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Projekt 3: Makers Lab

The following days, we were callenged to use the HvA Makers Lab, to producte a concept that would make our insights tangible that we already gained by learning about the Design Thinking Process.

The failed prototype:

Elyse and me came up with an idea, that would show the aspect of Design Thinking as a wholesome and round solution, consisting of different parts of the process, like ideation and prototyping. We spend our firsts day trying out a paperbased foling model. Sadly this model was not working as we planned. Therefore we started with a fresh mind, refraimed out idea and came up with the consept of a spinner, that would resemble the iterative process. 

The concept

The first failed spinner, it was way to small!

The final prototype

Elyse and me really learned how important it is to not be to clingy to a specific idea. Of course, coming up with a complete new concept after failing the first one was frustrating, but in the end this lead us to a much better solution that what we would have expected! The days in the Makers Lab really were Design Thinking Days!

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Project 2: Escape Room

In the second week, we were able to attend escape rooms in small groups around 5 people. My team and me went to the “Amsterdam Catacombs”, a horror escape room mainly containing storytelling. We had a lot of fun, but also payed attention to the different elements of the escape room, given that we would have to come up with improvements. Back at the HvA, we developed an escaperoom ourselfs according to our findings. We established a set of “lenses” with which we would be able to look at escape rooms in different ways, and refraimed the situation. Therefore we chose to make our design challenge the following: “How might we design an escape room for NASA, that gives the experience of being in outer space, with having only very limited space available. Throughout ideation we developed a solution, that would split the container in two und using it vertically, building the inside of the spaceshit and the open space. The effect of lacking gravity would be symbolized by big ventilators, that would make the user fly around in the outer space part, while solving out developed riddles. 

I learned that especially looking at a problem with different “lenses” can help a lot in the process of finding an unusual solution!

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Project 1: 1.5 self-assessment

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Project 1: 1.4 Feedback

The day after, we tested our prototype in action by handing them over to actual international students. This testing gave us the possibility to gather valuable feedback and lead us to making serveral improvements on our box, like adding the boxes name to the front and making the video personally adressing the watcher. 

To get feedback of a recipient using your prototype is not only interesting but extremely effective for improving the model! The user had ideas and insights that we couldnt even come up woth. 

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Project 1: 1.3 Prototyping

According to our findings we started to build our prototype the next day. We knew, that the international students were flooded by information material in their first day, eventually leading them to be overwhelmed and not read the information at all! Therefore we build a box, that was not only visually different from the other informations but als had a young and fun approach to teach the information. We came up with the idea, to put the most valuable information of the healthsystem in the neatherlands not into a brochure, but in an entertaining video. This Video would be played by opening the box. Furthermore the box contained various items that young people will need like condoms and aspirin, lifting our tonality towards the younger recipients.

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Projekt 1: 1.2 Field Research

In the second day we started our field research. Therefore we printed a paper containing the questions we wanted to ask, and a poster to start our conversation with strangers. We went off in teams of two and interviewed 11 persons in total. This really gave us the most valiable input, and detailed information about what exactly an international student was worried about in his first week. After coming back, we started to cluster our findings to isolate the biggest problems. This clustered information has lead us to our final problem, that we wanted to solve: the confusion of interantional students regarding the health system in their time in the Netherlands. 

I learned how to break the ice, and that simply asking “why” a lot is a very powerfull tool to find out about deeper insights the person has to offer. Furthermore I learned to be more outgoing towards strangers, they were all really nice!

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Projekt1.1: Desk Research

To start Project 1 we did a relatively long and deep desk research for the beginning which gave us a lot of important insights about problems and solutions that already existed. Especially thinking about what we might not even know oubout opened our way of thinking. The main outcome of the first day was an overview over topics, that we wanted to know more about. This was the base to developing the questions that we wanted to as the students about in te next day. 

This day I really learned a lot about opening up your brain to different aspects of a porblem, wich is crucial for understanding the problem in its core. I really look forward to research more. 

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Project 1

To Kick-Off the Design Thinking and Doing Minor the teachers confronted us with a challenge, that we had to solve using the Design Thinking Theory we would learn about in the upcoming week. The Challenge was the following: “Come up with an idea to make the life of an international Student better in the first week.”