In this class, our goal was to continue developing an Innovator's Mindset. To do this, we started by working to better undestand ourselves and how we interact with others. We then moved on to practicing empathy so we can better understand other people. Finally we combined these two important skills to participate in a design sprint, prototyping a product for a specific group.
In the first part of the class, we learned the value of understanding yourself. I found this especially valuable and challenging. It isn't very often that you take the time to reflect on what makes you who you are. Taking the time to explore your identity allows you to better understand what makes you who you are. It allows you to see parts of yourself that you may not have seen before. This is challenging because it requires you to be vulnerable and allow yourself to see not only your strengths, but also your shortcomings. For example, during the self-reflection portion of the class, I learned that I had strong empathy skills. During our design sprint, I conducted interviews with a professor and current student. I had to use my empathy to not only listen to the answers they gave my questions, but also understand why they feel the way they do. Another important lesson from this class was exploring your personal biases. Although we would all like to belive that we treat everyone equally and fairly, that is not the case. We have to examine our personal biases to better design products for others.
In the second part of the course, we worked to empathize with others and learn about what makes teams successful. In order to design for others, we first have to be able to put ourselves in their shoes. We have to evaluate problems and solutions from their point of views to fully understand a problem and develop a solution that benefits them. My empathy skills came in handy for this portion of the class. We also spent time evaluating how we behave in teams. Entrepreneurship rarely happens individually. To succede, you have to surround yourself with diverse viewpoints. Understanding how to maximize the efficiency of these teams is incredibly valuable
The culmination of our work in this course was a team based design sprint. Each team chose a topic related to Duke to develop a pitch for. My team's topic was redesigning how learning is evaluated at Duke. To better understand the problem space, we began by conducting interviews. I interviewed both a student and a professor to understand concerns they had with the current grading system as well as potential solutions. After all the other members of the group conducted interviews, we developed the persona of our user. Next, we asked questions about the current problem space and turned these questions into a pitch. The question we asked was"How might we reward those who work hard without preventing access to future opportunities and punishing those who challenge themselves?" From this, we pitched a system in which professors do not evaluate students. Instead, students would be expected to create a portfolio showing projects that demonstrate mastery of classes required in their curriculum. Then, when searching for a job, students would be evaluated by those hiring them. Our final deliverable for this class was a mock syllabus for an Economics class taught in this way. This can be seen below.