Design Thinking Week 5 Project

Reflection – Storytelling

Challenge

The first thing that came to mind in doing this assignment was an example provided in a course  module. It portrayed a community style kitchen that supported the local senior community by  providing meals, and that met an important need.

The staff are unhappy at being pressured to do more and more work at a faster and faster pace.  They have said that they are underpaid, underappreciated, and there is no career path to pursue,  nor any room for advancement. In other words, it’s a dead-end job with few rewards.

The organization bogged down due to employee disillusionment with their core mission – to  support their elder community. Part of the fix was to hire chefs to come in and train the kitchen  staff in some of the finer arts of culinary practice. That was a major catalyst towards resolving  the issues(s), in part.

My thought is to take this a step further by not only bringing chefs in to train the staff, but to also  elevate the organization even more by selling meals to go to the general public, making the staff  part owner/operators, and growing the business to the point where it could actually function as a  culinary training academy – of sorts.

Selection of Design Tool - Storytelling

I felt that it was the best method to convey my ideas as to these people and this organization in  transition. It seemed to possess the right arena in which to convey this story of organizational  transformation.

This scenario begs to be told in storybook form. That’s because it’s about people – their dreams,  hopes, frustrations, challenges – and their vision for a future.

I applied the tool to this scenario by envisioning the emotions, thoughts, and actions that kitchen  chefs, staff and support personnel would be experiencing. Stories have a way of giving a real- time picture of situations that are intimately tied to people’s lives.

Application and Insight That I Gained

This approach has given me a peek inside the minds and hearts of kitchen employees and their  supervisors. It’s not just a matter of exploring human emotion and the resulting behavior, it’s a  matter of understanding how people are thinking, feeling, and reasoning. That is actually a  central issue to this scenario - to make sense of what is going on, how to approach it, and what to  do – in order to understand the human equation.

Design Thinking Week 5 Project

Having to take human emotion and behavior, plus factoring in events, was interesting and  somewhat challenging. Still, all the information formed into a cohesive whole which then told a  dramatic story of people, their lives, and their livelihood.

Approach

Perhaps I could have used the Visualization tool in lieu of the Storytelling one, or blend both. In  hindsight, that might have been more effective. But to do honor to a particular tool, it’s best to  use it in a standalone sense and fully utilize all the perspectives and advantages that it provides.  After all, conveying information is principally about clarity and conciseness all while conveying  imagery and feelings in the most persuasive way possible.

As for my interpretation of human emotion, expression of that emotion, and how that drove their  behavior, it was an interesting journey and I had to give it careful thought. But in hindsight, I  probably should have looked more closely at all of these elements to decipher even more  important information.

