Thursday, October 14, 2010

Semester 2 - The Elderly Challenge Reflection

What have you learnt?

The importance of prototyping of creating up with your product but before that, the skill required that I have learnt is the process of coming up with the idea.

Commitment, I need to discipline myself to document the process of ideation every week so it will make the process much more easier, although it may be troublesome at times. But with this process, in the future when reflecting on the product and recognising the mistakes probably made or going to change. If there is an error in calculating for example, the size is too small, we can just look back into the date being written into that journal, then we can just modify the changes from there.

Critical Thinking was also a skill learnt as it is to be employed in the creation of our journals and we might find out various materials needed for our respective products. We cannot use paper if one of the features of the product is water-proof.

Collaboration, is when getting the perspectives and feedback of our peers then giving them our honest feedback too so we could help one another. With this, not only we can improve in our product and make newer features or correct original mistakes, but we can do the same to others too.

Creativity as we need to push ourselves over the limit to improve and create ideas that are not one-of-the-usual items you see every single day but something unique and makes someone go in awe and that “wow” factor. Just simply, wow.

Communication in exchanging our thoughts and feedbacks on one another’s products so not only ourselves can improve but also our peers. Helping one another is also part of collaboration. But we still need to communicate effectively to make sure we get the idea over to the other party.

Curiosity as we need to venture out and experiment with other different and new things so we could stand out from the crowd. To be from a face in the crowd, to a face the crowd faces.

Confidence because we need to be sure of what we want to convey and not improve repeatedly and what is done is done, and we did our best in submitting our final product. Not be underconfident, and not to be over, which is complacent.

Courage is similar to confidence in a way, as we need the courage to actually interview the elderly and understand them by not offending them. We need to respect them as, well, they’re the elderly.

Cross-Cultural and Citizenship is important when interviewing the elderly and/or doing a project about them, we need to know they’re situation, and if they have any conditions that we cannot offend, we will have to follow and respect their decisions.


What difficulties did you face?

Obtaining the right materials to create my product. After that, I have the problem of forming the product with the supposedly correct material. Far before the formation of the product, there was the problem of coming up with the product to aid the elderly. Decision on the range of products that was thought up.

How did you overcome it?

Analysing the products that were available then apply criterias to see which was the best and most suitable product. In addition to that, it also had to be feasible. I have also applied the same criterias for the choosing of which product is best for the elderly for me to work on and prototype it.