Ends lecture 3/5

I am always worried that I am not doing my projects right, but today Dr. Vanegas cleared the air a bit.  Basically if I read the objective of the assignment and try to reach it with my project I should be fine.  I of course have to comply with the rules, like saving the project under the right name, and make sure that I do all the parts required.  

The actual lecture was a continuation from the tuesday class about managing the creative process.  We looked at a bunch of different ways to help come up with ideas and solutions.  You can do activity analysis where you list everything you do.  Later go through that list and find ways to prioritize what you did, and if there was anything you could do make those tasks easier.  There is also anthropometric analysis, weird name huh, which is using human population measurement data to check the coverage and suitability of the design solution for the target group.  This will help you find a group that represents who will be utilizing your product.  Character profiles is observing real people and picking a small subset of the population to focus on and help, basically specializing your service.  You use stereotypes in a positive way here to help you find a group such as planning parties for the extremely rich or something along those lines.  It is also useful to do long range forecasts where you imagine possible scenarios and try to figure out ways you could provide a service or solve the problem.  I tend to do this frequently, where I imagine various scenarios and think about what I will do if one of them actually happens.  The other method I liked was the five whys where you ask a person why five times and you will find the truth out really quick.  

Trying out the idea or product is important to see if it is worth it or not.  You can use the methods of role-playing, scenario testing, or scale modeling.