Week 4

Summary:

This week I learned what design thinking and human-centered design is and how they could be used in social situations like eradicating poverty.  Models for design thinking can help pinpoint aspects of the process in which we get to a testing stage of our ideas that may help or stop the social issue.  Lastly, I learned that creative confidence, even when once lost at a time, can be learned or relearned.

Response to video:

Something that got my attention this week in my studies was from the video, “How to Build Your Creative Confidence” by David Kelley.  His Ted Talk was on discovering or rediscovering everyone’s creative confidence but what stood out to me was the role that fear had on hindering this confidence.  We can have empathy and we can use design thinking as well as prototyping, but if fear gets mixed in the process, our “creative juices” don’t flow as well.  Sometimes fear comes in the form of someone insulting your creative idea or failing in what your end goal was with your innovative idea.  It could present itself in many ways, but either way, fear restricts or even stops creative confidence.

Weekly prompt:  Why is design thinking an important skill in social innovation?

I think design thinking is important in social innovation because it give us a viewpoint when using the model.  Sometimes, for me, when I have something to look at, I tend to grasp the idea quicker.  The model helps us pinpoint critical points (emphasize, define, ideate, prototype, and test) that need to be understood in order to get to the end result in helping with a social problem.  From emphasizing to testing, the order in which the model shows us to go, it gets us to a place of understanding the root issue in a way that looking in through the outside layers never could reach.  If the process is followed correctly, the solution will lie in the needs of the people being met before thinking of a possible solution.