Driving Question: How might we collaboratively implement a design-thinking process to meet the needs of the community we serve?

What were your goals for this module? How did you achieve them?

Our main goal for this module was to take the US ballot design issues and come up with a new ballot that the people understand. We went through many interviews with users to meet this goal and detected the main problems with the existing ballots. We found that generally, they were very confusing and out of order. We took the information we learned and implemented it into our design. To make sure that our design hit our goals, we got many rounds of feedback. In the end, the above design proved to be the most self-explanatory and neutral.

What did you learn about yourself, your creative process, or about your medium?

We learned tons about the US voting process, as well as how to lead effective interviews.

What did this project mean to you?

This project was very relevant to Hanna and interesting to Samy because of the US election happening this year and the scandals with voting fraud.

Driving Question: How might we collaboratively implement a design-thinking process to meet the needs of the community we serve?

Explanation of Summative

Our summative product is the concept design and layout for an app designed to help households cut back on their domestic food waste by providing them with an interface to better manage the contents of their fridge, their dietary needs, and trips to the grocery store. The app would address some of the main reasons for domestic food waste that we identified – overbuying of food in general and poor storage of it in the house (i.e. forgetting about it in the fridge, letting it exceed its expiry date and having to throw it away, etc).

What were your goals for this module? How did you achieve them?

Our primary goal as a team was to learn how to collaborate effectively online, especially when deprived of the intimacy and information exchange of real human contact. Our meetings were casual yet productive, and we made the most of our situation by calling each other frequently in between to compensate for the lost opportunities we would have had if we were physically together. Another of our goals was to learn how to properly conduct interviews with users – we achieved this first by researching the nuances of good and bad interviews and then interviewing members of our families, the TGS community, etc.

What did you learn about yourself or about your creative process or about your medium?

A large part of our creative process had to do with accommodating various people in our team. This meant scheduling meetings, which included keeping in mind a distance of 7 hours between two of the members’ timezones. In another sense, though, this involved designating roles based on different people’s abilities and expertise, largely to do with technology and software design. Therefore, we learned the importance of using the strengths of the people on our team and assigning them to the areas that they’d be most effective in.

What did this project mean to you?

This project was meaningful in that it brought a group of us students together who didn’t necessarily interact very much outside of school before; it also taught our team much about the real nature of collaboration as something that can be both online and in person.

Driving Question: How can I grow my own indoor herb garden in Finland’s dark winter?

What are you passionate about that lead you to choosing this project?

Being home so much allowed me to reflect on my personal actions and how I was contributing to the environment. I had in the past wanted to do a gardening project however traveling and limited outdoor space prevented that. 

What do you hope people will get from looking at your page?

I hope people will be inspired to possibly start their own mini herb gardens and realize that even having limited space won’t prevent you.

What was your initial idea and what did you want to do/learn with this project?

My initial idea was to just grow a herb garden and learn about the various herbs and how they grew from seed. 

Did your project develop and change from your initial idea, if so how?

Upon looking at the different learning targets I could possibly utilize I ended up adapting my project into a more of a science project where I explored how different soil types would effect growth. In my research, I ended up using 2 main variables: the soil type and 3 different herb seeds so that I may achieve the best results.

What are your big takeaway lessons from this project?

I think my biggest take away is that it was fun. I enjoyed observing and taking pictures of the plants growing. Watching something grow from seed is extremely rewarding and a beautiful part of life.