Reflection#1 Ideal Birthday Experience

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This reflection will follow the Gibbs reflective cycle. Future reflections will follow the Ranning model of reflection.

Description - What happened?
By following the steps given in the worksheet, I interviewed a classmate and designed an “ideal birthday experience” for her. This included finding out exactly what the client needed and gathering insights to define a problem statement and later creating 3 preliminary sketches of possible solutions based on the problem statement. The 3rd drawing happened to be the closest to the client's “ideal experience” so it was used as the base idea for the final prototype. It was presented with a simple 9 step flow chart to portray the chronological events of the birthday experience. Questions, what worked, and additional ideas were collected and documented.
Feelings - What were you thinking and feeling?
I have to say that the first step of the process was the most difficult for me, and I struggled a lot on trying to gain empathy because I don’t really know what exactly birthday experiences are supposed to be like, in general. On the same note, I also had trouble coming up with responses for what my “ideal birthday experience” would be like, as I was hit with some questions that I have never thought of before.
Evaluation - What was good and bad about the experience?
The worst part of the experience was having to think of an ideal birthday experience because I never really considered a “birthday” as such a spiritual day, and hence I never had any idea what I might consider an ideal experience. What went well was when the prototypes I came up with resulted in responses that led me to eliminate or emphasize certain ideas to create a better final product.

Analysis - What sense can you make of the situation?
I need to be more specific with the questions that I ask in that they must be more effective at grabbing the big idea of what exactly the client is looking for. I also need to work on improving my empathy skills to be able to work with problems that I myself have never faced before.
Conclusion - What else could you have done?
If more time were given, I would have used the newly designed ideal birthday experience and talk to
the client again to further identify what can be made better to fit the client's needs. I believe more rounds of reiteration can produce a much better final product.
Action Plan - If it arose again, what would you do?
Next time in a similar situation, I would ask better questions that would be able to hit the source of the client's needs. Questions that would reach deeper into the client's thoughts can reveal a larger problem or a completely different problem that might need to be solved by the product.

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