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Example Reflection- Mind Map

1. Challenge: Describe your challenge, including all relevant information.

The challenge that I face is to identify what is causing the tribal groups of a certain district to not  take up the employment opportunities provided by the government. The government outreach  workers had observed the impoverishment that the tribals have been living in and as this reflects  the economic condition of the district, the district government had passed a policy to provide  employment opportunities for the tribal men and women, a 300 days labour and salaried  programme

2. Selection: In your own words, briefly describe the tool you selected (e.g., what it is and why you

selected it for your challenge -- including any appropriate video lecture references).

The tool I’ve selected for overcoming this challenge is mind mapping tool which is a tool that looks  for patterns and insights that can help in providing a more creative solution to the design challenge  one faces. This particular tool will be helpful in understanding the connection of different aspects  of the life, features, lifestyle of tribal population and their perception of employment and its  purpose. The application of this tool is explained in week 3’s 4th video.

3. Application: Describe how you applied the tool you selected to your challenge (e.g., what you did

and how the tool was applied effectively or ineffectively).

I met with the tribal population, interacted with them on various things relating to perception of  occupation and other activities they do, about the problems they face where they work right now  (those who are employed). Spoke to those who were part of this Tribal employment programme in  order to get an understanding of reasons (innate as well) as to why they stopped in between.  Instead of writing the points down as a list, I made a mind map for each person and identified the  common factors and responses. So the project designing team, decided to brain storm ideas on  how to avoid the problems/pain points the previous project had.

4. Insight: Describe the insight you gained from applying the tool you selected to your challenge

(e.g., how an insight affected your thinking about the challenge and about design thinking more  broadly).

It was easy to apply this tool and was fun as well because I didn’t have to use formal language  and could draw simple pictures to express the point being written. The tool made it easier for me  to write the final report as everything in the mind map was sequenced and connected. This is a  very effective tool to use to when conducting explorative studies.

5. Approach: Describe what you might do differently next time -- applying the same tool you selected

or a different one -- and the reason(s) why.

Next time I’ll use the ethnographic tool as well to identify and compare the employment perception  of tribals and non-tribals so that this document can be referred in future while designing projects  for tribals, so as to avoid assumptions that the needs of tribals and non-tribals are same or similar.

