Hello again, I hope you enjoy reading my short recap blog of my time in Amsterdam.
Over the last two weeks, I have had the pleasure of working with the University of Amsterdam on a project trying to promote and find ways to have sustainable tourism in Amsterdam. And I could not have been happier about who my teammates were; they were all so nice and inviting and willing to collaborate on every assignment, and also invited us out, gave us recommendations on places to go (shoutout Karolina). I think what did not work when exploring the challenge was looking at it through the lens of trying to find a solution, which we later found would not work. What did end up working for our team was trying to find a specific problem that was feasible and we could address. For example, instead of trying to have 4 different solutions for sustainable tourism, we instead came up with 1 problem and 1 solution: which was to increase awareness for sustainable tourism.
The three key takeaways I took from the design abilities are: less is more, prototyping does not have to be physical, and just because you are one thing today does not mean you can not develop into something else later, change is possible. To further explain, less is more, refers to communication, during our AMS stories we had to give a whole story about a time of hardship in Amsterdam, but we had to deliver the story in a one slide presentation with photos instead of words, and I believe this really taught me the value in conciseness, especially since I think I am very sporadic person and always want to get to as much out, so I believe this activity really helped me bring things together. Another BIG thing I learned was that prototyping is not always a physical demonstration, sometimes prototyping can be walking someone through an experience, and I believe this is the most important thing I learned in my time in Amsterdam; I believe this really changed my perspective on how to approach a problem and find a solution, and also that the prototyping stage is not necessarily building but can be finding and walking people through that experience. Last thing I learned was actually during our last activity when we were navigating ambiguity, after taking that survey; it said I was in Quadrant IV so I don’t really know how to handle ambiguity, but I have optimism that I will make my way to Quadrant I.
I think I would not have been able to learn how to interact with strangers, especially those who had no interest in talking to me, forcing myself to interact with tourists and doing the interviews, and also when we tested our prototypes. Because I believe myself to be a pretty extroverted person that loves meeting new people, but I believe doing the interviews is a whole nother animal. But I am very glad I was able to do it.
Some of the questions I have relate to more of the engineering side of my brain, for example logistically how would we accomplish? How long is the project going to take? What specifically is the goal? What do we call a successful project? If we were to do this project over a course of a semester, how far would we get? Some ways I would change our approach would honestly be to ask more narrow questions but to a wider range of people, because I still do believe getting a diverse range of responses could be super beneficial to finding the real problem we need to address.
If this project were to go forward, I would see a way for our group to connect with the Amsterdam government or at least tourism administration, and be able to collaborate to implement our solution into the streets of Amsterdam. All in all, I do think the project would be way to big of a task to tackle in a semester, or at least to see the results, but I do think that a lot of the project could be fleshed out and prototyped and reiterated until we have found a viable solution to make Amsterdam more sustainable for tourists.
If we zoom out and look at the project through the double-diamond lens, I would say I used to thrive in the condensing part of the process trying to find a specific solution and then creatively getting there. But, after the class I definitely have found joy in brainstorming, and going through the whole process. I would not say I am good at all aspects of the process, and I definitely still learning, but I will say that I am definitely better at it now than I was. And that with practice I could thrive throughout the whole process.
My biggest struggle was in the interview process. Going up to over thirty people in the span of an hour and half and only getting one interview that was inherently unhelpful really brought me down mentally. But I do think the reason I struggled with this so much was because I held myself to such a high expectation. Since I consider myself to be an extrovert I thought walking up to people would be a breeze, but that turned out to be wrong. As I mentioned earlier, interviewing people and constantly being rejected is so much harder than I thought, and the more I get rejected the harder I get on myself. I have noticed this happens to me on the golf course sometimes, after I hit a bad shot I get down on myself and go on a pretty bad slump, but I have gotten better at my mental game. Anyway I digress, if I were to interview tourists, I would split it up into more chunks and I would not really force myself to do it, and instead be more sporadic about when I interview myself. Also it would be fun to interview not only tourists but instead interview store clerks or bartenders who are much easier to interview to gain some confidence.
My favorite part about my Amsterdam experience was definitely ranged. My favorite part about the classroom was Gazelle and the Straat Museum, both super fun and interactive experiences with a lot of learning available. My favorite non-classroom activity was definitely hanging out talking to the University of Amsterdam students, since it reminded me of my time living abroad in Romania getting to learn from a bunch of people about their cultures.
Advice I would give is to not take a day for granted, do anything and everything you want to do – GO TO THE WINDMILLS, honestly one of the coolest experiences ever- maybe hit up the Heineken Experience (didn’t come from me). Also if you want to take a nap, especially if you’re tired- DO IT.
Anyway signing out,
Daniel Martinez (Sleepy Duck)