Week 7 Reflection

This week, I found it quite hopeful listening to everyone’s solution for their own personal climate change goals. It amazed me how even with only four groups, the difference in ideas to solve very similar problems was incredible and made me really see that there are many plausible solutions to solve this crisis. From things like fashion, all the way to home design, there were options in pretty much all facets of life which were really cool to see.

For me in designing my own product, I loved the creative process. I often struggle when told to simply “come up with an idea” without any prompt or process. Through the whole project though, I found it very easy to come up with ideas because our whole thinking process was very laid out and organized. While working on SmartHearth, I felt that ideas for features came easily because of the exercises we did like the storyboards and the CLA that highlighted and identified reasons why the user was doing something, and what could help fix these habits. This is something that I will definitely implement into my work in engineering. I feel like this idea of design thinking and the design process really helps someone think clearly of the function and implications of a product. This clarity is very important in product development and something that will be a great tool for me in the future.

I also think this project opened my mind to using CLA as a solution finder. When looking at everyone's projects, you could see that each dealt with different levels of CLA and each satisfied a specific niche in its level as well. This breakdown of solutions was cool to see and looking back, I see how my mind jumped straight into a product because that is normally the scope at which I think. However, I now see that there are most likely solutions that don’t fall within the behavioral level, that could have larger effects on solving the problem.