Reflection - Visualization

Challenge & Selection

For a group project, my group was tasked to figure out our own challenge we would want

to solve. So as a group we decided we wanted to work on improving the safety of e-scooter  riders. This could take on multiple aspects like adding a shared helmet or improving the battery  life of the scooter. After deciding to pursue the shared helmet route, we still had to decide how  we would implement and promote the usage of the helmet. So our goal was to come up with an  improved design of e-scooter to allow for riders to have access to helmets while maintaining  good hygiene and increasing safety of riders.

The tool I used was visualization - a tool that allows a shared understanding of the

problem whether through graphics, tables, or videos. I chose this tool because we were just  getting started and wanted to share and understand each of our ideas well before making a  decision.    Application

After brainstorming, we decided to share our ideas. Initially, we were trying to share our

ideas without any images. As we began discussing our ideas, we found out that each of us had a  different idea of the proposed solutions. So to fix this issue, I applied the visualization tool.  However, instead of just telling the person who came up with the idea to draw out what they  were thinking. I applied a bit differently where we each drew what we thought the proposed  solution was. After finishing our drawings, we compared our drawings and found that each of  our drawings were different, but all of them could potentially work. We picked different aspects  of each of our designs to create a totally different design than each had proposed. Not only  increasing the amount of ideas, but also how each unique part of the helmet could be designed.    Insight  This tool worked really well with my group. As our design project was open to all ideas, by  drawing out each of proposed ideas we were able to increase the number of ideas to improve the  design of the helmet. The graphics really helped us get a more concrete understanding of helmet  design. We were then able to analyze the helmet further and all be on the same page, so none of  us were confused about what we were doing. Though I did not apply visualization exactly how it  was described in this course, I feel that it allowed us to come up with a better final product.    Approach  As my group was just starting, the visualization tool helped a great deal in solidifying our  thoughts for the final solution. For future projects, I will do a similar exercise so that we will all  be on the same page and also understand each of the proposals. We will then proceed to use  other design methods, so that we can improve our design thinking.

