Makerspace @ CMRIT

Methodology

Dentifying The Challenge
Understanding the full context of a situation and recognizing its problem areas brings us closer to solving the challenge at hand. By mapping all that we know, we can understand how the users are affected by the problem, define the critical needs and gain clarity on where our attention is most needed.

Empathizing With Others
To generate useful and effective solutions it is important for us to set aside our preconceived notions and prejudices about users and stakeholders. By genuinely connecting with the users we can understand and respect their values, mind sets and identities. This allows us to create holistic solutions that are meaningful to the stakeholders.

Researching To Explore
Investigating the challenge at hand is essential to gather facts and confront assumptions. Examining and testing our pre-vious knowledge allows a more thorough understanding of the problem and its context, helping us become experts on the matter. Data gathered in research can be used to validate or question ideas.

Organizing To Understand
When faced with large quantities of information it is essential to identify the material that is useful. With the help of organizational tools we can filter and group data and identify commonalities, differences and other interesting observations. These techniques increase knowledge about a problem and inform future decision-making.

Envisioning Multiple Ideas
To arrive at innovative and unique concepts it is important to go through an exhaustive process of ideation. The focus of the idea generation processes is to think divergently and produce a vast quantity of diverse ideas. By exploring multiple variations and approaches, an appropriate outcome can be achieved.

Developing a Concept
To design a powerful concept it is important to refine and strengthen your ideas by combining, evaluating and reworking them. The decision making process of convergent thinking helps establish what is most critical moving forward with a design and provides the framework to generate a well-rounded solution.

Prototyping To Experiment
Prototyping seeks to test and provide validation for concepts by materializing them in different mediums. Through mak-ing from an early stage, the idea is informed by iterative experimentation. Prototyping helps evaluate functionality and validates future creative choices. This process refines and strengthens the solution reducing risks and potential mistakes.

Testing For Feedback
Collecting feedback is crucial when assessing if an idea is working the way it is intended to. From an initial vision to the finished design, asking users, stakeholders and experts for their opinions, insights and perspectives is necessary to im-prove user interactions and validate the concept.

Presenting & Sharing
Explaining and validating ideas in a convincing and compelling way is fundamental in adding value and broadening the reach of a solution. Presentation techniques simplify complex concepts so that they are easily understood by a new audi-ence in a holistic way. Documentation is a crucial part of the sharing experience. It helps retrace your process and makes for a strong argument by objectively validating the decisions that were made.