Mindsets of a Human Centered Designer

How we used the mindsets in our design

1. Innovation is for everyone

Creativity isn't just a one dimensional thought process it is thinking outside the box and using different methods to come up with new possibilities. When we started out we didn't base the problem only on our experiences we went and asked other Old Dominion University students and faculty. The final product was a result of not one but four different people from four different backgrounds coming together to create a product that will benefit students of Old Dominion University.

2. know your why

Our mission is to communicate about our campuses extensive resources for African American & Latinx ODU students more specifically freshman, first generation, and transfer students and in the process reducing the stigma of getting help. Our team is a mix of first generation and transfer students so we understood the feelings of not knowing about resources around campus. We also know what it like to find out about those resources when it is too late and we don't want other students like us to go through the same problems we faced especially if it is because they feel like they can't ask for help or that they don't know that help is out there.

3. show & tell

We acknowledge as students that we don't like asking for help even when there is resources out there and it is being offered. However, being able to know about the resources from the start and having them constantly being presented to the student makes it more present. The ability for the student to know that they have other students and staff in this program to ask for help because they are going through the process together enables the student to be more comfortable with asking for help because it is available to them.

4. radical collaboration

It has been proven that diversity in an organization can increase productivity and team Webb believes that in O.D.U. a diverse group of people can get together to increase awareness of those areas that only multi cross disciplinary collaboration can reveal this will lead to the success of all students but most of all minority groups

5. empathetic & human-centered

As a human -center designers, we have to understand the people for whom we are designing. As a team we have to understand the difficulties that students face in ODU. It is necessary to uncover the students needs and their desires in order to explain their behaviors.

6. embracing ambiguity

We embrace ambiguity as approached how we could overcome stigma of asking for help for black and brown people. This stigma is deep rooted so we wanted a program that would help to compact the stigma little by little with help from others. We ourselves had to get out of our comfort zone and ask question and ask for help from our follow students to see how best our solution would help everyone. We changed our solution multiple times because as we leaned into the ambiguity of this huge problem we saw that the only way to overcome this stigma is to jump with both feet and hope you land. We want to be that push for students so when they need help after completing this program they will be better prepared to jump.

7. iterate, iterate, iterate

It takes more then one try to design something for everyone. You don't want to exclude someone on accident or design a product that wouldn't work for a wide array of people specially with how diverse Old Dominion campus is. We had to go back over and over again to make sure that our idea would be the best product we could put forth and I'm sure after this website is complete we will go back again to add to or change a piece of our program to help more people. But every time we go back over something and revise a concept our program gets significantly better then it was before. We want students to Wear your Crown Proud but to do this they first must, Earn your crown and we as a team earned our crowns by iteration.

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