January 20, 2023

Design-Thinking Workshop

Today, we attended a full-day design-thinking workshop lead by Karthikeyan, a friend of the GCIL program. As we only had one day, we followed a condensed version of the 5-step design thinking process: empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test. Our process began with a ward assessment of C.V. Ragan Nagar Ward, which was conducted by Sensing Local. We were split up into three groups focused on water, waste, and sanitation issues in this ward. Using observations from our visit to the ward last week, as well as data from the ward assessment, we followed the design-thinking process until each group had come up with a possible solution to an identified problem amongst a chosen stakeholder group.

During this exercise, Karthikeyan made a lot of important points and gave us many tools to choose from. I learned a lot from his emphasis on how brainstorming should be done in different lenses and from different stakeholders to give way to richer ideas. I think that this exercise in general was great practice for how the design thinking process will work once we start work with our organizations, as well as how to visibly brainstorm ideas to allow for collaboration.

Toward the end of the day, we were joined by Sobia, who works for Sensing Local, the organization that conducted the ward assessment. She also gave lots of great tips for design thinking, such as how crucial it is to keep in mind the importance of conversations as a mechanism for solutions. In many situations, solutions are solved by community involvement and initiative, which all start with conversation.

Through the constant influx of information we have been receiving over our first three weeks here in Bangalore, our lesson today helped to solidify one of my bigger takeaways so far. There are already lots of innovative ideas and people to learn from, but the hard part is harnessing that information and molding it into viable solutions to different problems. I think that going forward, a very important step will be to make sure we get the best possible understanding of our stakeholders in order to creatively cater a solution to their needs. I am looking forward to continue using design thinking as we start with our organizations next week.