ABOUT ME
Hello! My name is Sarah Astudillo and I am a sophomore nursing major at Illinois Wesleyan University. You may be asking why a nursing major would be designing products. Well, for one of my gen-ed credits, I decided to take course called Design Processes. I had no idea what this course was about going into it but it intrigued me. After realizing this was a course about design and entrepreneurship, I became excited. I had always been a creative person so this course was a way to take my mind off drug facts, pathogenesis of diseases, and patients and actually work my mind in a fun, creative way!
COURSE MATERIAL
In this course I learned a variety of things that I can take with me in the future that will truly make my resume stand out from the rest.
Resumes
Design Process/Techniques
The first assignment we had was to come up with a resume of yourself with your qualities, achievements, awards, work experience, etc.
Each person received feedback on their resume from the entire class, which allowed me to see what I needed to include more of or what I should eliminate.
This assignment made me realize I had a lot more to put on my resume than I thought I did.
Entrepreneurship
One of the most exciting things the class had the opportunity to do was work with real clients on their ideas that they wanted to share with the world. I was placed in a group that was a little different from the rest because my client did not actually come up with an idea that we could help her progress into a product. My team had to come up with a diabetes project on our own and produce it on our own, as well. We were lucky because if we did create a product that could be used in the diabetes industry, we would keep all of the profit. So one of the projects we that we focused on will be presented in my portfolio, as well as the process we took to get to where we are now. Click here to access my Diabetes project.
As a class, we learned about what some different design methods were. Starting from observations to brainstorming to prototyping to finally implementing.
We also discussed different brainstorming techniques that we could use to develop new ideas for design
Mind Maps: Mind maps are used for a visual representation of ideas. You begin with one idea being written out in the middle of a space around a bubble (eg. sports). Then, you would brainstorm what reminds you of sports and connect lines to the initial bubble to your new ideas (eg. soccer → world cup → Shakira) until you can reach an idea that you are content with. This is a good technique if you are starting fresh, and have no idea what you want to create. Something could come from nothing with mind maps.
Reverse Brainstorming: This technique is efficient with finding problems with an idea you may have produced. It is also good at putting in new perspectives for an idea. This is best used when there is a group of people, or at least more than one person involved. One person would start out with their idea and after a minute they would pass the idea on to someone else. That person would then write something completely opposite of it by asking themselves how they could challenge the idea or cause a problem to it. Once you are done passing it on to others, you should be able to identify one or more solutions to an idea you initially produced. It is important to allow brainstorming to occur freely and let there be no rejections during the process.
Word Association: Word association is very similar to mind mapping. The only difference present is that word association is not a visual map; it is simply writing down words that can be categorized together. Like the example given for mind mapping, you can start out with soccer and start listing world cup and Shakira underneath it until you reach a point where you feel you could generate a solid idea. There is actually a board game very similar to this technique called “In a Pickle” and it uses the same ideas that are described above.
Creating a Game
One of the most difficult projects I encountered was creating a game while also creating a diabetes product. We also had to incorporate a 3D object that was made from Fusion 360. Not only was it hard to find a game that wasn't already in the market, but using Fusion 360 took a lot of practice. But we finally came up with a game and an object to present to the class. This game is also in the portfolio. Click here to access Spectrum Chase.
