Working with my UvA students was a very very very interesting experience. Going in, I had no idea what it would be like or who I would be grouped with. I ended up with a group of all guys who had been friends for a while. From the moment I was put in their groupchat, I was spammed with weird memes and requests to play WoW. We were very different people, as I am American and a woman and they are all neither of those things. However, they were still hard working and very nice to me. They genuinely seemed like they wanted to hang out outside of class, even though we didn’t get to. They were very diligent about completing the assignments, working on the design challenge outside of class, and communicating about their work. I enjoyed working on the design challenge I was assigned, last mile mobility, even though I kind of had no idea what it meant before I got to class. It was an interesting topic and something I hadn’t learned about before, so I enjoyed researching it. I think the only thing that didn’t work out particularly well for me were the interviews. I did interview quite a few people, but I didn’t really get useful responses.
I think my main takeaways about the design abilities I worked on during this course are to look at things from a lot of perspectives, be okay stepping outside of your comfort zone, and think about the experience rather than the product. For the first one, I think it was really helpful to just walk around and notice things, whether that was in the shoes of a user or just as yourself. It helped me understand the issue I was researching when I just walked around the city and saw it from someone else’s perspective, especially from that of the user or someone living there experiencing the issue. I also think it is important to help you work towards narrowing down a problem space. When you focus on one issue or one point of view too much, it gets very hard to think broadly. When you start thinking broadly, you can easily narrow things down to a problem where you can actually solve it. For the second one, I think it was very important that we all stepped out of our comfort zone, especially when we had to go out and interview people and test our product. A lot of us coming into this class had learned about it in ENGI 120, and were very stuck to the idea of solving a problem rather than finding the problem. We all had to step back and look for a problem, make sense of it, and then experiment with it to see if we could help solve it. Finally, before this class, I never really thought about the experience that solving a problem has. Whenever I have encountered a design problem before, I have only thought about making a product that solves that issue. I think the difference between something like an engineering design course and then a business or entrepreneurship course is how you think about the user, and one of the main things that I will take away from this class and will apply to my engineering classes is the idea of making an experience for the user. Rather than making a vase to hold flowers, make it to be a way for people to appreciate flowers in their home. Rather than solving a tourist issue by just handing out flyers or advertising online, go talk to people and give them an experience in the process of giving them the same information.
I think the design challenge I was given was something I would not have considered without being there. My design challenge was to help entrepreneurs get their products to people in Amsterdam, which can be an issue due to bad delivery services and small roads. I have never seen Amsterdam, so I didn’t know how small some of the streets are and how not car-friendly it is. In my experience, you just kind of order something from Amazon or from a business online and it just gets to your door somehow, even in bigger cities with less cars. If your package gets lost or turned around, you have a way to figure out where it is or get it back. In Amsterdam, packages often just don’t get delivered. Even while we were researching this issue, I’d see the UvA students in my group complaining about PostNL and DHL, the main delivery services in Amsterdam. Almost all of them had packages get returned to the sender because they “weren’t home”, but the delivery person hadn’t even knocked on their door or tried to contact them. I think this is an issue I just never really thought about before because of the differences between the countries and because I have never experienced it.
I think the main thing that I wanted more time to think about related to the design challenge was finding a problem we could really solve. We did come up with an overarching problem statement, but it felt a bit rushed and not like something that we could work towards solving. My group ended up changing that statement and are now working on a solution, but I would’ve liked a little more time to work with them on finishing out that problem statement. If I were to start over now, I think I would pretty much do everything else the same. I think we did a good job finding evidence and finding different problems in the city.
If this project were to go forward, I think it would be really helpful for Amsterdam. I think it would be a big project to take on, as there haven’t been any advances in this area already. However, I think it would be really cool to see better delivery options and it would open up a lot of new and more efficient ways to get things around in Amsterdam. I also think it would really help with the zero emissions policy in Amsterdam.
I think I thrived in the sensemaking and experimenting parts of the process. I struggled with getting evidence and interviewing, but once I had information, I did well at making sense of it, turning it into a problem, and then experimenting with that issue. This may have to do with experience I had before in the ENGI class, as I worked on making sense of interviews we got and then working on fleshing out a problem.
My favorite part was the people I met, both students and people I got to talk to around the city and during site visits, and the way we went around the city. I have never really experienced a city before. Usually when I travel with my family, we either have a planned activity or go around seeing museums and such, but we never just walk around, talk to people, etc.. Living in Amsterdam was a totally new experience to me and I really enjoyed it.
I would advise people to pack a little light for the train, plan activities beforehand but don’t confirm anything until you get the GCal, and come in with an open mind, especially if they came from ENGI 120. This was an awesome course and I really enjoyed being in Amsterdam.