From Ideation to Implementation: My STEAMunity experience

I worked on a low-fidelity prototype with a team of students across various schools to solve a real-world problem in Singapore over 2 weeks.

During the March holidays, I got to meet my team. We learnt about Design Thinking: Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver. We first decided to tackle the problem of facilitating the use of elderly wheelchairs to move down in HDB buildings and determined our target group. We also learnt to identify the existing challenges faced by our target group and come up with an opportunity statement. We also managed to explore potential solutions. Through the first few days, I realised that my team were of different ages and from different schools. This made it hard to connect with their experiences. Hence, I tried my best to socialise with them through the first few days to establish a sense of camaraderie within the team and make it easier for me to understand them. It was also enriching for me to hear from industry experts about problems that others faced as I learnt to understand and empathise with communities that I did not have much contact with in real life.

Over the next 2 weeks, we had meetings both online and offline to check in on each other's progress. It was often hard to coordinate meetings as we had a wide variety of schedules and we would meet until late at night. However, we would communicate important information by working on the same website so everyone would receive updates about our progress on the project as well as answer questions about the project ranging from scientific concepts to ideation. I was incredibly amazed at my groupmates as they were able to showcase their leadership qualities and their understanding of Science concepts which they applied to our project. It taught me to value all of my groupmates and make sure to utilise their skillsets to different aspects of the project. We also encouraged each other when we faced challenges

In the end, we managed to give a presentation about our project and move on to the next stage. However, I chose to withdraw due to taking on other commitments and I wanted to make sure I could devote enough time to my commitments without tiring myself out in the long run. Despite this, I still cherish the memories I made with my team and if I did not have other commitments, I would have wanted to continue with my team as well.