Design Thinking for Innovation  Coursera

Final Reflection: Mind Mapping

Challenge:

I am currently a mechanical engineer student at Finolex Academy of Management and Technology coursing my fourth year. In one of my courses  (Design Methodologies), I was assigned as my final project to design a mechanism for a billboard that  allows several ads to be displayed. To do so we had a meeting with the costumer to learn his  requirements and his needs. The costumer currently has the infrastructure for static billboards;  therefore, our job is to propose a design for a mechanism that could be incorporated to it. The  mechanism must be unique and should not violate any existing patents, it should display an ad for ten  seconds and have a transition time of three seconds and should have low maintenance. With all this in  mind, a deep research in existing patents and possible mechanisms is needed.

Selection:

To assist me in the design process I used the Mind Mapping technique. Mind mapping is a tool that  allows designers to visualize all the ideas involved in a problem and to easily relate them with one  another. According to Crystal Padilla in the Mind Mapping Tool video (Module 3), “mind  mapping is looking for patterns and insights in a large quantity of data you collected during your  exploration of what is the current reality”. I selected this tool because it will help me to organize my  ideas and to relate the research provided by the costumer with possible solutions. Moreover, a mind  map will allow me to represent graphically every existing idea and possible mechanisms.

Application:

I applied the tool by dividing the main idea (billboard mechanism) into several branches. In one of the  branches, I wrote “patents” and drew several branches coming out of it with all patents related similar  mechanisms. By doing this I can clearly see the existing patents and easily propose improvements (or  whole new mechanisms) in the “What if?” phase. In other branches I wrote the specifications the client  wanted such as display and transition time and materials. Once I had all the ideas written or drawn in  the mind map, I drew arrows to connect ideas from a section to the ones of another section. With these  lines I could see graphically different combinations of mechanisms, materials, display methods among  other things. This helped me in the “What if?” phase to decide on possible solutions. For all the  combinations I then made a diagram of the pros and cons, considering manufacturing processes, costs,  and maintenance.

Insight:

This was a very useful technique to arrange all the disorganized and overwhelming initial data. With the  tool I could clearly pinpoint possible solutions to the problem I was trying to solve. Usually as engineers  we are focused on an initial idea before even starting the design thinking process. We skip directly to the  “What if?” phase without paying much attention to the “What is?” step. This is a mistake that I have  made in previous projects, finding a solution before knowing entirely the problem. With Mind Mapping I

can easily understand the problem because it helps me to organize my ideas and clearly see the patterns  in the data. The whole process of design thinking is very valuable and should not be ignored when  solving a problem.

Approach:

A different approach could have been taken using the same design tool. Considering I am still an  undergrad student, I could have asked the faculty professors to help me by proposing ideas to  complement the mind map. By doing so, the mind map would have had a greater level of validation and  back up from experts. This kind of mind map could have altered my final proposed mechanism.

