Week 4 Journey Mapping

Week 4 Investigate, Personas and Empathy Mapping, Synthesising Information to Frame the Problem.

This week no one showed up for the before class meeting, which really upset me as I had taken the time to be there and only two people out of six told me they wouldn't be coming, and one girl has even changed her course. I think communication is essential in a group and as the group co-ordinator I was very unimpressed and hope this is not going to become a trend! 

Things we need do to:

• Print stuff off for our journey map and to visually put info together for our boards.
• Identify 3 personas that are very important in the context of the group, they are the average of the interview pool. - Done
• Decided on VesBar nothing else. - Done
• We need to bring there information regarding interviewees, need to come up with sampling profiles. - Done
• Interview staff at Vesbar

 Our Chosen Personas (no one really took it seriously)

Overall the activity was interesting as we were trying to find a sample that demonstrated an average of our investigation or even a stand out with some good advice, I think my group were slightly uncomfortable categorising people and found that there quick interviews didn't really help them with in depth analysis. We also found that guys are all together not really interested in the improvement of AUT life/ Vesbar as much as girls are, or at least aren't willing to talk about it as much.

Still to do

• Print stuff off for our journey map and to visually put info together for our boards.
• Interview staff at Vesbar
• Empathy mapping interviews
• synthesis information and create a problem framework.

One of the ones that pops out on this list is interviewing staff at Vesbar, we need to talk to the staff and then talk to the manager and for this we need to generate some probing but also general and friendly Questions, such as:

• Do you have a mission statement?
• How do you make profit?

So I will keep posting progress updates and I hope everyone gets more on to it!

Week 3 - Investigate Stage

This week our group met and decided to discuss how our research developed our ideas on our chosen subject.

Photos

• People were in small groups five people at most
• More people on smart phones than socialising
•  Social areas – courtyard, cafes.
• More comfortable seating areas would be nice
• Shelter in open spaces

Interview

• People didn’t have any idea of school spirit
• People aren’t here to socialise
• Want to socialise but have minimal opportunity
• People don’t make friends within classes, everyone becomes acquaintances

Solutions

• Encouragement from Uni to become more involved – better from AUSM (o week was shit
• More information regarding what is available
• Better student life at the Vespbar (quiz night, social events, cheap Tuesdays, give away tickets, Zoo section for students at recreational centres)
• More sporting options available for social fun teams
• Join schools together more

Ideas for Interview

What are you studying?

Are you interested in out of Uni activities?

What is your idea of Student Life/ Culture?

Do you feel like AUT has a culture?

Does it Concern you?

What does school Spirit at AUT mean to you?

Are you part of any extracurricular activities?

How would you improve School Spirit?

How would you Improve Vesbar?

Do we need better advertising?

How would redesign the Plaza?

What would be more appealing to you?

Our Idea falls within the top two piers of Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, Morality, Creativity, Actualisation, Respect, Confidence and Self Esteem, Confidence and Respect.

We were trying do discuss an idea for improving school spirit when it hit us that you really can't design a solution that will effectively cure lack of school spirit. For this we looked into AUSM who were really endeavouring to create school spirit through events, the problem was that no one was interested, students at AUT aren't interested in the idea of a student life, rather going to uni and getting there degree and going home. So we then decided to work on the idea of community rather than school spirit itself.

Ideas we came up with:

Community

·      Joining all the faculties together

·      Inter joining all the buildings

·      Re designing the plaza

·      Eating places

·      Redesigning the Vesbar (student bar)

VESBAR

·      Promotions/advertising

·      Visibility

·      Prices – extra cheap for AUT Students

·      Compare Vesbar (Student Bar) prices to Bars

·      Inclusive of students

These were some of the ideas we discussed more to come soon! :)

Reflective Journal Week 2 - Investigate Stage

This week we had our first meeting at the crack of dawn (10.20am) to discuss our groups statement of grace, detailing our intentions

Statement of Grace

Together this group hopes to achieve goals by a combination of our skills.

·      Nidhi Raniga – Attention to detail.

·      Rosie Manley – Creative Perspective

·      Luke Walker- Structural Analysis

·      Ben Ein –Critical Thinking

·      Kath Bowden – Organisational development

·      Ashley Walker - Creative Idea Generator

·      Devon Jones- Insightful Viewpoint

Work style and personality profile

·      Nidhi Raniga – Like to work with ideas fresh procrastinates, needs through explanation.

·      Rosie Manley – Hard copy work, hands on attitude., doesn’t cope under pressure.

·      Luke Walker - Spread out work evenly, to efficiently accomplish goals, makes hasty decisions.

·      Ben Ein – calm nature, organised and decisive, procrastinates.

·      Kath Bowden – Procrastinates, works best under pressure or organised working.

·      Ashley Walker – out of the box thinking, targeting problems efficiently, procrastinate.

·      Devon Jones – Calm, procrastinates, diligent and studious, impatient.

Meeting Schedule

·      Once a week every Monday gradually increasing with higher influx of work.

Expectations of each other

·      Everyone to put in same effort

·      Everyone to aim for A++

·      Communication – Facebook, Text, Email, in class, and Meeting sessions.

·      Voicing opinions.

·      Open communication.

·      Communicate Tardiness.

Failure Action Plan

·      Immediately address flaws in the group through open communication.

·      Unforeseen circumstances, planning and teamwork is key.

·      Personal communication, plan out parts of the assignment and delegate, in case of emergency, communication will be essential.

·      Delegation allows for no weak links, one person lets the group down and we will not achieve our goals.

·      Discuss problems head on, voice opinions negative or positive.Do we need to do work as a group? Or is it ok to collaborate separately and then come together later? How will we work through tasks?

 We must check back in constantly with the group in between each tasks.

Mission Statement

Work collaboratively to no only succeed but to understand tasks  present to us as a group, keep all lines of communication open in order to work towards a common goal and embrace constructive criticism and helping each other to excel.

Then we talked about Investigating our idea that AUT doesn't have a typical "Student Life"so to start the investigative process we talked about three different types of Investigation, Personal, Passive and Interactive. We started with Passive and went Knowledge spotting taking pictures of people in there environment, observing from a distance. we needed to ask ourselves , who are they? what are they doing? how/what are they feeling? and are there needs fully met? who/what/where.why/when/how.

We then went and took photos of people within there environments.

Reflective Journal Week 1 - Intro to Design Thinking

Today was the first class for Design Thinking at AUT, we first started discussing what we all thought Design Thinking was, my idea was that Design Thinking was a creative approach to problem solving.

As we went through the course we were given a glimpse into what Design Thinking really means and from my personal perspective it has a great focus on the relationship between design, creativity and innovation within a business context. 

"the methods and processes for investigating ill-defined problems acquiring information, analysing knowledge, and positing solutions in the design and planning"

To thoroughly explore this relationship several tools are used including empathy developing, insight gathering, brainstorming, creative ideation and basic idea 

prototyping. 

What really popped out about these ideas was how contemporary Design Thinking is and how it is versatile and can be applied to varying solutions through relatively simple processes. 

We then briefly went through the learning outcomes for this paper; 

1. Explain the fundamental principles of design. 

2. Explain the fundamental principles of design thinking including cognitive 

processes, human-centred research, collaboration, creativity and integration. 

4. Undertake basic design thinking project to drive the creation and implementation 

new ideas. 

3. Identify and analyse the key steps in the design thinking process including insight 

gathering and analysis, brainstorming,ideation and implementation. 

5. Communicate ideas effectively and creatively using basic visual tools. 

6. Analyse the impact of design thinking on contemporary business practices to drive 

ideas, to improve user/customer experience and help create business competitiveness.

We then briefly went over the IDEO Design Thinking Model that worked through six stages;

1. Understand

2. Observe 

3. Point of View 

4. Ideate 

5. Prototype

6. Test

Then we had a look at the AUT model we would be following for our problem solving

Another idea that struck me was that Design Thinking was incredibly human focused, not only about there products, graphics, buildings and services but there individual human experiences. 

After this process we were all asked to make collages that represented ideas regarding solutions to life as a student at AUT. My collage was about food and had a large McDonalds insignia so I was grouped together with people who largely used symbols in there group. 

After that we were asked to brainstorm general assumptions we had made about University.

My group and I then made a plan to meet at 10.20 every Monday before class for a debrief and to discuss. Overall I am excited about this class and am looking forward to branching out my way of thinking into a new perspective!