Design Thinking Toolkit

Design Thinking equips individuals like us with the ability to aid our teams by comprehending the needs of our audience, identifying risks inherent in innovating or creating new solutions, products, or services, and fostering collaboration by harnessing the diverse skills within the team, both collectively and individually.

This concept narrows down to 5 variables; People, Objects, Environment, Messages and Services.

Through my Overseas Social Innovation Project, we look into the roles of people through their demographics, behavioural traits, and quantity of people in the environment; Objects - we observe the items the people are interacting with, including furniture, devices, machines, appliances, tools; Environment – we embrace ourselves in the community and culture interacting people from diverse background and learn about their architecture, lighting, furniture, temperature, atmosphere; Messages – we listen attentively to the tone of the language or commonly used phrases in tag lines through social/professional interactions; Services – we cultivate hands-on experience where we can see the outcome of all services, apps, tools, and frameworks used to create an end product.

Thereafter, we pull together what’s desirable and feasible. Based on the interview and empathy study we conducted locally during our homestay, we came out with different data points from the people of RIC. We started filtering data points that were irrelevant.

During the process of Design Thinking, the practices for the process were not always linear. Some of these steps happened several times as we jumped back and forth between them. Moving through the phases of design thinking took us from a blank slate to a new, innovative solution.

During the OSIP, the empathy study was a great help to support us throughout the project. We framed questions on the go by identifying what inspires us to search for creative solutions.

Through our interaction with the community, we gathered inspiration as we were inspired by new thinking through discovering what people really need.

This approach deepens our understanding of the problem, enabling us to generate concrete ideas by surpassing the obvious and reaching breakthrough solutions. We iterate through testing, learning, and refining our ideas based on feedback and experiments, confidently steering the project towards success if it takes flight.

Finally, let's tell the tale. It's a purposeful and uplifting narrative crafted to ignite inspiration among others for our project. Our aim is to empower the women in the community through the art of paper weaving, encouraging them to persist in learning and surpassing all barriers, thus eradicating societal stigmas and embracing their desired identities.