February 21, 2023

Feedback

The beautiful countryside north of Bangalore

I’m sitting here trying to decide what to write this blog about. I could write about so many amazing things here in India: the delicious food, the beautiful parks, the calm countryside when I get outside the city, or the friendly people. Maybe I could describe another fascinating well-rejuvenation project my team got to visit. Maybe I could blog about the variety of merchandise that is pushed or driven past our hostel daily, selling vegetables, snacks, or offering to sharpen kitchen knives, always accompanied by a speaker announcing what is being offered in an accent that I can only understand once I see the wares being offered. Or I could describe the more difficult aspects of living in India: the litter, the smell as I walk past a black spot or a cow pie, or the roads that sometimes seem like they are more a combination of potholes and speed bumps than pavement. None of these topics are piquing my interest. I’ve been preoccupied the last few days.

Selling cucumbers and beans from a small pushcart

We received feedback for our preliminary ideas of our GCIL project last Friday. It was honest and blunt. It brought to light several details of my team’s idea that were weak. Some we were aware of, but others we weren’t as prepared for. I’ll be the first to admit that I struggled to appreciate the critiques as they were being given. My team spent a good portion of the weekend reflecting on our idea and determining what our best course of action was for moving forward. We ultimately realized that we had misidentified the stakeholders of our scheme and found a solution for a problem that we had no proof had a paying customer or even existed.

It’s incredibly difficult to step back from an idea that I can see potential in, especially when so much time and effort has already been put into it. It may have merit, but that doesn’t mean anything if there’s no one willing to pay for it. We were tempted to move forward by trying to find proof of our assumptions, but that felt disingenuous as we hadn’t made time to get to know our actual customer or what problems they were facing.

So, it feels like we’re back to square one. Only not really. This time, as reminded by a teammate and one of our mentors, we understand the circumstances around the greater problems we are trying to make an impact on a little bit better. We’ve also learned a bit more about the design thinking process as we worked our way through it. And, as alluded to by several of my peers over the preceding weeks, perhaps we’ve learned to “trust the process” just a bit.

For now, we are scheduling interviews, asking everyone we can think of if they “know any Bangalore residents that would be willing to be interviewed by three students from the University of Washington about their relationship with water.” It’s still too early to know if our original idea will play a part in our final project, and I am still discouraged, feeling like we are behind where we need to be. But I appreciate having the perspective from our mentors. And I also appreciate having teammates and peers around to talk with about our frustrations, struggles, and any ideas we might get as we stumble towards the end of the quarter.

By Jody