Design Thinking as a strategy for Innovation:
Design Thinking is a powerful process to solve problems. It encourages to think outside the box and to come up with creative ways that might not even exist.
Many market leaders applied design thinkinglike Amazon, Unified Healthcare, Pepsico& Nike etc., have sustained through this human centred approach.
So it is worth considering in the context of children in whom ‘’ Higher Order Skills’’ are at the formative stage.
In D-InnoThinkr, we empowered our participants with Design Thinking mindset and asked them to identify some problems faced by them or by their family members using this process and come up with some desirable solutions.
The participants geared up and spoke to the concerns, empathised with them, understood the problems, defined those problems and came up with creative solutions.
Problem faced: Busy chaotic mornings at home.
Root cause: One of the important reason is waking up late and the tendency to snooze alarm and go back to sleep.
Prototyping solution: She ideated and came up with Robotic alarm clock that wakes her up by moving around with the help of motion sensors and has smart speakers. The added feature is it doesn’t have a snooze button. What fun way to start her day! Kudos to her maker’s mindset!
Problem faced: Taking care of elderly people living alone and their difficulty in doing daily chores as they have health issues.
Prototyping Solution: A socially interactive and assistive robot which can be programmed to do the tasks at home. Also can communicate with elders. It can read out the books to them and reciprocate the expressions. It cares & gives companionship. It also monitors and alerts the neighbours and relatives in care of emergency.
Prototyping solution: We really appreciate the concern and empathy shown by our little genius.
Problem faced: Challenges in coconut farming- pests, diseases, malnutrition in the crops, scarcity of water are some of problem areas.
Collaborative Solutions:
1. She has come up with indigenous idea of making an organic pesticide laced with the scents of female beetles to attract the male beetles.
2. Identifying this symptoms of mineral deficiency and nurturing with micro nutrients, fertilizers, organic manure and dispense them in perforated containers that will release the nutrition slowly/regularly to the crops
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3. Drip irrigation to minimise the water supply and mulching is used to prevent vapourisation. We highly appreciate her holistic approach towards the problems and doable solutions.
Problem faced: Mom’s garment business on loss due to damaged goods delivered by the vendor.
Handy Solutions:
1. Quality check to be done on arrival of the goods
2. An exchange agreement to be made with the vendor to give back damaged pieces.
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3. If not agreed, upcycle the damaged garments into repurposed clothing.
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4. For example! A damaged garment can be restitched into crop tops, shorts, bags, ties, napkins, tablemat, etc.,
We are really impressed with upscaling sustainable fashion ideas of him.