Design Thinking and Innovative Thinking: A Self-Analysis

Running head: DESIGN IT
Design It
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s Note:

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Introduction
Self-analysis is one of the most important tools that are being used by the students in this
modern day scenario for understanding their strengths and weaknesses. Self-analysis keeps the
students to develop a clear cut idea about the areas of their strengths and weaknesses. The
students must be taught the methods of applying the self-analysis skills in their personal and
professional lives as well. This will help them to find out the areas of their strengths and their
weaknesses (Uthaug, 2018). This is the best way through which the students can actually learn to
take different steps for improving their weaknesses. I have undertaken many workshops and
weekly activities that have helped me in finding out my backlogs. I will have to find out different
means for overcoming these errors and myself for becoming successful in the future. These
workshops were mainly about the methods of design thinking and innovative thinking.
Reflection of learning from the weekly blogs
I am really very thankful to my teachers that they arranged for the workshops on a
weekly basis and asked us to participate in the same. This has really helped me a lot to
understand my own personality. I have been able to understand the areas of my strengths and the
areas of my weaknesses. I have realized many unknown facts about my own personality. This
will surely help me in the long run. As I want to become a successful manager in the future, I
will have to inculcate some or then other kinds of qualities within myself. This has also been a
very good opportunity for developing a team spirit.
This is because I got many different viewpoints and opinions about myself from my
peers. In the week 1 workshop, I came to know about the entire course details. I was initially
worried and did not know the methods of design thinking. I was really getting afraid (Madore,

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Addis & Schacter, 2015). I did not know what to do and how to proceed in the work. However, I
could understand the details of the assignment as I started paying to make attention to the class
and started thinking deeply. In the week 2 workshop the concepts of design thinking started
becoming much clear to me. I realized that I have to be much more innovative. I need to develop
the divergent style of thinking. This will help me in finding out the solution to any particular
problem from many different angles (Sowden et al., 2015). This naturally helped me to widen
my range of thinking. I learned about the Unilever Water Purifier and Gillette Razor. I realized
that innovating thinking is indeed one of the most important tools. I also came to know about the
deep drive approach and the brainstorming methods. This is really very enlightening. I will try to
develop a very strong and deep innovative thinking capacity.
Week 3 was also very useful for me. I have always suffered from this problem of time
management. I often go by only one particular kind of thinking style and do not try to widen my
area of thinking. It is for this reason I was having a problem in learning about the Divergent and
Convergent thinking tools. I was also not quite sure about at the usage of all these tools.
However, as I started paying deep attention, I realized that it is not really that tough (Watson,
2015). I have to understand that in order to be a successful manager in the future, I have to be
much more creative. I think that some of the quotes that I came across during this session have
been very inspiring from me like “watch and learn”, ‘’Patience ‘’, ‘’Cross-disciplinary’’ and
many other such other sentences (Furnham, 2015). In the 4th week, I came to know about the
difference between problem-solving and problem finding.
I think that I have to learn a lot from this week activity. This is because I was trying to
find out problems in that which actually did not have any such problem. So, I need to utilize the
methods like visualization, spotting, Personas and many other such effective tools for

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understanding and analyzing a problem and reaching to its solution. Week 5 was again about
design thinking. This helped me to understand the different techniques of design thinking and
how to carry on the process of brainstorming and mind mapping (Rosciano, 2015). I realized that
I have to be less judgmental and say yes to any kinds of challenges. In other words, I have to
understand that I cannot stay biased. I have to make my ideas and my opinions much more open-
ended I realized that I have to start identifying and understanding each and every day to day
objects in an innovative manner. I learned about the usage of the mind mapping and the
brainstorming in the value chain analysis before delivering a particular product (Behm, Culvenor
& Dixon 2014). Before the launching a product in the market it is really very essential to see the
products properly through a value chain analysis (Madore, Jing & Schacter, 2016). This will help
in understanding the different effects that product might have after being launched into the
market. There are many activities like the inbound logistics, outbound logistics, operation,
marketing and sales, services and also many other such products (Baruah & Paulus, 2016).
This helps in understanding the different stages of mind mapping that through which we
can design the launch of a product in many different ways and see the best possible means. Week
7 has also been very beneficial for my career and my future development as well. If I get
appointed in any of the reputed firms in my future then I will have to produce many reports.
There are several methods that help in extracting the data and producing an error-free report.
There are steps like following a proper method either Qualitative or Quantitative Approaches,
using either the primary or the secondary data, carrying on the interviews, surveys, focus groups
and many other such things. I also learned that I will have to abide by the ethical considerations
while preparing any reports for an industry. In this week I came to know why ethics is one of the
most important parts of working in any position and in any industry.