My Achievements In a Design Thinking Group Project

- How teamwork has contributed to my professional self-development

Being a Digital Marketing MSc student has so far been an educational experience. In addition to developing my digital marketing skills, I have learned more about my strengths and weaknesses and how to fill them. Working in group projects has played a crucial part in my journey. It has been valuable and educational and has emphasised how fellow students and I can share our knowledge and cover possible gaps together in a group. Moreover, it has shown how beneficial it can be when we put our minds together as a group to work together towards a common goal.

In this blog post, I will share my experience of working on one of many group projects so far as a digital marketing student at Royal Holloway University of London (RHUL). By focusing on our first assignment in the module called Design Thinking, this post will demonstrate the journey throughout working in teams and the result of the project by highlighting my contribution. Although each team member was responsible for giving feedback and input to each other's research and content, this post will focus on the work I was responsible for, my reflections on it, and my general contribution to the project. I hope you enjoy reading!

"Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. Involving five phases—Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test—it is most useful to tackle problems that are ill-defined or unknown".

THE TASK

The task for the Design Thinking group project was to compare and contrast service design tools. To end up with a well-completed assignment, we had a group meeting to discuss which tools to choose. Focusing on the service design thinking process, we focused on four research tools and one ideation tool; secondary research, system mapping, online survey, in-depth interviews and brainstorming. In addition, we wanted to mention how it would work if we were prototyping our idea and implementing it. The aim was to make our work seem more holistic and well-executed, even though prototyping and implementing a product or service were not a part of our assignment. We demonstrated how each tool fits in the process of designing a service and highlighted technologies to complement the tools. On that note, we were ready to start the project!

HOW WE COLLABORATED

Team-working was an essential soft skill for completing the task (and the module in itself) successfully. Therefore, a focus of mine was to have a good work ethic. Our team collaborated on both Microsoft Teams and face-to-face as we discussed our progress gradually. Furthermore, we utilised the graphic design platform Canva to create our presentation. Canva was a great platform to create visual content and share new ideas within the group. It was important for our team that everyone contributed to each part of the task by having regular meetings where everyone shared their ideas and thoughts along the way. In terms of roles within the group, we decided that everyone should have a say in every piece of content. Thus, all of us were creative producers, in addition to being to gathering research on one tool each.

To answer the assignment in the best possible way, we started with a meeting and agreed to create a problem statement. That allowed us to illustrate how we used our research and ideation tools to answer the problem and exemplify how we would use prototyping and implementation if we were to create a service or product as a solution. Firstly, we decided to start the process with the ideation method called brainstorming. That was a way for our team to start the project, by sharing thoughts and ideas. This worked efficiently, and we agreed on focusing our design thinking project on RHUL students. Secondly, we gathered secondary research by collecting, analysing and visualising data. In this way, we could find a customer need in RHUL students. We used Google Documents to share our research and collaborated on the remaining work, where everyone could update each other with findings and give feedback. Thus, we ended up with the following problem statement:

→ How might we enhance the learning experience of RHUL students?

MY CONTRIBUTION

After everyone had shared their knowledge from the secondary research in our meeting and on Google Docs, each participant was responsible for one tool. Thus, I gathered further research on how system mapping works as a service design tool. For one of my slides (see Picture A), I used our group project team created on Canva to summarise the principles of system mapping in bullet points and made simple graphics for a more appealing look. Furthermore, I summarised how to conduct a system map in 7 steps (see Picture B).

Picture A

To complement the tool with technology and gather further research on our problem statement, I created a visual presentation of the connections within the students' Royal Holloway learning environment on Padlet. That was a practical way for our team to collaborate online when we did not have the opportunity to meet in person. Padlet is a collaborative tool where every participant can cooperate online by posting text, images, links, documents, videos and voice recordings. This implementation on Padlet was crucial to understanding how system maps work in practice and presenting this to the team. Based on our research data, we could add stakeholders to the map and share our knowledge on the topic. Building on each other's inputs resulted in a richer map, which illustrated how we could use the tool to clarify our thoughts concerning our problem statement. That was a great starting point for our assignment and to get an overview of relevant stakeholders. Thus, it was easier to discuss potential questions for our survey and in-depth interviews later in the process.

Picture B

In a group meeting, we decided to dedicate a slide on the advantages and disadvantages of each tool to compare and contrast them. Hence, I demonstrated the advantages and disadvantages I encountered while creating the system map in the next slide I made on Canva (see Picture C).

Picture C

After utilising secondary research and system mapping to gain insights surrounding our problem statement, the following data collection tools were survey and in-depth interview. In the process of comparing and contrasting we concluded that in addition to secondary research and system mapping, we wanted to make use of an online survey as this is a time-efficient way to collect rich data from fellow students. Nevertheless, our group discussed that in-depth interviews would be an ideal tool to utilise if we had more time and resources to realise the project through the following stages in the service design process. If we would go ahead with interviews, however, the system map I created would be beneficial to discovering potential stakeholders to interview. Nonetheless, the system map was helpful to form relevant questions in our survey.

MOVING ON TO IDEATION

When the research stage along with valuable insights was established, we could continue with ideation activities. Although our group focused on research tools as the first stage of the design thinking process, we wanted to demonstrate how we would implement the rest of the process if we were planning on developing a real product or service to support RHUL students' learning environment. After finishing up my research and creations related to system mapping and visuals on Canva and Padlet, I, therefore, continued my work by contributing to the following stages in the service design process; ideation, prototyping and implementation. By discussing our next step, our choice fell on brainstorming as a tool to demonstrate how we ideally would implement the ideation stage.

→ Based on our research so far, we needed to come up with actual ideas - How might we enhance the learning experience of RHUL students?

THE RESULT

Looking at possible challenges within the RHUL student's learning environment, provided us with the benefit to build on each other's ideas. Concerning our problem statement, we discussed that it would be ideal to include RHUL students and lecturers in the brainstorming session to develop further ideas on how to enhance RHUL students' learning experience. However, that would be beyond our time frame and assignment. Nevertheless, our group had a brainstorming session to discuss our findings and possible outcomes based on our primary and secondary research. Based on discoveries in the secondary research, system mapping and our survey, we, therefore, discussed how we could improve the learning experience of RHUL students by providing them with the choice to attend classes online or in person. After researching and reflecting on our fellow students' thoughts and emotions connected to this possibility, the result of our collaborative project was that we would go for the idea to provide the choice between attending lectures online and in-person, as that was positively received in our research. Thus, our result was to initiate the choice of having classes online and in-person each day. If we were to realise the idea, the next step in the service design process would be to test it in practice and implement it if it successfully worked.

CONCLUSION

This module emphasised how we can efficiently collaborate as a team by allowing each other, and not least ourselves, to be committed to the project by sharing our thoughts and ideas throughout the process. In this way, we get the best possible result. The purpose of this group assignment was not to come up with a service or product. However, our task was to demonstrate our ability to work together as a team by comparing and contrasting service design tools, which was a crucial part of this subject's progress and learning. Based on this, I chose to write about this group assignment. Even though this subject gave several of us adversity to the extent that it was a challenging subject to get acquainted with, we quickly found out that the key was to have an open-minded and collaborative team.

"Research shows that collaborative problem solving leads to better outcomes, and people are more likely to take calculated risks. Working in a team encourages personal growth, increases job satisfaction, and reduces stress".

Contributing to teamwork has without doubt contributed to my professional self-development. The group project has emphasised the importance of working in groups and that it is an important skill to have. Although we did not always have the opportunity to meet face-to-face, I will argue that this did not have any effect on our group work or result. To sum it up, I have contributed to the teamwork and result in several ways. Highlighted in the pictures above, I researched how system maps work in theory and how to use them in practice based on our problem statement. After secondary research, system mapping was a great way to gain an overview of stakeholders in the RHUL learning environment and how these were connected. I added visuals on Canva and created the wall on Padlet. Using Padlet as a remote alternative to a system map makes it easier for the team to gather ideas along the way. In this process, we discovered gaps in the map. This was valuable in creating survey questions and reflection on ideal interview partners if we were to prototype and implement the idea later on.

More importantly - I would say my most important contribution was to participate in creating an open space within our team and encourage my colleagues (and myself) to share thoughts and ideas and present them openly with each other. This provided a safe space within the team. By creating open-minded discussions, I allowed myself to participate in group discussions in a more active manner, for instance through brainstorming. I thought of new solutions on Padlet and built on my teammates' ideas in group meetings. Additionally, I found myself exploring Canva more, as I was inspired by my colleagues and their creative work. This resulted in a more creative and innovative working environment. Thus, I would say that each of us contributed to the collaboration working as optimally as it did. Being active listeners, created an efficient working space for everyone. Finally, we accomplished a result we could not necessarily solve individually. We built on each other's strengths and weaknesses and made it possible to create the best outcome together.

Thank you for reading!

- Jenny K. Bekken