CHALLENGE:

When I was an Undergrad, my college used to have this 2-3 day Technical symposium that showcased  various events of different departments of the college. This was a flagship event of the college as it used  to showcase the technical expertise of the various students participating from across the nation while  promoting the college itself. Until one year it was decided by the college that the symposiums shall be  conducted separately for each department to attract larger crowds and enhance publicity. A new  student committee was formed in each department and I was chosen as the Vice President for mine i.e.  Mechanical Engineering. Our task as a team was to design a completely new model of the symposium  exclusive for our department with new events, attractions, themes etc. We had no reference to build  upon and had to start from scratch and that’s where I got to apply one of the design thinking tools which  I didn’t know they were one back then.

SELECTION:

Even though we had a student committee to decide on the above challenges, I decided to involve all the  students for the idea generation part. The logic behind it was that when you are designing something for  the masses why not involve & ask them. The tool that we decided to select was Storytelling that was  unanimously agreed by the student committee in unison. The logic behind selecting a tool like  storytelling was pretty straight forward, every person part of the Mechanical department must be  having some sort of story behind them that prompted or ignited them to choose this specialization. We  wanted to understand each & everyone’s story to formulate our theme & event so that the crux of our  model is based on actual emotions that people could resonate. Understanding what fascinated them,  their likings, childhood ideas, inspired & awed them was essential in order to come up with a plan that  could appeal to the soul of the masses.

APPLICATION:

So we started with our process of interacting & sharing with people the reason why they choose  Mechanical as their Engineering specialization. One such student narrated us the story that how he was  so much fascinated by racing cars that he either wanted to build one or drive it. This story in particular  was common among a majority of the students, the passion & love for automobiles. A few people  shared stories that showcased their love for bridges, some part of their nostalgic childhood memory  with family while others used to get mesmerized by the one present in their hometown. There was one  unique story that I got to hear from one of my batch regarding airplanes and I could clearly visualize  everything he wanted to portray. He used to visit his grandparent’s house during vacations which was  located near an air force station and every time when a fighter jet took off he used to make paper air  planes and launch them as well. We came across multiple such stories that had a deep connect with  their soul & emotions and as a team tried to bank on that aspect for a strong platform for our event.

INSIGHT:

The entire exercise was extremely eye opening & pleasing to say the least. There is a general perception  that a minor section of people come to study out of peer & family pressure, lack of options etc. But  through this entire process a lot of pre conceived notions, shackles were broken and much broader  perspective was achieved. Coming to specific insights that we got from the exercise, we were clear of 4- 5 events that was a sure shot in the list as a majority of the student crowd had a backstory to it.  Listening to the stories was also beneficial for the fact that we could now recognize who can actively  volunteer in which event and give his or her 100% percent in terms of ideas, creativity & involvement.  Also it made us understand that not all events required the large scalability that we were afraid of, some  of them were as simple as a pen & paper based process.  The major insight that we could agree upon  was that designing an event structure based on themes which resonated with people’s underlying  emotion would not only foster participation on a large scale but could stand out for as a benchmark  event for our juniors.

APPROACH:

After learning from this course, I feel that a tool like Visualization could also have been extremely  beneficial. Drawing out patterns, process flow charts & ideas regarding the structure of events would  have allowed us to fine tune the entire events as a whole. Instead of communication and portraying  things verbally it would have resonated with my team a bit more had I used Visualization techniques  that could have garnered a much proactive response & initiative from the team.

