1. “From the buildings in which we live and work, to the cars we drive, or the knives and forks with which we eat, everything we use was designed to create some sort of marriage between _________________ and _________________.”
2. The folks at IDEO state that they are not experts in any given area. But, they do claim to be experts on the Design, which they apply to the innovation of consumer products.
3. After the team of designers is brought together, told the problem, and informed they have five days to “pull it off,” what phase of the design process do they immediately engage in?
They immediately begin the proccess of Brainstorming. Criteria and Constraints come up first, and then the materials needed for the prototype. They then gather research for the project, and then create plausible ideas.
4. Give two examples of what the team members did during this phase.
a. Immediately, they list all of the possible ideas that come into their heads, since every idea is a posibility in design.
b. Everybody went to the field, and gathered the information about the Shopping Carts first hand. They all go and find stories, incidents, and information about what they are re-designing, which in this case, is a shopping cart.
5. List five rules-of-thumb that IDEO employees follow when they share ideas during the brainstorming phase:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
6. Why should wild (and sometimes crazy) ideas be entertained during the brainstorming phase?
7. After the brainstorming phase was over, the team narrowed down the hundreds of ideas by Voting for those ideas that were not only “cool” but also _________________ in a short period of time. What phase of the design process is this called?
8. IDEO believes that the ideas and efforts of a ______________ will always be more successful than the planning of a lone genius.
9. Once the ideas were narrowed down and divided into categories, the group was split into four smaller teams. What phase(s) of the design process was each of these groups responsible for?
Each of these groups were building prototypes of the design. They each took one of the main aspects of the problem, and re-iterated it into possible solutions.
10. The leaders at IDEO believe that ________________ behavior and a playfull environment are two important reasons why their employees are able to think quickly and creatively to produce innovative results.
11. Sometimes, people come up with great solutions that work by trying their ideas first, and asking for _________________ later.
12. Design is often a process of going too far and having to take a few steps back. What phase of the design process would the critique of the four mock-ups come under?
13. Upon critique of the four teams’ models, it was obvious that none of the teams had developed an optimum solution. However, the people at IDEO believe that it is important to _____________ often in order to _____________ sooner.
14. What percentage of the entire week’s time did it take to fabricate the final prototype?
Days 1 and 2 were creating the basic protypes, and it took three days for the final protoype to be created, with the majority of the work completed on the last day.
15. Instead of showering his design team with a tremendous amount of praise, what did the boss require his employees to do with their new design?
The Boss wanted to see if the design was practical; So, the boss took the cart and some of his employees to a grocery store, and tested out the mutual design.
16. Of all the things that we are surrounded by every day, what has not been placed through the design process?
There are many things, that have been made the same way, for as long as it's existence. While most of the things that we use have at one point, been re-created, many things can't be currently refined. For example, our windows; panes of glass. How can we re-create a pane of glass, if there isn't much to change about it?
Conclusion
1. What did you find to be the most impressive part of the team’s effort?
Personally, I don't really understand how everybody was able to work in such a jocular enviroment. Although I do agree that people need breaks, and that sitting in a desk job for several hours can be monotonous, it can be really easy to get off on a tangent, and lose sight of the project.
2. What advantages are there to having a design team with members that have non-engineering backgrounds?
If everybody has the same backround, you don't have that much that you can improvise on. If you have a team of multiple professions, they can each argue and create more ideas, instead of just the practical ideas done by a single profession.
3. There was a point in the process where a self-appointed group of adults stepped up, stopped the ideas, and redirected the group to break up into teams. Why was this done?
They noticed that the project was being persuaded too much by the project manager. They decided that the majority of the project should be in hands of the builders, instead of just done by a single manager. This allows for unique individuality to be used in the workplace enviroment.
4. At the end of the video, Dave Kelly states, “Look around. The only things that are not designed are the things we find in nature.” Can you think of anything that would contradict this statement?
Technically, geneticly modified plants. But in reality, anything that's manmade at one point or another, has or will be, re-invented to be more practical in application.
