Example Reflection – Mind Mapping

Challenge & Selection

Last year, my school brought us to Philippines, Antipolo to do a research on how to  further improve the livelihood of the people in Calawis. In Calawis, many people  value the tradition of basket weaving as they have been doing it for generations  and it is their source of income. Through this project, we were task to improve the  livelihood of the people in Calawis by increasing the production and efficiency of  basket weaving so that the villagers are able to weave more basket in a day and  earn more income for their family.

In this project, my group and I used Mind Mapping tool a lot as this tool helps us to  look for patterns and insight in a large quantity of data that we collected during  our interviews and research about the villagers. It also acts as an engaging  alternative to share with our group members the details that we came across  while interviewing the villager. As it is more visual and creative, it helps many of us  to understand quickly and come out with ideas.

Application

Upon reaching the village, we went over there to experience the life of the  villagers and find out the problems that they faced while weaving the basket. We  went to many villagers in Calawis to gather the information in groups before we  started it by gathering information that we had and jot it down on post it notes.  With all the post it notes that we have, we place it in different category of the  mind map. This was the mind map that we gathered. For example, the category  varies from “Problems faced by Villagers when weaving basket”, “How many  basket do they weave a day”, “How much do they earn per basket” and “How long  do they take to weave a basket”.

We place the mind map on the wall and from there we started to analyze as a  group what are the main problems of the villagers from all the information that we  have gathered. After that we came out with a persona and project statement  which we used to lead us to our ideations for the villagers. Mind mapping was very  effective as it helps to break down the information and let us rearrange the data  by category. From there, we were able to find out what are the problems so that  we can create a product that benefits the villagers and achieve our aim, to  improve the livelihood of the villagers.

Insight & Approach

I have learned that in this project, mind map has acts as a very useful, creative and  engaging tool to gather feedbacks from everyone as well as having a deeper  understanding of the problems that the villagers are facing and what we can do to  solve it. I feel that the biggest takeaway from this project is the shared insights  that different groups have found out and it enhance our learning, which helps us  to define their problem with basket weaving. It also helps us to know what we can  do with the information and provide a solution to the problem.

