Assignment Overview:
Your assignment involves crafting a detailed and comprehensible problem statement, which should be based on the insights you’ve gathered throughout this process. Additionally, you’re required to use the provided template to create an annotated portfolio that showcases the completed process of arriving at a project brief. This portfolio should elucidate the advantages and applications of design thinking tools in understanding your problem. Specifically, it should address the following points:
1. How and why would you utilize these tools in your future professional endeavors?
2. What aspects of the process would you repeat or alter in future projects?
3. What you’ve discovered about yourself during this process?
4. What is your personal learning style?
5. Most importantly, your individual contributions to a team, as a result of the work you’ve completed in this course.
This assessment task requires you to demonstrate that you have used the theory and exercises to reach a comprehensive understanding of the problem at hand, the tools used to address it, and your personal growth throughout the process.
This assignment does not require you to identify a potential solution. To summarise, the key deliverables from you would include:
- The filled-up checklist.
- An annotated portfolio created using the provided template and incorporating artifacts that you produce during the course. 3. Reflections on the artefacts addressing the requirements set out in the template.
Assignment Brief
The use of screens, including smartphones, tablets, and computers, has become an integral part of our daily lives. While these devices offer unprecedented access to information, entertainment, and connectivity, they also present challenges, particularly among young users. High levels of screen time have been associated with various health and developmental concerns, leading to public scrutiny and ethical considerations for technology providers.
You work in an innovation team at Lava International Ltd, which manufactures mobile hands for Indian and international markets. Currently more than a third of the phones that your company manufactures are exported to markets including Mexico, Africa, Southeast Asia, and West Asia. (You can find more information about Lava here and more information about the Electronics System Design & Manufacturing (EDSM) industry in India here)
The leadership team have tasked the innovation team with reaching a better understanding of the way that young people (GenZ) use smartphones. The board is aware of negative publicity involving the overuse of devices by young people worldwide and wants to explore ways that it can respond to the potential hazards associated with misuse of its products. Before deciding whether to initiate an innovation project, your boss has asked you undertake some design thinking research to better understand and define the problems associated with the use of smartphones by young people, and to prepare a design brief supported by an annotated portfolio demonstrating the research you’ve undertaken to arrive at your brief.
This assignment will require you to apply design thinking tools to understand and define a project that addresses the problem of excessive screen time.