Design Thinking - Prototype and Test Assignment

1. DESIGN THINKING ACTION
LAB
Prototype & Test
Submitted By:
Shubham Singhal,
India

2. Problem Statement
A smart, intelligent, hard working student at
a reputed B-school needs a way to
manage time between studies and work
(doing projects and part time work)

3. Idea 1- for prototyping
Use calendars and to do list to
keep a track of meetings in the
office and assignments in the
college and prioritize the work
accordingly.

4. The tools used in prototype

5. Working of the prototype
 The student can use the tools as mentioned in the previous slide to his aid
for:
 Better organizing his work
 Keep a track of his deliverables
 These can be
 Online (like Google docs)
 Offline like physical diaries and making notes with pen/pencils
 Software based- using apps like Any.Do, Google Calender, Reminders,
Schedulers
 The student in this way can keep a track of his office work and the B-school
studies and assignments and thus complete all his deliverables in time by
prioritizing the work based on their importance and urgency

6. Testing the prototype
 Who?
 A smart, intelligent, hard working student at a reputed B-school
also doing part time work
 Process:- The student was explained the prototype, its
working and how he can benefit from it. A demo was
given of all these applications and software which can be
used even from his smartphone on the go keeping him
always updated and track and plan his work.
 The Required apps and softwares were installed on his laptop and his
mobile phone.
 After a few days his responses on the this new system were noted, asking
his valuable feedback

7. Space used
College’s Discussion Room After explanation of prototype

8. Observations
What Worked?
- He felt nice.
- He was surprised
- It was interesting to use the technology for daily
tasks
- Has made his life a lot simpler
- He can now prioritize and meet all the deadlines
What could be improved?
- Integration of the apps and his calendar with
automatic reminders at the right time
- Usability ease for the stakeholder
- Automatic putting up of tasks and categorize them as
per their nature of work
Questions
- How much will this be effective in meeting the need?
Ideas
- Make separate entries/calendars for separate work,
and have a way to even view the combined calendar/to-
do list

9. Idea 2- for prototyping
Use time management tools

10. Working of the prototype
 The grid showing how to do time management can be used as a tool
 The 4 quadrants can be used to categorize one’s tasks into
 Important
 Urgent
 Based on their importance they can be categorized into
 Important
 Not important
 This model can actually help a person to know where his time is getting
wasted and where he should be putting more time and when those tasks
have to be done

11. Testing the prototype
 Who?
 A smart, intelligent, hard working student at a reputed B-school
also doing part time work
 Process:- The student was explained the prototype, its
working and how he can benefit from it. All the 4
quadrants were explained to him, with even creating a
mock time management table categorizing his tasks so as
to help him and give him a demo of how to go about it.
 After a few days his responses on the this new system were noted, asking
his valuable feedback

12. Observations
What Worked?
- He felt nice.
- He was surprised
- It was interesting to such a simple looking tool to
categorize his daily tasks
- Has made his life a lot simpler
- He can now prioritize and meet all the deadlines
What could be improved?
- Further divide the 4 quadrants into smaller segments
to get more insight and capture the data in a better and
more precise way
- Automatic putting up of tasks and categorize them as
per their nature of work
Questions
- How much will this be effective in meeting the need?
Ideas
- Make separate entries for separate work based on
the nature like:
- Personal work
- Office work
- Assignments
- Teem meetings

13. Reflection
 Since the idea as well as the prototype were well
received by my stakeholder, I would stick with the idea
and try to incorporate his ideas and suggestions.
 The next step would be to have a clearer understanding
about the different parts within the tools mentioned. I
would prototype each part and test it with my
stakeholder(s).
 Usually when I have ideas that I really like and present
them I am a bit disappointed by a lot of criticism. This
time, I saw it as something neutral for me which is
designed for my stakeholder. I felt more professional
about it.