GROUP PROJECT
- Your assignment involves working in a group to tackle a real or hypothetical problem using Design Thinking and Lean Startup methods.
- Your team will creatively solve the issue, focusing on the first three stages of Design Thinking.
- You need to submit a document of up to 2500 words, highlighting your process and findings.
=> This assignment is to demonstrate your mastery of Design Thinking (DT) tools, rather than to perform a comparison or case study. The structure of your assignment should therefore emphasize how you have applied these DT tools effectively and what insights or learnings you have gained from each. Let's outline a structure that reflects this objective:
Suggested structure:
1/ Introduction (250 words)
2/ Phase 1 – Empathize and Identify (600 words)
3/ Phase 2 – Ideate (600 words)
4/ Phase 3 – Prototype (700 words)
5/ Ethical Consideration (250 words)
6/ Conclusion (200 words)
7/ References and Appendices (as required)
1. Design Thinking: A user-centered approach to problem-solving that involves understanding user needs, challenging assumptions, and redefining problems to identify alternative strategies and solutions.
2. Lean Startup: A methodology for developing businesses and products that aims to shorten product development cycles by adopting a combination of business-hypothesis-driven experimentation, iterative product releases, and validated learning.
3. Empathy (in Design Thinking): The ability to understand and share the feelings of another person, crucial in the initial stages of Design Thinking to truly grasp the user's needs and problems.
4. Prototyping: The process of creating an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process, typically a key step in both Design Thinking and Lean Startup methodologies.
5. Iterative Process: A method of developing products, services, or processes through repeated cycles of analysis, design, testing, and refinement.
6. Minimum Viable Product (MVP): In Lean Startup, an MVP is the version of a new product that allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.
7. User-Centric Design: Designing a product, service, or process with the end-user's needs, preferences, and limitations at the forefront.
8. Validated Learning: A process in Lean Startup where one learns by trying out an initial idea and then measuring it to validate the effect.
9. Ideation: The creative process of generating, developing, and communicating new ideas, where an idea is understood as a basic element of thought that can be visual, concrete, or abstract.
10. Brainstorming: A group creativity technique designed to generate a large number of ideas for the solution to a problem.
11. Feedback Loop: A process in which the outputs of a system are circled back and used as inputs, essential in both Lean Startup and Design Thinking for continuous improvement.
12. Pivot (in Lean Startup): A structured course correction designed to test a new fundamental hypothesis about the product, strategy, and engine of growth.
13. Stakeholder Analysis: The process of identifying and analyzing stakeholders and their interests in a project or business.
14. Customer Development: A formal methodology for building startups and new corporate ventures, focusing on understanding customer problems and needs.
15. Business Model Canvas: A strategic management template used for developing new business models or documenting existing ones, useful in aligning the activities of Lean Startup processes.
Suggested flow:
○ Introducing context of the study and problem statement
● Choose a real-world organizational aspects (e.g. health service, training process) OR a non-organization-related aspects (e.g. healthy soil, staff satisfaction, etc.) that is current and pressing and has negative consequences for the organization, its employees, or the community at large.
Example: An effective learning culture is a necessary component of an organization’s ecosystem, where individuals are encouraged to gain and share knowledge. Companies that learn fastest and adapt well to changing environments perform the best over time (Edward Hess n.d.). However, cultivating an effective learning culture is no small feat.
- Purpose and methodology of the report
The purpose of this report is to offer a holistic approach to addressing the issue through the application of Design Thinking.
It is structured into three primary sections, which correspond to the five steps of the Design Thinking framework: empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing, as outlined by Swapnil (2021).
→ This document will pinpoint the problem and delve into its underlying causes. Subsequently, it will examine the selected solution using various methods. In the end, it will meticulously detail prototypes of the concept, taking into account ethical implications.
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