent thinking built-in

The past few days I had the privilege to meet a team of designers from GovTech who were kind enough to facilitate and conduct a Design Thinking crash course for us MOE officers. The main framework which they introduced was the d.school's 5 parts Empathise-Define-Ideate-Prototype-Test framework but they also pointed us to the UK's Design Council's Double Diamonds framework which included arrows suggesting the divergent thinking and convergent thinking required at different phases.

 

We had the workshop at GovTech's Hive which was housed together with Disney and Lucasfilms in the Sandcrawler building at One-North. For those of you who are wondering about the little Yoda in the collage above, yes, the space gives off the Star Wars vibes intentionally and in fact the building was officially opened by George Lucas himself together with PM Lee in early 2014. The space was really neat. Fusionopolis which was right above the MRT station also had a foreign feel. To me there was a Korean feel and it was interesting for me to spot 'Bins for a cause' recycling electronic waste and even food near the entrance of the building which connects to the MRT.

Hive had 3 levels but we mostly used the space on Level 7. We had to learn, unlearn and relearn how to observe, take notes, interview, download and eventually synthesise the information which will come in handy for our future work. I really grew to trust the process espcially with cool ideas like o the 6 Contextual Inquiry factors (Artefacts, Relationships, Usage, Environments, Ambience & Influence) to look out for when being a fly-on-the-wall.

I also liked how I had to maximise the use of my senses besides just writing or just talking. I had to listen more closely and actively. We were expected to pay attention to details and to look out for patterns and even things that lie under the surface. Basically, we had to make sure we learnt all we can from what was said or not said. We had to watch out for emotions, body language, gestures and nuances from our users in our interactions with them. 

Although we could plan out what to say (just like lesson plans), we had to improvise at times and make the best of the time and opportunity granted to us with the user during the interview which was supposed to be more like a conversation or discussion. We had a mini trial run set-up for us by the Experience Strategy and Design (ESD) folks and it was a truly enriching experience. I even learnt that the user we had the mock interview with was from the school where I taught at.

  

The great thing about learning from the designers is that they had a different perspective on matters. They helped me reframe the way I see things, looking at the world with a different lens. Also, they used several abstract ideas and metaphors to explain and describe some of the concepts and methodologies too. The multi-disciplinary team surely helped add to the learning as the diversity and varying thikning styles and approaches was fascinating to me. We also had the chance to snap some photos together on the open-air garden area on the same high floor and I took the opportunity to use my 360 camera to capture some memories of the enlightening learning experience.