PERSONAL REFLECTION JOURNAL Up to the end of term 1, we have finished the sense and sensibility phrase and empathy phrase. In sense and sensibility stage, we have come out with our issues and project statement which is “How can we help the locals and foreign students to socialise better?” In the empathy stage, we had done an interview to our potential users and drawn a persona with the data collected. In this project, especially for the empathy stage, I learned better in how to use design thinking tools. One thing that I think especially useful is the interview. It is applied during empathy phrase to gather insights about the relationship between locals and foreign students. Before the interview, my idea of the relationship between locals and foreigner mainly come from what Medias portray and that may not be the accurate picture of relationship between foreign and local student as the Media always highlight issues that are unusual and not of the common. It did happen to my case as I do the interview in expectation of an answer similar to what Medias portrayal but the answer prove me wrong.
It really make a difference in our project as if I have not done the interview and jump to persona stage, I might probably do a different persona and ideation and get the prototype wrong. This shows that interview is an effective tool of gathering information in empathy phrase and in future project; I will continue to use it. The most difficult design thinking process is sense and sensibility, to describe the issue and context is very difficult for us. The reasons are: firstly, at the beginning stage we have no idea what are we supposed to do and to generate an issues and project statement are difficult for us, nobody have any ideas to share. Secondly, in a multi-disciplinary group, it is common that we are not very familiar with each other and everybody is more