SMITHFIELD – In its seventh annual iteration, Bryant University’s Innovation and Design Experience for All, or IDEA, 2019 seminar added a focus on user experience during the three-day event.
Based on steps from empathizing, defining and ideating to creating a prototype and testing, the IDEA model was advanced this year by the school’s administrators to include analysis of the user experience, the first step in the model’s process.
Allison Butler, associate professor of applied psychology and director of the IDEA program, said the increased emphasis on empathizing will allow students to develop breakthroughs to hurdles faced by users who may have gone previously unrecognized by the design team.
During initial research, she added in a statement, designers “encounter a lot of perceptual bias, where our brain is sort of hardwired to make us very efficient. We notice the big picture, but we often look past the details. … That’s just one example as a design-thinker where you really need to combat some of those perceptual and observational biases to make sure that you catch the fine details.”
IDEA co-founder and professor of management Lori Coakley echoed her colleague.
“Creating this deeper understanding of the user or customer becomes the foundation for transformative innovation,” said Coakley in a statement. “By looking at the entire journey of a user, you can see where a transformation needs to take place and get to a solution.”
Throughout the event, students are evaluated not only on their results – a possible solution or work toward one – but also on their train of thought, specifically overcoming obstacles and their defense of their end product.
Wrapping up on Jan. 23, the design-thinking boot camp saw nearly 900 students team up to help solve real-world problems of 35 local companies. Not just mom-and-pop shops, the New England Patriots Hall of Fame, Boys and Girls Clubs, Rhode Island Community Food Bank and the Providence Place mall were involved in the latest IDEA event.
Information on the 2018 event can be read here.
Emily Gowdey-Backus is a staff writer for PBN. You can follow her on Twitter @FlashGowdey or contact her via email, gowdey-backus@pbn.com.
