By: Nicole Parallag and Ross Tayag (The Innovator)
Thanks to the first Design Thinking Summit hosted by FEU Tech, iTamaraws acquired a better understanding of how to think outside the box especially when it comes to solving problems. The 3-day workshop consisted of hands-on, activity based sessions that highlight ideation, presentation, and prototyping. Design Thinking is a growing, global trend of problem solving. This new approach fosters collaboration and inspires innovation by openly challenging accepted ideas and assumptions.
Held at The Innovation Center on January 22 and t the FEU Tech Gymnasium from January 23 to 24, 2020, the summit introduced ways of creating clever and imaginative concepts that can be brought into fruition as well as designing innovative prototypes to students of FEU Alabang, FEU Diliman, and FEU Tech.
Startup PH Training Founder Mr. Carlo P. Valencia, ably supported by FEU Tech College of Computer Studies faculty and associates, served as the students guide and head facilitator in FEU Tech’s great leap into design thinking. Students were grouped to work together through the different phases of the workshops that include: Ideation – where students generate lots of ideas for the problem they have chosen to address. From all these ideas, they vote for what is the best one. Prototyping-where they experiment and attempt to turn the idea into a tangible product. Students created scaled-down versions of their product. Last is pitching, where each group was given 3 minutes to present their product and what it can actually do to solve the chosen problem.
Fresh ideas filled the air as Valencia gave exercises and showed various techniques that the industry utilizes to identify, conceptualize and execute effective designs. One of these was the simple but often overlooked act of collecting feedback from a target audience in order to refine and improve an original design and idea.
At the end of the summit, students were then asked to come up with a bold concept, make a prototype, and present it to the audience for critique and feedback. Rather than focusing on complex designs and capabilities, Design Thinking has inspired iTamaraws to create inventions and innovations that are user-centric, prioritizing what is important for the user rather than the designer. We can’t wait to see what they will be producing for their capstone projects.