Process Journal

Joann Doan's Process Journal for INSN 540 - Spring 2020

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IDSN - 540: Unit 14 | Process Journal - Evaluation

Reflect on the methods and techniques that are most appropriate for evaluating the performance of your groups implementation and summarize those thoughts in a new post in your process journal. How do you assess the outcome of the various phases of the creative problem solving process that your project has gone through? Create a post for your blog

Google docs really helped our team. We really saw an evolution of our work throughout the semester. Even our deck 2 weeks ago verses what we just finished working on is crazy. There’s definitely evolution and growth as a team.

 It’s nice when Aaron gives us time during class after presenting to work with each other. Our team uses that time to debrief feedback that is fresh on our minds and we evaluate what we need to focus on. The areas with the most critic are naturally areas that we focus on improvement the most. We tend to iterate and iterate until we are satisfied with our product. 

I also noticed that when we first started, there was no clear role within the team and we didn’t use the time we had as efficiently as we could’ve. There were some assignments that could have been divided and done on our own, but as we got more comfortable communicating with each other and trusting each other we started to delegate tasks and assignments based on our strengths/interests. 

I think we did very well through the phases of our creative problem solving process overall. It was a bit choppy at first, but started streamlining as we got use to the work and each other. This is exactly like the idea of iteration anyway, you continue to do it until it get’s better. I feel like each week and each meeting we have with our team the better and more efficient they become. We become better at problem solving and knowing what creative problem solving suits our team best. 

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IDSN 540 - Process Journal Unit 13

Reflect on how you and your team spent the week iterating on your solution. What were some of the success, and failure points? Did you have to pivot your idea? How did you generate visual assets for your solution? How can you put these to use in your final presentation materials? Summarize those thoughts in a new post in your process journal

Our team didn’t have too much of a difficult time on iterating our solution. I think we have improved tremendously since presenting out project 2 weeks ago. We really took Aaron’s advice and really focused on the problem at hand so we got very specific and detailed. We went into last class already thought out solution and really positive feedback. There wasn’t much pivoting of our idea, but rather cleaning up our solution and removing anything that isn’t necessary. 

This week’s iterating was focused more on how we are able to polish or solution and how we would present our deck to our clients. We had good solutions and ideas, but it’s not very presentable or appealing to the eye at the moment. We are stying our product and making sure that the information we are presenting to our audience is easier to digest. We are getting a bit more granular in some areas of our solution as well. 

We have added more graphs and some data in presentation as some forms of visual assets, because we know people are moved by data and facts. 

This week was a good week!  

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IDSN 540 - Implementation Part 1 Process Journal

Reflect on the methods and techniques that your group plans to use to communicate the ways that your project should be implemented and summarize those thoughts in a new post in your process journal. How do you most effectively pitch your idea to various stakeholders? How do you visually communicate the objects, environments, systems, processes, and interactions involved in your project implementation?

During this unit my team members and I met more than ever. 3 or 4 times in a week for an hour or more a day. It was the most that we have met in one week so far. We spent a lot of time really specifying our tasks and our goals. What helped us was playing devil’s advocate and in a way trying to put ourselves in the shoes of our customer (Aaron in this case). We thought about possible questions that may arise and what information our client may want to know. We wanted to make sure that we were thinking through as much about the details of how we’d implement our solution. 

We also went over how we’d answer these questions that may arise. We also got to understand the strength and weaknesses of our team members too. We delegated our tasks based on our strengths and assigned topics of ownership for each member. We also took account interest of each member too, making sure each person has a voice of their own. We really played into the role of us selling our idea to our client. We believe that the ability to express and present our idea can really impact the success of our implementation. 

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IDSN - 540: Ideation Process

Reflect on the methods and techniques that your group used to come up with ideas to address the problem you defined in the previous unit and summarize those acvies in a new post in your process journal. What ideas were the outcome of your group brainstorming exercise? What were some of the standout ideas and discussion-points that came out of the debriefing session? Post to your blog

Our group used the group brainstorming technique, we all were on Zoom together spewing our ideas on a google doc. We didn’t stop and kept going and everyone’s input and suggestion was welcome. We also brainstormed crazy ideas and ideated off of existing ideas. 

We first wanted to ask a bunch of questions, after we came up with all the questions we all came to a consensus on the question we liked the best as the team and wanted to focus on. This helped us narrow down what problem we wanted to solve. After we had the question, we continued the same process as we did coming up with the question: group brainstorm, brainstorm crazy ideas to help solve lead us closer to actually answering the questions. 

I found that with group brainstorming there were a lot of personal experience that was shared and stemmed from each individual’s background that if we brainstormed individually we wouldn’t have considered. Brainstorming as a group also helped us elevate any biases and helped us word our ideas better. 

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Unit 9 | Process Journal: Definition

Reflect on the methods and techniques that your group used to define the problem and summarize those activities in a new post in your process journal. How did you come to a consensus on what characteristic of the problem needs to be addressed?

It was very important for us to have a very clear topic and from there, we figured out a broad problem. With the bigger problem we created sub categories. A lot of the time was spent brain storming and then we got more specific. We diverged a couple of times, but we all saw it as something positive and something that would take us to the final definition. We also picked out key words from each of our definitions and used those words in the final problem statement definition.

We came to a consensus by making sure that from the very beginning everyone had input and a say. It was also important to make sure we are all on the same page. Our definition is a mixture of all our own definitions put together and finalized in agreement. We started off focusing less on creating the final definition, but more so focused on getting everything in our head on the Google doc as possible and condensed and perfected the final definition later. It was easy for all of us to come in to consensus, because we started off with translated and brainstorming the definition together. 

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IDSN - 540: Process Journal, Acceptance and Analysis

I think the biggest problem that I will face during this group project in IDSN-540 is the fact that there will be very little guidance and a lot of free flow. Contrary to what many of us are use to — which is structure — there will be a lot of autonomy on this project and there will be many different ways we can tackle the problem. Because there are so many different ways to go about, we will need to communicate more often and more clearly as a group to make sure we are all in agreement. 

I think setting standards and team norms in the beginning stages is a great way for us to really have a strong foundation to work on this project together. We also set goals and standards. It was also very important to us that we were all excited about the Topic we chose, because we would be working on this for the rest of the semester. We also wanted to choose a Topic that would benefit us as professionals in our careers. Not only will we be able to learn how to tackle the team dynamic, analyze problem solving, but also work on a topic that we normally would not have really gone out of the way to research. 

I realized that in the analysis phase of this process, we assigned subtopics to each individual and gathered as much information as possible. We then reconnected and educated each other on the topic of expertise. We also made sure that all of our research was put in one Google doc to be shared. Then we dissected our research together and made it more condensed. 

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Unit 3 - Creative Problem Solving Interviews

I decided to interview an undergraduate student, a product designer, and a copy writer. At first I was going to interview all professionals, but I was curious to see (because I’d like to think my problem solving skills during undergrad were pretty good) how college students/Gen Z’s problem solving routines are different than professionals. Here is what I found: 

The Undergrad Student - Janet

1. How do you generate ideas? 

Janet says that her ideas are generated when she’s reading books or watching YouTube. She emphasized that she is most productive when she is procrastinating - before she tackles a problem she distracts herself with cleaning her room or watching Netflix before solving the problem. When she can no longer procrastinate is when assignments are due and she is under pressure to complete her task. The pressure to preform is what helps her generate new ideas and overcome any obstacles.  

2. What process(es) do you use to solve problems?

First, she analyzes the problem and ask opinions/input from others. Then takes the idea that she likes the most and implements the idea. Once the implementation is done she moves on until another problem appears. 

The Product Designer - Heidi 

1. How do you generate ideas? 

Heidi generates new ideas by looking at/buying a lot of print material, finding random cool items (printed, vintage, etc) and keeping them around for later use. Pinterest is her friend and she enjoys online shopping to look at what other relevant brands and agencies are doing. As a designer your ideas are not liked by everyone, what you think is great work may not be aligned with someone else’s vision. Sometime you can give your all only for the direction to change - that can be a huge obstacle and the way she overcomes it is to take a break from it, work on something else or just work on it again the next day - that way she is looking at the problem/obstacle with fresh eyes. 

2. What process(es) do you use to solve problems?

First, I need to take time to learn about the whole problem. I need to make sure I understand what it is that I’m trying to solve. I take this time to fully understand so  I have enough context to effectively find solutions to problems. Then, I like talking to people and asking them their opinions because after you’ve looked at something for too long, you cant see small problems or inconsistencies like someone with fresh eyes can. After I have collected all the information that I need, I create a plan and execute on the plan. I reiterate until the final product/problem is solved and up to standard. 

The Copy Writer - Kristin 

1. How do you generate ideas? 

Kristin says nothing inspires her - “absolutely nothing”. However, to get inspired she likes to smoke weed or do yoga to get her creative juices flowing. She finds that sometimes as a copy writer you have to really adapt to each individual person’s request and way of speaking. It can be hard and often times people’s requests just don’t make sense at first so you don’t know where to start. She faces these obstacles by just “word vomiting”, meaning she just sits there and even if what she’s writing doesn’t make sense she doesn’t stop until she has nothing else she can write. She said “never stop to edit”, once she is done she’ll step away from what she’s written and once she feels refreshed she’d come back and pick out all the good things she’s written to use for later. 

2. What process(es) do you use to solve problems?

First, she just requests as much information as she can from the person that is requesting copy from her. She then just writes and writes as much as she can on the topic that she is working on. Once she’s done, she’d step away from the work and take a break so she can look at her copy again with fresh eyes. She calls this the planning stage. Once she picked out what she does like, she creates a rough draft that she then shares with a team member to hers to get input. After getting some advice from her team members and making any necessary edits, she presents her work to the copy requester - knowing that what she is about to present is still far from approval. Those who request copy from her always has input, when she gets back any input, new requests and suggestions she edits her copy according to their needs and continues to reiterate until her copy is finalized and approved by the copy requester. 

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Unit 2 | Process Journal: Exploring Creativity

Early thoughts of creativity: 

The meaning of creativity has shifted for me throughout the years. While I was younger up until I finished undergrad, I’ve always thought that creativity was something an individual is born with. Often times I would associate creativity with art. My conclusion was if you are creative you’d be able to do art, if you can’t do art you aren’t creative. However, as I grew older I realized that creativity is more than just arts and crafts and that I was creative all along. I came to this realization when I started working my first full time job out of college. I had limited tools to be successful at my job and to execute project that my director wanted me to deliver - the limitations there helped me be resourceful and challenged me to be observant of the problem I was assigned to solve. When I was in an environment where I was required to create new things and to solve new problems, I realized what it meant to be creative. 

What creativity means to me now: 

Problem solving is creativity. Innovation is creativity. Defining and facing a challenge is creativity. The ability to express yourself is creativity - either through emotions, through art, through words - it’s endless! 

Creativity to me is to think beyond limitations and to be positive of the outcome. I agree with what Professor Tina Seelig said about a creative person being a quilt not a puzzle. Creativity doesn’t take failure as a no, but rather learnings for the next iteration of the creative project. I also think, you don’t need to create something that’s never existed before to be creative; you can take something that’s new to you and make it your own thing - that to me, is also creativity.