By Michele Schmidt 

 Better Commute Reflection - Visualization 

 Challenge 

 I have in the recent past worked with a few of my peers ( group of 6 ) , on a design challenge that is   human centric and was focused on ‘ Designing a Better Commute ’ . Some of the framework we applied   in selecting our target audience after discussion were as follows : 

 •   The commuter had to be residing and working in a Metropolitan City . 

 •   In order to narrow down to the most critical commute in a metropolitan city we would   particularly focus on participants commute to work in the morning . 

 •   Each commuter should have access to and apply atleast 2 means of transport . 

 It was decided to conduct a 15 - 20 min interview with 3 commuters , as a group . We noted down the   interviewees experience , needs , wants , likes , dislikes and asked them to make visual representations   of their experience . Our group met to share our observations and then continued to make further   visual notes on our understanding of the problem to come up with some radical solutions . Even the   solutions were approached through visualization . 

 Selection 

 Visualization is a tool that is extremely effective in engaging the creative side of the brain . Even those   who are not used to sketching can get past a lot of noise ( in the information ) and come up with some   innovative insights on the information available . For the stakeholders , visualization generally provides   a deeper meaning into the problem or solution . The advantage of Visualization is also that it can aptly   be used in almost every stage of Design - Thinking . Whether one is trying to gather information from   stakeholder through ethnography , or trying to mind - map in order to come up with design criteria , or   brainstorming for portfolio of ideas , or developing concepts that need to be prototyped or even   creating early prototypes – Visualization can be used and evolved at every touchpoint of the Design   Framework . This is one of the reasons , I have decided to select Visualization as my design tool for   reflection , the other being my recent exposure to visualization when approaching the design challenge   mentioned above . 

 Application 

 The participants in our design challenge were interviewed independently . We asked them to share   their experience on their morning commute to work and then followed up by understanding what   they liked , disliked about their time commuting . We also tried digging deeper into understanding what   they need changed and what would improve their experience . At the end , we asked them to sketch   something that comes to their mind when they think about their morning commute . 

 By Michele Schmidt 

 We made notes and attached the sketches of the interviewees . Then my design group met to   deliberate on the notes and came up with our observations . We also finally came up with a list of   solutions visually , based on the findings of the interviews . The visualization were able to use the   experiences and other attributes of the interviewees to build concepts for further brainstorming on   viable solutions . I have illustrated some of the solutions that we were able to visually present as part   of the study . ( Note : All the visualizations were created on Microsoft Whiteboard ) 

 By Michele Schmidt 

 Insight 

 For starters , none of the group members had any prior experience of sketching or art . But what we   realised that within a short time and followed by few iterations of attempting visual notes , we were   each able to come up with satisfactory visualizations that could be used to interpret and further our   understanding on the underlying challenges that our interviewees ( stakeholders ) were facing . I even   came to notice that our storytelling , mind - mapping and solution propositions became much easier to   be understood and accepted by other stakeholders within the organization . We were also able to build   our list of assumptions and missing data based on the last sketch I have shown above . 

 I must accept that being our first attempt to visualization and also to human - centric design thinking ,   we were still building our understanding of the framework and application . But with Jeanne ’s   coursework on Design Thinking in Innovation , I ’m able to further see the merits of the visualization   and the role it ’ll play in developing intuition into our target audiences ’ problems and emotions . 

 Approach 

 With all my understanding in Design Thinking at this point , going forward , I will : 

 •   Prepare some baseline visualizations for the stakeholders to connect with during the   interviews . 

 •   Try to build more visualizations of an immersive experience during the interviews and get   opinions or comments from the interviewees , which could give valuable insight that might   have been missed during the verbal interview . 


EMAIL: 
ID_NUM: 
NAME_STUDENT: Michele Schmidt, Michele Schmidt, Michele Schmidt
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: By Michele Schmidt 

 Better Commute Reflection - Visualization 

 Challenge 

 I have in the recent past worked with a few of my peers ( group of 6 ) , on a design challenge that is   human centric and was focused on ‘ Designing a Better Commute ’ . Some of the framework we applied   in selecting our target audience after discussion were as follows : 

 •   The commuter had to be residing and working in a Metropolitan City . 

 •   In order to narrow down to the most critical commute in a metropolitan city we would   particularly focus on participants commute to work in the morning . 

 •   Each commuter should have access to and apply atleast 2 means of transport . 

 It was decided to conduct a 15 - 20 min interview with 3 commuters , as a group . We noted down the   interviewees experience , needs , wants , likes , dislikes and asked them to make visual representations   of their experience . Our group met to share our observations and then continued to make further   visual notes on our understanding of the problem to come up with some radical solutions . Even the   solutions were approached through visualization . 

 Selection 

 Visualization is a tool that is extremely effective in engaging the creative side of the brain . Even those   who are not used to sketching can get past a lot of noise ( in the information ) and come up with some   innovative insights on the information available . For the stakeholders , visualization generally provides   a deeper meaning into the problem or solution . The advantage of Visualization is also that it can aptly   be used in almost every stage of Design - Thinking . Whether one is trying to gather information from   stakeholder through ethnography , or trying to mind - map in order to come up with design criteria , or   brainstorming for portfolio of ideas , or developing concepts that need to be prototyped or even   creating early prototypes – Visualization can be used and evolved at every touchpoint of the Design   Framework . This is one of the reasons , I have decided to select Visualization as my design tool for   reflection , the other being my recent exposure to visualization when approaching the design challenge   mentioned above . 

 Application 

 The participants in our design challenge were interviewed independently . We asked them to share   their experience on their morning commute to work and then followed up by understanding what   they liked , disliked about their time commuting . We also tried digging deeper into understanding what   they need changed and what would improve their experience . At the end , we asked them to sketch   something that comes to their mind when they think about their morning commute . 

 By Michele Schmidt 

 We made notes and attached the sketches of the interviewees . Then my design group met to   deliberate on the notes and came up with our observations . We also finally came up with a list of   solutions visually , based on the findings of the interviews . The visualization were able to use the   experiences and other attributes of the interviewees to build concepts for further brainstorming on   viable solutions . I have illustrated some of the solutions that we were able to visually present as part   of the study . ( Note : All the visualizations were created on Microsoft Whiteboard ) 

 By Michele Schmidt 

 Insight 

 For starters , none of the group members had any prior experience of sketching or art . But what we   realised that within a short time and followed by few iterations of attempting visual notes , we were   each able to come up with satisfactory visualizations that could be used to interpret and further our   understanding on the underlying challenges that our interviewees ( stakeholders ) were facing . I even   came to notice that our storytelling , mind - mapping and solution propositions became much easier to   be understood and accepted by other stakeholders within the organization . We were also able to build   our list of assumptions and missing data based on the last sketch I have shown above . 

 I must accept that being our first attempt to visualization and also to human - centric design thinking ,   we were still building our understanding of the framework and application . But with Jeanne ’s   coursework on Design Thinking in Innovation , I ’m able to further see the merits of the visualization   and the role it ’ll play in developing intuition into our target audiences ’ problems and emotions . 

 Approach 

 With all my understanding in Design Thinking at this point , going forward , I will : 

 •   Prepare some baseline visualizations for the stakeholders to connect with during the   interviews . 

 •   Try to build more visualizations of an immersive experience during the interviews and get   opinions or comments from the interviewees , which could give valuable insight that might   have been missed during the verbal interview .
### Output: 