Visual Thinking 

 Challenge & Selection 

 Back when I was a sophomore in college @ La Salle College , every student had to participate in 

 a design thinking challenge that took place a week before the second semester . The task team I was   assigned with was working with an assisted living community , with the task being making the guests   stays more enjoyable . Seems like a simple task , but what do 6 college sophomores know about assisted   living ? The answer is , very little . The resources we had where mentors ( older peers ) and design thinking   coaches tasked to oversee the teams . We had two scheduled visits to the community and a 5 days   deadline for our suggested improvements . 

 The Tool 

 With a more structured design thinking experiment , we incorporated a lot of the tools in our 

 approach to brainstorm new ideas to drive a more positive engagement within the community . Most   notably we focused on the Tool of Mind Mapping . During our first assisted living community visit , we   met with guests and listened to their stories and feedback , met with staff and employees on initiatives   and what worked and has n’t worked , and continued asking why . This first visit was essential in the mind   mapping process to give us the “ What Is ? ” understanding of the problem we needed to overcome . What   are the reasons guests are n’t happy ? What is the current state ? 

 From there we brought our observations , notes and questions from our business back to the 

 classroom to draw out what we had observed during our visit . From here we noticed everyone had   different ideas and observations from the visit that we noted on a shared whiteboard . When it came   down to brainstorming new ideas , we used a philosophy “ Yes and … ” to address all ideas , go or bad , to   let them materialize into something unexpected ! This process of “ Yes and … ” led us down many paths   and addressed the What If in our ideation sessions . 

 Once we came up with a good group of Ideas , we addressed the last two areas of the mind 

 mapping tool : What wows and What works . We looked at What Wows but building a diagram of our   suggestions for the panelists to see our vision come to life . Since we could n’t bring them to the facility   we created a current state and an altered future state with our suggested improvements . The What   works section came into play when we curated our pitch , worked through our ideas to form one   proposal and executed on the proposal . 

 Insight : 

 Learning from this course and from my previous experiences in Design thinking has reaffirmed my   enjoyment when practicing design thinking . 

 Approach : 

 From my example I would not go back and change anything from the process because it was my   first exposure to design thinking . After taking this course and learning more on the different   developmental methods to apply design thinking I am excited to execute more design thinking   approaches in my work . 


EMAIL: 
ID_NUM: 
NAME_STUDENT: 
PHONE_NUM: 
STREET_ADDRESS: 
URL_PERSONAL: 
USERNAME: 

### Task: You are a PII (Personal Identity Information) Detection. Given a essays written by students, you have to identify ONLY the following:
NAME_STUDENT - The full or partial name of a student that is not necessarily the author of the essay. This excludes instructors, authors, and other person names.
EMAIL - A student’s email address.
USERNAME - A student's username on any platform.
ID_NUM - A number or sequence of characters that could be used to identify a student, such as a student ID or a social security number.
PHONE_NUM - A phone number associated with a student.
URL_PERSONAL - A URL that might be used to identify a student.
STREET_ADDRESS - A full or partial street address that is associated with the student, such as their home address.
### Input: Visual Thinking 

 Challenge & Selection 

 Back when I was a sophomore in college @ La Salle College , every student had to participate in 

 a design thinking challenge that took place a week before the second semester . The task team I was   assigned with was working with an assisted living community , with the task being making the guests   stays more enjoyable . Seems like a simple task , but what do 6 college sophomores know about assisted   living ? The answer is , very little . The resources we had where mentors ( older peers ) and design thinking   coaches tasked to oversee the teams . We had two scheduled visits to the community and a 5 days   deadline for our suggested improvements . 

 The Tool 

 With a more structured design thinking experiment , we incorporated a lot of the tools in our 

 approach to brainstorm new ideas to drive a more positive engagement within the community . Most   notably we focused on the Tool of Mind Mapping . During our first assisted living community visit , we   met with guests and listened to their stories and feedback , met with staff and employees on initiatives   and what worked and has n’t worked , and continued asking why . This first visit was essential in the mind   mapping process to give us the “ What Is ? ” understanding of the problem we needed to overcome . What   are the reasons guests are n’t happy ? What is the current state ? 

 From there we brought our observations , notes and questions from our business back to the 

 classroom to draw out what we had observed during our visit . From here we noticed everyone had   different ideas and observations from the visit that we noted on a shared whiteboard . When it came   down to brainstorming new ideas , we used a philosophy “ Yes and … ” to address all ideas , go or bad , to   let them materialize into something unexpected ! This process of “ Yes and … ” led us down many paths   and addressed the What If in our ideation sessions . 

 Once we came up with a good group of Ideas , we addressed the last two areas of the mind 

 mapping tool : What wows and What works . We looked at What Wows but building a diagram of our   suggestions for the panelists to see our vision come to life . Since we could n’t bring them to the facility   we created a current state and an altered future state with our suggested improvements . The What   works section came into play when we curated our pitch , worked through our ideas to form one   proposal and executed on the proposal . 

 Insight : 

 Learning from this course and from my previous experiences in Design thinking has reaffirmed my   enjoyment when practicing design thinking . 

 Approach : 

 From my example I would not go back and change anything from the process because it was my   first exposure to design thinking . After taking this course and learning more on the different   developmental methods to apply design thinking I am excited to execute more design thinking   approaches in my work .
### Output: 