What’s in your Bag? Take 2

There are many different ways a person can confront a problem or task that is placed in front of them in order to achieve their goal. But between these options there are two roads placed in front of them as well, the quicker easier way out or the long road of trial and error which can sometimes lead to greater success. Many designers and artists share the passion of wanting to achieve success for themselves and the people who see their work knowing they gave it their full potential and didn’t just treat it like another thing on a checklist to be completed. Designers are able to achieve this goal because they all follow the same method of Design Thinking. This is a process that helps people to map out the necessary steps and standards to follow in order to reach their end result with satisfaction of their work by their peers and themselves. I can apply this process to my own life and to help me problem solve creatively for my job creating promotional pieces for my company’s social media pages. There five major steps to follow in this process are empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. Each step serves a purpose and cannot help to achieve the ultimate goal without the others. Empathize is the research necessary for a person to conduct so that they know what they’re going to make and for who their “target audience” is and how to make it fit correctly into the designated environment. This can be achieved through interacting with others and hearing their thoughts or observing normal behavior of people. I can go and see past social media posts and determine which ones received the best feedback and any patterns among them that best pertain to the target viewers. Define is when the designer can identify what the main problem is they are trying to solve and make connections based on the research gathered from before. Define can help me to determine the best possible way to portray the company’s message to its followers and define the problem statement. Ideate helps a designer to visually map out their ideas through things like sketches and storyboards so that they can better organize their ideas and take the time to see what fits and what should be reconsidered or discarded. This is when I would draw out all my ideas and concepts and then go through what I want on the final product by placing those images on a paper and organizing them in a way that makes sense. From these visual references designers can move on to creating prototypes and make their solutions to the problem a reality. I would make a sketch that would resemble what I picture the final image to look like on the social media page. Then the last step is to test the prototypes sometimes with test subjects and also allow for feedback from peers. I would show my prototype to my peers and manager for approval and feedback and usually I go back a couple of more times to the prototype stage for revisions and add things I think would make it better. The first prototype usually doesn’t always mean it’s the final product, but the process of Design Thinking allows for the designer to go back to the prototype stage to apply what they learned from the test and their peers to make it better and can even go back to their notes from ideate. If a designer does trial and error multiple times it does not mean complete failure but rather the greater chance of an outcome of not just solving the problem but going above and beyond.