Reflection

Challenge:

Challenge is related to elevator. We often spend too much time thinking in front of elevator thinking about should we take elevator or stairs to reach destination. In 5+ story buildings, this problem is even more observed. And if elevator has to make opposite direction trip before taking us to our destination, time increases even more. So, we need to think of a solution to help us take decision to choose between elevator or stairs, or just take decision for us. The challenge is Human-centered. Outcomes are unpredictable, as consumers’ behaviour will be unpredictable. Data available is rather scarce.

Selection:

The tool I selected was mind mapping as the challenge involves quite complicated relationships between elements. Also, the data collection phase will require questions to be asked to group of people. Appropriate questions to be asked will come out through mind mapping elements. These questions I came up with how much time can you spend waiting for lift, what do they want( system to take decision for them or provide easy data to decide themselves), etc.

Application:

See attached image of mind mapping diagram. What Is: I used mind mapping tool to decide exact problem statement that is we need to make decisions easier for consumers who use an elevator. What If: In preliminary stage I have 3 options for consumers to choose from which are ready concepts. More options can be thought of by looking at mind map. What wows: With Google form, I will take survey of consumers. They can suggest their own solutions as well. What works: This will be done iteratively after doing above steps.

Insight:

As I went through first three steps, I came up with more ways to solve problem. Like , maybe we can take decision by just previous data of elevator times taken during that period, or giving consumer approx time that will be taken to reach destination floor and let him decide, etc. By survey with google form survey idea that I came up through mind mapping tool collected more than enough data to train my system in initial phases.

Approach:

The same data can be collected through journey mapping as well, but it will be quite time consuming. But data collected through journey mapping will be of better quality as it will be directly collected from consumers’ perspective rather than an observers perspective. But most probably, the system will consist of machine learning, so providing sufficiently enough data to computer can interpolate and generate more data through Machine Learning. So going with mind mapping will be better.

