Elements of The Perfect Sausage Using Visualization

For my reflection I will design the perfect sausage.

Challenge:  The perfect sausage is a subjective claim, meaning that multiple  people can claim they have the perfect sausage, and all can be right.  My challenge  to this was to be more objective.  I can be more objective by answering for  questions:  What is? What if? What wows? And What works? (Liedtka & Ogilvie,  2011).   Answering these questions will bring a lot more people on board to my  idea of what a perfect sausage would be, and thus root out the more subjective and  personal claims of what the perfect sausage would be.

Another, and possibly biggest challenge to this is that I have only eaten sausage  and never made a sausage myself, so I did not know how to begin, much less  visualize the components of what entails a good sausage-other than the flavors of  the sausage.

Selection:  The tool I used is Visualization (below is where the Visualization tool  fits in the entire design process) Note: this is a scanned image, so I apologize for  the image quality.

(Liedtka & Ogilvie, 2011, p. 22).

I used the Visualization tool because it encompasses all the other tools in the  design process.  Plus, without a visualization of what the product would look like,  there is no product.

Application:  Visualization does not come naturally to me, so I needed inspiration  and did a web search for what a sausage is, or the essence of a sausage.  Basically,  sausage is a blend of grounded meat, species and usually enclosed in a casing from  animal intestines (Sausage, 2021).  After a web search, I visualized the individual  components in my mind and went to the supermarket to pick up the ingredients.  I  did run into an issue attempting to find the sausage casing, but I was able to  purchase the casings online via Amazon.   From there, visualization played another  role where I took the individual ingredients: ground meat, spices, white wine, and  casings and combined them into the finished product. I then cooked the sausages  on a grill and obtained a finished product After a product was combined, I selected  10 of my friends and family to taste the result.

Insight:  Without visualizing the components in my mind, there would be no  insight.  I like this tool as it helps me see all the individual components that would  go into the sausage.  I also used visualization to glance at what I thought the  perfect color of the sausage would be and the color of when it was done.  Of  course, I used a timer too.   I also visualized some of my friends and family eating  the sausage and visualized at their facial expressions.  Most of them enjoyed my  sausage creation.

Approach: Most of the critique came from too much salt in the sausage.  If I were  to do it again, I may use little salt in my next creation.  However, the feedback I  received was mostly positive and many would want me to make the sausage again.

References

Liedtka, J., & Ogilvie, T. (2011). Designing for Growth: a design thinking tool kit for managers. New York:

Columbia Business School Publishing.

Sausage. (2021, May 23). Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sausage

