Reflection Report on Design Thinking Activity

This reflection report discusses the author's experience and learning outcomes from a 10-week long learning activity on design thinking process. The report describes the tools and techniques used in entrepreneurship and innovation, including mind mapping, brainstorming, visualisation, feedback capture grid, storytelling, customer co-creation, value chain analysis, customer journey mapping, prototyping and concept development. The author also analyses the specific skills and new things learned and evaluates how this activity can influence their personal and professional life.

Running Head: REFLECTION REPORT
Reflection Report on Design Thinking Activity
Name of the student
Name of the University
Author name

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Table of Continent
Introduction................................................................................................................................4
Description.................................................................................................................................5
Description of learning experience........................................................................................5
What I have learn about DT tools..........................................................................................7
Analysis:...................................................................................................................................12
Specific skill and new things that I have learnt....................................................................12
Evaluation:...............................................................................................................................13
How this activity can influence my personal and professional life.....................................13
Reference..................................................................................................................................15

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Introduction
In this era of digitalisation, the business operation is getting more and more
complicated. Along with the complexity of internal business operation, the business planning
and process execution are requiring more specific and specialised tools (Johansson‐
Sköldberg, Woodilla & Çetinkaya, 2013). Therefore, to become a successful entrepreneur
and to design a business process holistically, several multipurpose planning and development
tools are required. In entrepreneurial development innovation is the most essential criteria
that requires specific planning, execution and evaluation methods. Design thinking is a
creative problem solving approach that minimizes all the possible planning errors in the pre-
development planning phase. Apart from that, design thinking allows a business process to
find out the solutions for any run time or potential issue. all the groups participated and had
done well and also got good feedback Finally, we gathered different visualising ideas among
all the friends.
This report will describe my experience in previous learning activities and all after
event evaluations. In order to do so, the report will initially describe my experience and the
components that I have learnt from the learning activities. In the next phase I will be
analysing the components that I have learn while discussing about the specific skills and new
things about entrepreneurship and innovativeness. After that, I will evaluate my experience
conserving my feelings and thoughts on these factors and my skill set while making decision
for my skill development plan to become a successful entrepreneur with innovative ideas.
The purpose of this learning reflection is to reflect my experience and share my analysis and
evaluation procedure in order to develop appropriate skill development plan for me. In Week
5We had discussed about the benefits of brainstorming and learned about the advantages of

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group works which help to generate different innovative ideas and help to take it in the
market easily.
Description
In this description section my experience in the learning activities on DT or Design
Thinking process will be discussed. To do so, this section is subdivided into two sections
namely description of experience and the learning outcomes from the experience.
Description of learning experience
The process of learning about innovation, entrepreneurship and design thinking was
10 weeks long. Throughout the process, many units of team members were involved. The
cooperation that I received from the group members is very encouraging and the topics are
also Interesting. In all classes, the professor used to introduce the units assessment, teaching
team, learning resources, moodle and reading materials. In all the classes my classmates have
shared their ideas and concepts related to the entrepreneurship, innovation, diffusion, and
design thinking. Along with that, the professor explained each and individual factors clearly
including the poster design, blogging tips, process to get good marks while sharing some
wonderful innovation ideas and stories. These helped me to think and design my future in
better way. Our professor allowed us to make multiple groups and discussed for the details
requirement of assessments with some good examples.
In every week, our professor had discussed on various topics, which were very
interesting including problem solving, problem finding, spotting the obvious, and
visualisation as a Design Thinking tool. In many classes, we students had discussed briefly on
the explained topics with relevant examples among the group members. Along with that, our

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professor also had given different interesting examples on every topics and show us the
related videos that helped us to understand the concepts and to find out the strategic
implication of problem solving tools as well. Each group had individual leader. In the class
of visualisation our professor gave a piece of papers to each groups in which we had to draw
an imaginary picture of any person and should answered all the mentioned questions within
the groups by visualising.
Throughout the learning process, we have conducted many activities in order to
understand and utilise our unit materials while investigating the existing and potential
discrepancies in our conceptualisation. We had filled up and completed the given tasks and
representing our groups when they went for the presentation. In week 8, our professor
provided different equipments, which were needed to understand the process and importance
of prototype. For this, we had done prototype of hostel and buildings and demonstrated it in
class well with better explanation. The main aim of week 9 was participating in the group
discussion about the previous and upcoming assessments with all the group members while
giving feedback about the prototype, which we had done in last week. The 9th week was very
much interesting for me, as we got good opportunity to ask many questions to the next group
and got chance to know the suggestions and thoughts regarding the problems and prototype
that we had done in last week. In weak 9 We had explained about the apps which was named
as Hostel App to our professor also and got some knowledge from our professor regarding
the structure of the App and we also modified it too in better way. For every part of the
learning process felt very happy because I saw many new things to know and learn with my
friends.

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What I have learn about DT tools
In entrepreneurial development innovation is the most essential criteria that requires
specific planning, execution and evaluation methods. Design thinking is a creative problem
solving approach that minimizes all the possible planning errors in the pre-development
planning phase. Apart from that, design thinking allows a business process to find out the
solutions for any run time or potential issue. Design Thinking has several components to
build a proper structure for successful execution namely Mind mapping, Brainstorming,
Visualisation, Feedback capture grid, Storytelling, Customer co-creation, Value chain
analysis, Customer journey mapping, Prototyping and Concept development
Mind mapping
Mind mapping is a highly effective process to getting information flow in brain with
creative and logical understanding and conceptualisation. In Mind map tool, all the connected
components, concepts, theories, dependencies are presented in a multi order tree format that
consists of different nodes, relationship chains and one core topic or core concept (Aarikka-
Stenroos & Jaakkola, 2012). The Mind mapping tool can be used to develop new business
plan, analyse interrelation of various components, visualise concept presentation and to
develop new ideas. Some practical implementations of the mind mapping tool are academic
presentation, city planning concept, topic exploration and others.

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Figure1: Mind-map of social media marketing
Source: (Buzan, 2014)
Brainstorming
Brainstorming is a combination of relaxed and informal approach of lateral thinking
for problem solving. Brainstorming allows the people to come up with new ideas and
concepts within a group discussion to find out the appropriate solution of a problem through
critically analysing and decomposing the proposed procedure (Zahra & Nambisan, 2012). It
is a procedure that combines two essential components namely, group behaviour and
rationally structured analysis. After developing the array of creative solution, the participants
of brain storming session eliminates all the ineffective alternative ideas to find the correct
one. The core concerns of this technique are to be open-minded and to have critical reasoning
capability.
Visualisation
Design Thinking is a building up approach of innovation which requires knowledge,
innovation, concept designing and presentation before developing the implementation plan.
Visualisation is a most effective component of this approach that allows the problem solver to

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present his or her planning and interpretation. Many implementation tools are used for
visualisation procedure including presentation, poster, animation, graphical presentation, 3d
animation and others. Visualisation also helps to gain the attention of the audience while
making them more engage in the problem solving or process development procedure.
Figure 2: Visualisation of Brainstorming procedure
Source: (Hacklin & Wallnöfer, 2012)
Feedback capture grid
Feedback capture grid is a feedback collection and evaluation tool that allows a
system to analyse the feedbacks and critical responses of the users in order to eliminate the
faulty issues and to find new opportunities for further improvement. In an organisation,
feedback capture grid is used both internal and external operation to collect information about
runtime errors and reviews of the consumers (Tschimmel, 2012). The feedback capture grid
has 4 interconnected blocks namely Positive feedback, Negative Feedback, Points not clear
and Improvement opportunity.

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Positive feedback Negative Feedback
The positive reviews and comments from
consumers or members of business operation
The negative reviews and criticism from
consumers or members of business operation
Questions Opportunities
Factors, which are not clear as per the collected
feedbacks
New ideas and opportunities for further
improvement
Table 1: Feedback Capture Grid
Source: (Created by author)
Story telling
Sorry telling is a procedure of presenting new ideas and concepts to the target
audience in attractive way with practical interconnection and comprehensiveness. Story
telling allows the speaker to develop strong verbal communication to influence, motivate and
even convince the target audiences (Seidel & Fixson, 2013). In leadership to consumer
relationship management, storytelling is used as one of the most effective tools of effective
communication and design thinking.
Customer co-creation
Business strategy is focused on customer expectations, experience and interactive
relationships. With the help of Customer Co-creation a business can allows their customers to
get more active and involved in service and product development in order to creat rich
experience for themselves (Liedtka 2015). The co-creation strategy is very useful in
understanding the customers perspectives with regards to their decision making process for
purchasing. Hearing about customer expectations and opinions can change the perception of
the business plan developers that also influences the design thinking process significantly.

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Value chain analysis
Value chain analysis (VCA) is a process that allow anyone to analyse the internal
operations and competence level of an organisation that icludes primary and support activities
that add value to the final products and services. The VCA also allows the organisation to
assess their activities while reducing operational cost to increase profit margin and increase
differentiation (Liedtka, 2014).
Customer journey mapping
A customer journey map is a diagram or a group of interconnected diagrams that
explains the stages customer experience form the interacting phase, through decision making
to buying products. The post-purchasing consumer experience and relation with the company
are also included in this journey map. It allows an organisation to analyse their product,
service and process quality through the perspective of a customer.
Prototyping
A prototype is an early development of product which has not been released yet.
Prototyping allows testing the product quality and potentiality before releasing the product
for the market. From this sample, model the company can learn about the faults and
opportunity for improvement that help to improve the overall configuration of the final
product. The prototyping strategy is used in a variety of business industries including
semantics, design, electronics, and software programming.
Concept development
Concept development emphasises the basic understanding of the necessary
components, conceptualisation of the interrelation of these components and the overall
operating process. Concept development is an extremely early stage of planning after idea

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generation and screening, where the development group needs to develop the basic skeleton
or structural foundation of a particular new products or service. Concept development is very
crucial for communication, presentation and initiation of the next phase of development
(Vasileiadis, 2017).
Analysis:
Specific skill and new things that I have learnt
The Week 1 helps me to gather my knowledge about entrepreneurship and the role of
innovation. I am determined to make strides myself to think in a way which is able not only
facing the issues and the problems but also find an inventive approach to do. With the group
discussion among friends and professor, I am capable to design the future and how to prepare
weekly Blog. I decided to attend all the classes of this units carefully and gain many ideas
which helps me to design my life in a systematic way. I have learned many things within 10
weeks this unit which helped me to express my ideas without any hesitation with my
classmates. In week 2, I have learned different tools of design thinking process and they are
understand, observe, define, ideate, prototype and test. In the 3rd week, I learned many
important things about the blog and blogging. I realised that the blog is the personal diary
where I can post the activities which were conducted in the classroom by the professor by
uploading through text ,photos and videos.
In week 2, I have learned to investigate how plan considering fits with more
conventional shapes of the decision-making. In the week 2, I have learned some factors with
detailed information about the difference between design and business in a practical way
supported by appropriate examples. Along with this, I have learnt about the poster, which
includes its meaning and presentation techniques. In week 5 I learned about rapid
prototyping. From the lesson I have realised that rapid prototyping can be a bunch of

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strategies utilised to rapidly manufacture a scale show of a physical portion or get together
utilizing three-dimensional computer supported plan (CAD) data. I have also learned about
development and utilisation 3D printing as well as adding substance layer fabrication, with
advance graphical designing technology.
Through the exercises, I have learned that intellect mapping for any theme to urge
thoughts can make the estimation procedure in supply chain management and logistic
planning simpler. Through the group exercises I have also learnt about mind mapping with it
utilisation, operation and significance in business operations and in problem solving. I have
learned in that, in data collection, two types of information collection strategies can be used
namely primary and secondary data collection strategy. The Primary information collection
strategy comprises survey overview and real time based studies and their outcomes. The
secondary information collection strategy can be used for observation of studies and their
outcomes, which had not been made by us. I have also learnt about data approximation and
analysis techniques, which are used for micro and macro factor research in business planning.
Evaluation:
How this activity can influence my personal and professional life
The problem solving, problem finding, spotting the obvious, and visualisation will
help to analyse the existing situation of any problematic environment and to find appropriate
solution for those problems. These will be very helpful for my entrepreneurial skill
development process and even in my professional implications. Discussion about previous
and upcoming assessments will help me to enhance my comprehensiveness and competence

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level for academic scoring and career developing. Strategic tools like Mind mapping,
Brainstorming, Visualisation, Feedback capture grid, Storytelling, Customer co-creation,
Value chain analysis, Customer journey mapping, Prototyping and Concept development will
help me to improve my knowledge and develop my skills while allowing me to come up with
new innovative ideas with appropriate implementation plan in my professional life as well.
Along with all the Unit activities and learning components through the group activities I have
gained the perception of cooperative and collaborative work procedure. It will help me to be a
good leader and manager in my professional field as well. Apart from that the poster design,
blogging tips will help me to make appropriate visualisation and presentation tool for my
academic and professional field of implementation. The 3D designing, printing and graphical
utilisation will allow me to develop my skill in visualisation, which is one of the most
essential components for being an entrepreneur.

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Reference
Aarikka-Stenroos, L., & Jaakkola, E. (2012). Value co-creation in knowledge intensive
business services: A dyadic perspective on the joint problem solving
process. Industrial marketing management, 41(1), 15-26.
Buzan, T. (2014). Mind Maps for Business: Using the ultimate thinking tool to revolutionise
how you work. Pearson Education.
Hacklin, F., & Wallnöfer, M. (2012). The business model in the practice of strategic decision
making: insights from a case study. Management Decision, 50(2), 166-188.
Johansson‐Sköldberg, U., Woodilla, J., & Çetinkaya, M. (2013). Design thinking: past,
present and possible futures. Creativity and innovation management, 22(2), 121-146.
Liedtka, J. (2014). Innovative ways companies are using design thinking. Strategy &
Leadership, 42(2), 40-45.
Liedtka, J. (2015). Perspective: Linking design thinking with innovation outcomes through
cognitive bias reduction. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 32(6), 925-938.
Seidel, V. P., & Fixson, S. K. (2013). Adopting design thinking in novice multidisciplinary
teams: The application and limits of design methods and reflexive practices. Journal
of Product Innovation Management, 30, 19-33.
Tschimmel, K. (2012). Design Thinking as an effective Toolkit for Innovation. In ISPIM
Conference Proceedings (p. 1). The International Society for Professional Innovation
Management (ISPIM).
Vasileiadis, G. (2017). Visualization of Service Design Concepts. Journal of Product
Innovation Management, 12(3), 95-98.

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Zahra, S. A., & Nambisan, S. (2012). Entrepreneurship and strategic thinking in business
ecosystems. Business horizons, 55(3), 219-229.