Building our Team - DesignThinking

We had a request from our college, and they were asking for an internship program for the MSc (IT) students; the time period would be 2 and half months due to the current situation. So we had to come up with something that should not only be real-world software work but also create a progress report for the student who participates in the internship program.

We picked a Design Thinking topic for students, and we can measure weekly progress.

Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test.

The reason we picked this because Some of the world’s leading brands, such as Apple, Google, Samsung and GE, have rapidly adopted the Design Thinking approach, and Design Thinking is being taught at leading universities around the world, including d.school, Stanford, Harvard and MIT. 

5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process

Image Source - Interaction-design.org

How will this work?

We create a scorecard in the form of a report or dashboard for our clients (who are in the field of measuring sustainability). There are many different ways one can design a scorecard. We can also look at it by completely taking a fresh perspective. In this internship program, we will try to find that perspective.

1. They will start by learning this 3 hours course on Udemy about The World of Design Thinking Human-centered design for solving wicked problems
2. They will follow the design thinking process, and the objective will be to get answers for good quality questions to create better scorecards
3. The users who will be participating in the process will be the experts in the sustainability field in India, and the student will search them by asking those questions via LinkedIn comments or Twitter reply.
4. The Definition and Ideation will be done using one of the team members of 73bit.com
5. Prototype of the scorecard will be done by using one of the free wireframes tools like just in mind or mockup tool. It will be tested by a method known as A/B Testing again the users will be from the Sustainability community on LinkedIn
6. To make sure the students get some feedback and guidance, they will present the results along with the weekly report to the entire team of developers at 73bit.com
7. Once they get a breakthrough on one of the designs of scorecards, they can build using Angular JS, and one of our team members will give training along with a Dashboard Video Series

What will the student learn at the end of the internship?

1. Empathy They will learn the art of asking questions professionally online and within the team. Thus putting a human-centric approach towards problem-solving
2. Prototyping They will be able to have hands-on experience in creating few wireframes and/or mockups. Thus giving them the ability to convert an idea into screens within few hours.
3. Asking Better Questions The seed for innovation is asking a good question, and the student will be doing that continuously by asking one of our team members, the sustainability community of India and our development team every week.

One of the core themes of this internship is an experiment.

When the world was locked down, all of a sudden, we had to adapt to the new normal. This is what makes human as a race keep moving forward in spite of the circumstances. Remote work is the new normal, and ownership of your career is in your hand. Suppose you learn the ability to improve on your work daily and connect with the world on digital platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter. It will need a little guidance from a team like us and your self-motivation that could take you places that would not have been possible in the past.

I will leave with this post on LinkedIn by Avkash getting an internship at CRED.