Reflection – Mind Mapping

Challenge

I am a student studying perfumery and cosmetics science. My team and I was being assigned of a  challenge to come up with a new idea on creating an innovative cosmetic product that hasn’t been  released to the market and that targets teenagers in particular.  There are however some limitation  in resources for instance, time and budget and also manpower. We were given a close deadline of 3  weeks for submission of our prototype and a presentation to do. As such, we will focus on  brainstorming and finding out the needs and wants of teenagers specifically through surveys and  interviews and dedicate the workload to each team member to ensure efficiency in meeting the  deadline.

Selection

Having gone through several design thinking projects and exercises, we were equipped with the  necessary tools and are ready to use the mind mapping. Mind mapping tool is basically a technique  used to accumulate the ideas generated and data collected from the idea generation phase. It is also  an intuitive, creative and visual tool to shape ideas in the design thinking process.

Application

To start off, we decided to do a survey form consisting of relevant questions to find out more on  teenagers lifestyle and their use and thoughts on cosmetic products in daily life. After which the survey  is completed and distributed to our target audience, we gathered all data collected from surveys and  interviews with teenagers and divided them in different groups/ sections. From there, we started to  take note of repetitive points being mentioned through the responses and came up with the top few  responses being highlighted repetitively. Using the mind mapping tool, we drew up the whole  overview with the few key responses highlighted and tried to link and connect different ideas  together. With the overview of the map, it was now easier for us to generate a need statement that  best fits the needs of teenagers in the cosmetics aspect.

With the need statement, out team is then able to start generating new and fresh ideas on what kind  of product we are going to make. From there, our team was required to generate a few inputs  individually and after that, we were to consolidate everyone’s input and list everything down in a  diagram. With all the ideas listed, we managed to cut down some of the ideas which was not as  relevant and came down to 5 top ideas. Lastly, each team member was then required to do a vote to  select the final idea deemed most appropriate and best suits our need statement.

Insight

With the mind mapping tool, it greatly enabled our team to see and visualize the whole overview of  the project. Not only that, it also provided us with a deeper insight with the diagrams and charts on  all the raw data which can be complicated and messy if not organized properly. With all the data, we  also listed down possibilities of the idea working and weather it is suitable for users. We also added  on additional thoughts that will be useful on top of the finalized ideas to make it better and improve

on the existing idea with the use of a mind map to see if everything will flow and work well together.  With this visual tool our team will then review the insights collected and incorporate it together with  the finalised idea.

Approach

With the use of these design thinking tools, our team will thus be able to move forward with the next  stage of the design thinking process on prototyping. We will also have come forward and are a step  closing to reaching the final conclusion and solution for this project.

