Design Thinking Assignment

Design thinking is a design method to solve problems using a solution-based approach. Complicated issues that are uncertain and not well described can be tackled with ease using this method. It can also be helpful when we consider the individual needs involved and coming up with several ideas in our brainstorming process. There are five stages in design thinking, understanding and applying these stages can help us complete complicated challenges. The five stages of design thinking are empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and testing. We interviewed experts in UTM digitals and prepared a survey for UTM students to solve the problem regarding input and output system. We prepared a series of questions about audio input to the experts and our respondents. From the interview and survey, we identified that they are mostly facing the same problem which is complex action cannot be performed by using audio input in software such as Photoshop, AutoCAD, Microsoft Office etc. After our discussion, we decided to create a voice control interface like Siri from Apple on this basic working software to make audio input process more effective.

In empathize stage, we obtained empathic understanding of the problem by immersing ourselves in users’ perception. This helped us make the best approach to tackle user’s problem. Interview session is the first step of empathize. We collected respondent’s personal information, problems encountered and feedbacks. For example, we asked the respondent’s background such as name, title, and division, the problems faced when using audio input in daily life. We interviewed an expert from UTMDigital and identified the problem he faced when using audio input as replacement to traditional inputs in software such as Microsoft Office, Autodesk AutoCAD and Adobe Photoshop. Besides, we also did questionnaire form to the students of UTM about the problems they faced when using audio input in daily life and the problems might be encountered when using audio input only in the software mentioned above to identify the most impact problem based on the responses.

We list down the problems faced by the respondent if using audio input only in software mentioned above in the define process and tabled them in the table below.

According to the table above, we identified that perform complex actions through audio input only in these software is the major problem. There are thousands of functions available in these software programs, using solely audio input is difficult to perform complex and precise action. Besides, current existing audio input has limited function in these software. For example, the built-in audio input function for Microsoft Word is only limited to typing words. Therefore, we set perform complex actions through audio input only in these software is the major problem.

In this stage, we had a brainstorming session where we contributed our ideas to solve the problem above. After discussion, we came out several ideas and stated our ideas in Google Jamboard. After that, we voted and selected the best solutions. The ideas to solve the major problem for UTM students identified during define stage are the followings:

After our discussion and voting session, we decided to use idea number 7 which is designing a voice control interface similar to Apple Siri on basic working tools that we usually use for instant Microsoft Office.

Firstly, we discuss the user interface of this program we can add a “voice command” on the toolbars that the software we are using. When we select the toolbars the software will automatically switch to voice control mode.

Next, we discuss the command that we can do using sound control in Microsoft Office. The system should have a text selection voice command where we can select the text desired besides word typing only. Lastly, we decided to add a text editing and deleting option where users can edit their text by copying, pasting, cutting, replacing other text, and delete the text desired.

A prototype is the most suitable solution that we selected from the 9 ideas in our brainstorming process. We decided to design a voice control interface similar to Apple Siri on Microsoft Office. We designed our voice control interface using Microsoft Powerpoint and also presented each of the effects of voice command using it. A total of 39 slides had been created and these slides present voice command in typing function, text selection function, insert function such as insert tables and shapes, text editing function such as changing font type, delete, copy and paste, and moving typing cursor function.

In this stage, we tested our prototype to determine whether we achieved the results we wanted and obtained feedbacks that will help us identified potential innovation and keep on improving existing prototype to perfectly solve users’ problem. In our first test we found out that we don’t have enough features to fulfill users’ needs, and we had to add more features. After several improvements, the prototype successfully fulfilled the users’ needs.

There were many problems we faced during the making of this assignment. Our first and most impactful problem was the pandemic resulting the university temporarily closed. This caused inconvenience as we couldn’t meet each other to work on this project because we are all not staying in the same city. For example, we had to make sure that all parts of the report, video, and prototype, etc. are in synced and only had slight differences compared to other members’ work. Other than that, we also had time zones problems since we are not staying in the same country. Another problem we faced was that we had a different point of views at some points, which isn’t a bad thing since it helps us improve our prototype until it made all the members satisfied with the result.

Our teamwork is very visible in our group. Even though we had miscommunication for one week, we could still do our assignments well. At the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, this did not become a barrier for us to continue learning to do research. We were assisted by several supporting applications to conduct research for time control and virtual discussions. We had done our best to solve the problem with innovative solutions through a list of questions that will be asked of several users and our work has received good responses from our respondents. During discussions via social media to create design thoughts, our team's detailed plans executed smoothly. For example, we successfully completed our interviews with four respondents in one to two days even though we had many assignments from other subjects. Due to teamwork, we were able to shorten the time to complete this project.