PROMOTING USER-CENTRICITY among STUDENTS
Company: Universidad del Pacifico
Role: Teaching Assistant
Date: 2019 - 2020
THE CONTEXT
I was invited to teach at the Engineering Department to further prepare students to face real life challenges and propose solutions but from the user's perspective (not just from the business's one).
THE SOLUTION
For the past 2 years I have been teaching undergraduate students about Design Thinking and user-centered Value Propositions as part of the Business Architecture course which focuses on business analysis and models.
I hold this particular sessions as workshops, with a small theoretical section at the beginning.
The students must go through the whole Design Thinking process:
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Identifying an extreme user to focus on
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Building the interview questions
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Performing interviews with extreme users
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Debriefing
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Clustering
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Identifying patters
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Brainstorming solutions
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Creating a prototype
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Testing the prototype with extreme users
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Iterating
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Presenting the final solution in front of the class
Certainly, the biggest challenge so far has been to always remember students that they are creating for a user and not for themselves.
EMPATHY
Students interviewing extreme users.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the interviews are carried online.
definition
Students debriefing and clustering the information.
Since the pandemic, they have these sessions on an virtual board.
They synthesize the findings on an empathy map.
Ideation
Students brainstorming ideas individually and then as a group.
Working with trigger cards to take their ideation to the next level.
Clustering the alternative solutions and voting.
The most voted is turned into a concept.
prototypying & evaluating
Students prototyping differently depending on they solution.
It can be a storyboard, product model of mockup for digital solutions.
Students do iterations based on user feedback.
Final solution
Below you can find an example of one of the final solutions. This team proposed a new section within the University’s app where students that own a car can transport other students to and from University if the routes match.