Category: Unconventional Design

For the empathy lego workshop, do you believe that it’s my first time playing lego?! My partner Ribirth and I had a lot of fun and worked together as a team very well. We both speak Chinese, in this case, we used Chinese to communicate. The object she built was a symmetrical robot. She also made her instruction very clear for me to understand. So it’s easy for me to follow her instruction and build an exactly same robot. What impressed me is the result of this little game. Me and Ribirth never talked to each other before this workshop. However, right after this few minutes’ game, I felt much closer to her. (I don’t know what she thought.)

After the game, we did a final project workshop. (I will definitely feel less comfortable or confident if I have to share with Ribirth about my final project idea without the empathy game.) The workshop was broken into several parts to help us take one step at each time to come up with new potential ideas or solutions to our partner’s project. The short amount of time and clear goal of each step really helped me to focus on what I was doing: reading, researching, brainstorming and communicating. We both gave each other very useful and mind-blowing advice. I especially want to thank Ribirth for providing those amazing ideas for my project.       

In this class, we first conducted the activity of building blocks. The person sitting on the right first built up an object with small blocks, then we are randomly grouped, and the person sitting on the left should build the same object as possible according to the instructions of the person on the right. My partner is Robin, and in this process, both of us need to close our eyes without looking at the objects in our hands, so communication is very important. Robin clearly conveyed how to build that object, and I often asked her when I didn’t understand, so in the end we made almost exactly the same thing.

After that we also shared ideas about our respective final projects. Robin gave me several good suggestions and inspired me to have some new ideas for my final project. It is not easy to clarify your thoughts to people of different backgrounds, but it is quite essential. These two activities made me see the power of communication, and many new ideas and thoughts will spring out during the brainstorm. Moreover, others can also see problems that I’m not aware of, which is very helpful for the development and improvement of my project.

This is a final project brainstorming class. We are divided into groups of two. and we have an interesting activity before we talk about our final project. The activity is very fun. First we found 15 sets of the same LEGO bricks. Then divide them into two parts. After the people on the right put the 15 blocks together, everyone closed their eyes. The person on the right described the shape of Lego to the person on the left. The person on the left tried to shape the Lego blocks into exactly the same shape. I am the right person, so when I describe it, I choose to tell my partner with as much objective description as possible. Because each LEGO has a different shape, I describe the arrangement of the circular protrusions on the building blocks to my partner to distinguish the different blocks. Finally we succeeded. I think this event is very interesting and it makes us aware of the importance of communication. When we are working in a group or brainstorming, it is also important to know how to clearly understand your thoughts.

Next we introduced each other’s ideas for their final project. After reading the intension of the other party, we stand in the perspective of the other party to ask questions and try to understand each other’s ideas. Then we did research and then wrote as many ideas as possible on paper. I think Xiaoyan’s ideas are very good. I think we need to add some interactions between users to improve the user experience and increase user stickiness. And I think that because of the popularity of parent-child related products, if you narrow down the scope of users, only focus on the gift of parent-child experience, it may attract more users.

Empathy Workshop:

I think this workshop is personally my favorite workshop in-class. The whole workshop was super unexpected. So I had no idea when we switched the table and the partner. When my first partner built the lego, I kinda realized what this workshop was and remembered how did she build it. But then it totally changed! In this workshop, my role is the communicator. I thought my communication skill was pretty strong, yet I can’t fully make my partner form the exact same structure as the previous person did. I think what I like about this workshop is that it helps me understand the way designer work with other people. We need to think from other people’s perspective and figure out how to communicate well so that other people can understand our intention. Sometimes when I thought I made something clear, it failed my expectation. So I need to work on this more in the future. 

Final Project Workshop:

Bonnie is a good partner to help me find more research on dating chatbots. When we went online for the research, she immediately found a lovebot, which helps me defines my project more clear. During the ideation stage, Bonnie is wild! She came up with so many ideas for me, and eventually, some of them were used in my final projects. The workshop really helped us to finish our final project more efficiently since we got someone else to think about the project in another perspective.