In this week we took a back seat in developing our own projects as we looked more in depth at Human-Centred Design which is a creative approach to problem solving, it is also a very personalised way of designing as it is about building empathy for the person you are designing for.

We worked in pairs to interview each other about our trials and tribulations on our commute into university, using the sheets that were set up to dig deeper in each ongoing interview, taking it in turns in our pairs.

These sheets also helped us go through all the stages of Human- Centred ~Design thinking –

• The Inspiration phase: learn directly from the people you’re designing for as you immerse yourself in their lives and come to deeply understand their needs.
• The Ideation phase: make sense of what you learned, identify opportunities for design, and prototype possible solutions.
• The Implementation phase: bring your solution to life, and eventually, to market

We then had an arty session, designing quick prototypes for our end solution that we had come up with. https://www.facebook.com/jayumcooper/videos/10155985112296678/

For me my partners problem was that on the way to uni he was bad at panning his journey and wasn’t very good at calculating what time he would need to eave in order to get to different buildings on campus as he always only left himself about 10 minutes to get there and ends up rushing. Another element of my partners problem was that his morning routine was also rushed such as showering and making tea, and if that he didn’t get the right amount of tea before he set off on his journey, he becomes less focused. In the end I cam up with an app that my partner can interact with, putting in where he needs to get too and how many teas he wants, the app then calculates his morning routine and alarms him when he need to do each step e.g. showering/ getting dressed. The app also would connect to smart devices in the home such as the kettle, which would be making tea as my partner will be doing something else.

We then all shared feedback which we live streamed- https://www.facebook.com/jayumcooper/videos/10155983150776678/

My feedback was that my design needed more incentive to use, like the tea. Maybe more rewards throughout the morning routine. I then need to thin of what ideas come out of this and personalise the app further to what my partners incentive actually is or what it could be.

Overall this task was very good to look at how personalised design can be thought about and the interview section was useful to think about how you can get started in designing a solution for the problem by gaining empathy for the person or group of people you are aiming to help.