By: Justin Koga

I think that our “understanding” phase was the hardest part of our project, and I’m still not quite sure that we’ve left this phase. The design thinking process is lengthy. Sometimes as a team, we’d come to solutions before gaining a 360 degree view of our stakeholders. What we collectively learned was that while the design thinking process takes time and loads of effort, it will help us to fully synthesize a problem and come up with solutions that can be iterated over time. By interviewing stakeholders and committing to in-depth research, we ultimately position ourselves for a more robust “solution”. 

We interviewed ~10 professors in 2 days. This was tough! But what this gave us was a perspective that we hadn’t really experienced before. Professors are going through the same amount (if not more) uncertainty than students are experiencing. In this case, empathizing with the professor experience, which is a large portion of our online learning stakeholder portfolio, is necessary in order to develop a comprehensive project. 

I think that my greatest impact is my “why not” attitude. If something isn’t working out, there’s always a different approach to achieving a similar goal.