Reflection on Design Thinking and Innovation (DESN2002) at UON
A summative reflection on my learning journey throughout the Design Thinking and Innovation course at the University of Newcastle, Australia.
In 2023, I have taken part in the Design Thinking and Innovation course at the University of Newcastle as an exchange student. The existence of this particular course at the university was one of the main reasons I selected it for my semester abroad. What you'll find in this article is my personal experience with the course lectures, tutorials and materials and a detailed description of the project we worked on as a group during the semester.
Content of lectures
In the first six weeks of lectures, we explored different models and approaches to Human-Centered Design, including IDEO Design Thinking, the Double Diamond model, the Stanford d.school model and Art Thinking.
I was previously familiar with Design Thinking and the Double Diamond model from my internship a couple of years ago, where we combined these approaches into a single process that guided the whole agency.
The Stanford d.school model looks pretty familiar and follows similar steps as the others, with an emphasis on empathy.
Introduction to Art Thinking
Compared to the previous models, Art Thinking was a completely new concept to me. This is the first time I have heard about it before taking this course. This is the definition of Art Thinking from our lecture slides:
Art Thinking is not a methodology, but an attitude...Design Thinking is effective for creating and shaping creative solutions for the future. On the other hand, art is effective for observing the many possibilities and issues from a 360-degree-perspective. Design is a solution to shape a service or product, it is like a direction. Art is a compass. (Ogawa, H. (2019) Space to think: Ars Electronica Art Thinking School)
To understand Art Thinking, I needed to decompose it to its basics. As I come from an engineering background, the concept of art itself is too broad. The definition of art is subjective to everyone. I'd say art “has blurry edges”, meaning that art can be many different things. I like this diagram that compares Art Thinking to Design Thinking.
I think that Art Thinking can be a valuable tool for artists or anyone collaborating with artists to give their pursuits more structure and to help them fit better into the business world. I still like the concept of Design Thinking for my practice, as I am interested in creating products, not art by itself. Although the final result of an artist's and a designer's work might look similar, the process these two take to achieve the result is dramatically different.
In the next part, I will focus on my journey through trying to solve a wicked problem as a designer. For this, I chose to follow the Design Thinking model as, in my mind, it is more suitable for an endeavour that should result in solving a real concrete problem in the world as opposed to Art Thinking, which is to me, more ideal for exploration and experimentation.
Project
As a part of this course, we were tasked with tackling a wicked problem. The wicked problem descriptions were provided by non-profits and other organisations outside of the university. So we, as students, had the opportunity to work on a real-world problem.
Wicked problems are a class of social system problems that are ill-formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision-makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications of the whole system are thoroughly confusing. (Rittel, H.W.J., Webber, M.M. Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sci 4, 155–169 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01405730)
I selected the wicked problem proposed by Life Without Barriers, described as
How might we ensure that people with intellectual disability are able to navigate public transport in the Hunter safely and confidently?
This problem was explicitly aimed at the public transport infrastructure problems in the Hunter region of New South Wales, Australia. As such, we started with researching the problems the local community was having and reached out to locals who use public transport and TransportNSW, the government organisation which operates the public transport infrastructure.
Connection to UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
All the problems presented to us had in common that they tried to address some of the Sustainable Development Goals defined by the United Nations and defined as a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all.
Our problem was most closely related to SGD 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities, more specifically, the target 11.2:
By 2030, provide access to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems for all, improving road safety, notably by expanding public transport, with special attention to the needs of those in vulnerable situations, women, children, persons with disabilities and older persons. [source]
Team
Our team consisted of 6 members, including me. We had a mix of various backgrounds and majors, including Visual Communications Design, Music, Communications and Human-Computer Interaction. Working in a team of 6 proved to be challenging due to scheduling clashes, but in the end, we found a biweekly schedule of online video calls, which were very productive and to the point. Otherwise, we met every week in tutorials, where we presented our findings to the team, discussed and brainstormed ideas and then divided work for each team member to finish by the next week's meeting.
Our Process
Our work was separated into stages based on the Design Thinking framework from the Stanford d.school. Their process has five stages, which for the purposes of our deliverables, we grouped into two stages:
- Research and exploration of the problem space (Empathise and define)
- Identifying the right problem to solve and building a prototype of the solution (Ideate and prototype)
Proper testing of our proposed solution was outside the scope of the project timeline.
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Inspired by David Kelly's descriptions of IDEO's design process, we worked to understand the problem as well as we could, then moved to the observation phase, where we worked to empathise with our audience. Then we visualised idea ideas in the form of prototypes and iterated on them as we received feedback.
Empathising with our target audience
This was my first time designing for people with intellectual disabilities specifically. Throughout my research, I learned a lot about how we can make products and services more inclusive and, at the same time, more understandable and accessible to even larger audiences.
Our target audience could be described as people with an IQ of 70 or lower, one of the metrics for an intellectual disability diagnosis. [source]
We selected interviews and contextual inquiry as our research methods. Although we did not find any person with an intellectual disability, we could interview or observe in their environment. One of our team members interviewed a disability support worker who is in contact with our audience daily.
We created a persona, Annie, who is a fictional person created, to represent our target audience. We will look at Annie's current struggles with public transport and evaluate potential solutions against this persona later.
We followed the persona with an empathy map.
Problems we identified include:
- Buses in the Hunter do not announce the names of upcoming stops or have screens showing the current location and next bus stop. This makes it hard for people who do not know how to use a smartphone or do not own one to travel confidently, knowing they will be able to get off the bus at the correct bus stop.
- Buses do not stop at every bus stop. Passengers at the bus stop have to signal the driver (with a hand gesture) to be sure they stop for them, and passengers on the bus have to press the “stop” button before their target stop to be able to get off the bus at the correct location.
- “Tap on / Tap off” signs are on every bus door and every train / light rail stop, but without context, they might not be sufficient to explain what one should do if they are unfamiliar with how Opal cards work.
- Printed timetables at bus/train stops can be confusing for some, and even if the bus stop has a digital screen showing upcoming departures, the buses are often delayed, making the information on the screens even more confusing.
Defining the problem
Our core problem definition did not change much from the one provided by Life without Barries, we are focusing on specific problems with public transport in the Hunter region of New South Wales, and we are the problems affecting people with intellectual disabilities.
But what we did on top of it was to identify key stakeholders, e.g., people or groups who could benefit from our solution to this problem. These include:
- People with intellectual disabilities who use public transport
- Close family/friends of people with intellectual disabilities
- Carers/support workers
- The city council
- TransportNSW as the operator of public transport infrastructure
- Employees of TransportNSW
- The general public who also use public transport
Ideating solutions
The most obvious thing for us to do would be to build an app. Everybody makes apps nowadays, and we have apps for everything. What we understood early on is that for our target audience, using smartphones can be a problem and a significant barrier. We took this as a hard constraint. We did not know what we were building at this point, but we knew we were certainly NOT building an app.
After everyone on the teams shared their unique insights from research, we moved on to brainstorming possible solutions. Here are some of our ideas:
- Bus Hailing System - Adding an Opal card (NSW travel card) terminal on the bus stop would enable passengers waiting for their bus to signal the driver that they are waiting at the bus stop so that they can be sure the driver stops for them. Also, people with intellectual or other disabilities could provide additional information to the driver by having their Opal card send this information along.
- Utilising QR codes in sunflower lanyards - Green lanyards with a sunflower pattern are a recognised signal that the person wearing them lives with a hidden disability. Public transport personnel should be adequately advised on how to assist these people.
- Distress call/tracking (like Tile) - A small electronic device that could send a distress signal wirelessly
- QR Codes + Updating timetable design - Timetables in the Hunter are confusing even to us as students, and they could use an updated design.
- Top-up stations with guides - Utilise Opal card top-up stations with screens to enable viewing timetables planning routes, and guiding people who do not own a smartphone.
- Route info screen + Audio announcements on buses - This was the last idea we added to our list, as it initially looked too obvious to us. Many other cities, even here in NSW, Australia and other types of transport such as trams or trains have them, so why do buses not have screens?
Prototyping
We selected two problems to take to the prototyping stage in the hope of revealing their potential. It was the Bus Hailing System and Route info screen + Audio announcements on buses.
We focused on buses because they are an essential mode of public transport that services the most rural areas and suburbs further from the city centre and edges of suburbs. So for a lot of people, it is not an option to only take a train; for example, they often need to combine bus and train to get to their final destination. This is why having buses accessible is so crucial.
Bus Hailing System Prototype
This idea was based on putting an Opal card reader on the bus station pole and thus enabling passengers to send signals to bus drivers by tapping their card. The integration of opal cards instead of just a button would prevent misuse. We ultimately decided not to pursue this idea further as there were unsolved issues such as: “Would passengers have to tap their opal card again when entering the bus?” or “How would the system know which bus to signal if multiple bus lines were stopping at that bus stop?”. We concluded this might create even more confusion among passengers and decided to focus on our next idea.
Route info screen + Audio announcements Prototype
At first, we disregarded the screens idea when deciding what to prototype. We thought of it as a solved problem, and we were looking for something new. But then, when we looked at the impact and visualised all our ideas in the impact/effort matrix, it was obvious, that the screens + announcements idea had the biggest potential for positive impact. We also checked in with our persona, Annie, and evaluated whether this idea would impact her the most. We then continued to the next stage of prototyping with the Route info screen + Audio announcements idea.
We divided work between the team members, and I chose the task of creating sketches and low/high fidelity prototypes of the bus screen that would show next the upcoming stop and other route information.
I started by looking at how other cities around the world implement their bus screens and took a lot of inspiration from them.
Then I created various versions of what the screen interface could look like and experimented with information density and layouts. The design needed to contain multiple key information. Firstly, according to Jakob Nielsen's Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design.
First, we needed to provide the passengers with information about what bus they are on; h_euristic #1: Visibility of system status. T_his information consists of two parts, the bus line number and the final destination bus stop name. We put that information at the top along with the current time, which is very important for people who might not use mobile phones to plan their transfers to other modes of transport.
The following figure shows our exploration sketches, from which we chose option 6 as a great balance between readability and being understandable without much explanation.
Next, according to Heuristic #2: Match between the system and the real world, we designed the list of upcoming bus stops in such a way, that when looking at the screen from inside the bus, it looks like the bus stops are fading away into the distance, signifying which stops are closer and which are further away. This should help passengers with quick orientation, without needing much explanation. You can see this visual effect in the following high-fidelity prototypes, where we utilised the official design system and branding of TransportNSW, to match the expectations of passengers. We used existing visual cues from TransportNSW, such as colour and the B, T or L character inside a circle to display transfer options to other modes of transport.
The following figure shows the different iterations of the design, experimenting with how much information is needed/is too much for the design to still be glanceable.
During exploration, I identified an issue with how passengers understand our route visualisation. The problem here is, whether the topmost line shows the next upcoming bus stop or the final destination of the bus line. To answer this question of how people understand our prototype, I created a simplified version of the interface and polled people to answer a simple question: According to the picture, which stop do you think is the next upcoming stop?
The result was a little surprising, with 67% of people choosing the option that this design was based on, the bottom option. But 33% of people chose the second option from the bottom, which was a surprise and only happened by accident when I added all the options to the poll. I first only wanted to give people two options, the two that were most obvious to me, the top one and the bottom one. I was surprised, that my assumptions were not correct. But in the end, I learned a valuable piece of insight from this poll.
I then updated the design to highlight the bottom-most option even more and also add labels differentiating the next stop even more. This is the final bus screen design that balances information density with clarity.
The last addition to the design was estimated times of arrival next to each bus stop. These can make travelling on the bus less stressful, especially here in the Hunter region, as passengers here need to signal the driver if they want to get off at any stop. The bus does not stop by default. This makes it harder to do anything while sitting on the bus because one needs to be alert all the time. In other cities, where the buses stop by default on most stops, one can just count the number of stops until they need to get off, which is not a possibility here. Adding a time estimate can ease the stress of missing a stop or transfer connection.
Promotion
As a part of our assignment, we were tasked with creating promotional materials, that we could show stakeholders and members of the community to present them our solution. Therefore I created a fake-door test blog post, announcing the new addition to the buses in the Hunter region. This is what such a blog article could look like on the TransportNSW website.
Our team also created a video, explaining how our solution would impact the community if implemented.
Course Summary
I appreciated the hands-on experience throughout this course and the fact that we were working on a real problem based on field insights. I believe that our solution has the potential to improve public transport inclusivity and accessibility in the Hunter region of New South Wales.
As I wrote in the introduction to this post, I was previously familiar with the concept of Design Thinking, but I feel like I have a deeper understanding of the process and importance of empathising with people who we're designing for. There is really no substitute for going into the field and talking to people. These “wicked problems” will never be solved from behind a desk. I now see the value of different types of field research before a single wireframe is sketched or a single prototype is built.
I feel like in all my previous education in school or university in the Czech Republic. I've been learning about how to do things the right or correct way. But only this semester at the University of Newcastle has I really heard about finding out what the things that I'm supposed to do really are. In other words, identifying the right problem to solve before looking for the right solution because even the best solution is irrelevant if it solves the wrong problem.
This is one thing that I'm taking away from my exchange semester and the Design Thinking and Innovation course in particular: Our education system in the Czech Republic is very focused on hard skills, but ultimately in any profession, we are providing services or solving problems for people, for humans. So the focus on empathy and a deep understanding of their problems is crucial to have a real impact on the world. I saw that during my exchange semester here at the University of Newcastle in Australia, and it is the biggest takeaway I'd like to take home with me.