This class helped me cultivate many new skills as a student, designer, and innovator. One contribution to my personal growth was the ability to realize my dreams into existence. This has been difficult with imposter syndrome, and I think one thing that I took away from this course was that my hard work does matter, and I should be proud of myself for trying. In my Innovator’s Canvas project, I mentioned that I was a perfectionist and, in this class, I felt validated in my creating abilities. The satisfaction I got from pushing myself to speak on zoom or making suggestions then ideating/creating them in the design sprints, was so much more worthwhile than any A grade I got on a test.

 

My canvas areas related to teamwork were strengths and stress. A strength of mine was being a team player with a willingness to work. This helped my team as I was eager to get the work done quickly and efficiently. A pain point of mine that was detrimental was my tendency to shut down when overwhelmed. Since I took a big chunk of work (designing the website), I felt stressed with finals and wanting to integrate everyone’s ideas into the final product. I ended up prototyping the project myself but should’ve communicated more for feedback during the journey to minimize anxiousness and so our website could’ve reflected our team efforts better.

 

The two parts of my innovator’s canvas that were related to creating solutions and visualizing our customer were values and voice. In values, I used Oprah Winfrey’s quote of creating grand visions, which translates into how you plan to live your life. This helped with creating radical solutions, as I learned that anything can be imagined and if implemented correctly, this could impact consumer confidence. I pulled from my passions to uplift marginalized communities in the voice section to realize all needs of our customer. Conducting user research for the website allowed me to connect to our real-life audience and market, which I am extremely interested in after seeing the huge gaps in our current ableist society.

 

I think this class was useful, especially as a current student interested in UX/UI. There is neither a design major at Duke nor many majors with curriculums centered around design & creativity. To evaluate myself with a superlative, I’d say that I am “Most Improved.” I proved to myself that my ideas aren’t half bad, I can speak for them, and I am able to visualize consumer voices extensively to create multi-faceted solutions. Next time, I’d communicate & allocate work to my teammates better and speak up for my ideas earlier on in the class. If I were to evaluate myself with a letter grade, I would give myself an A. Ultimately, I spent a lot of time on the project, read the readings and assignment resources, and learned that failing is not imminent nor something I should ever be afraid of.