World Cafe

I was looking forward to attempt a World Cafe session which is an interesting way to generate new ideas by using the existing concepts. After have a quick look at peers’ design concept posters have already be categorised into different themes on the table, we start to do the brainstorming and idea generation based on those ideas under 3 rounds: context, audience/domain and refine. The whole process for me is like “standing on the shoulders of giants” to discover the unexplored area of those themes.

I do like the structure of the event; it has been divided into three big sections. So that I have the chance to go through six different categories of ideas in an hour. At this point, this an efficient ideation for a medium/large group in a short time. The first sections of Context and Audience are not difficult for me, I could quickly drill the key points from the pitch poster. Then based on what we have got from those ideas and combining with my own thoughts, some really great new ideas have been come up with. That was exciting and a cheerful process. But when it comes to the last section of Refine, I found it is difficult to generate new ideas especially for myself. However, being a host is quite challenging for me, because I need to quickly get understating and summarise the previous discussion, then explain and pass the key message to the next coming new group of people, and again choose some certain angle to have another turn of brainstorming.

I summarise some inspired takeaways I got from each round, and will try to combine them into our team's concept ideation process.

To sum up, during this one hour World Cafe session, I was inspired by some interesting interaction ways and other data display possibility for my previous pitch idea. In addition, I also get some ideas for other datasets I have not been looking for but have a similar concept on mine. I will try to organise those exciting new ideas and see how the group project can use those ideas the generate new ideas.

Ideation Process

Team forming

I'm really excited to be on the team with Eddie, Jay and Kuan. We come from different backgrounds, degrees and skill sets, I believe we'll work together to create something cool and novel. During the contact session, we shared about each person's expectation, working preference and concerns regarding group work. We also discussed about the team basic working strategy and some rules to make the make work efficiently and joyfully. I'm quite honoured to become the leader of our team, I will try my best to make sure everyone could use the best of their expertises and have a wonderful memory of this course. But I'm still bit worried about my team leading skills since this is my first time to play a role of team leader. I'm confident in my task management and organising skills, but I'm not sure I could divide the workload and different types or work in the way that everyone will be happy about. To sort out this problem, I will keep frequent communication with everyone in the team and listen to there advices for me as well. Other details regarding our team rules will be discussed together during the following team meetings. And I will complete the team charter then send to the teaching team. (P.s Although we haven’t came up with a rock team name yet, we will figure it out soon.) We had two meetings on Thursday and Sunday for 2 hours respectively. We had a short ideation regarding possible interaction ways and locations of the problem space.