This week our readings were ” The Structure of Reflection-in-Action” by Donald Schön and “Innovation as a Learning Process” by Sara L. Beckman. Though both articles were interesting, I believe Beckman provided more depth to her ideas. Amongst her innovative approach, I think that she made her point most accurately when she said “innovation means understanding the innovation process, and the need to move between the abstract and concrete and between analysis and synthesis to execute that process… it means assembling the right mix of people on the team to execute the process… it means providing a leader who understand the process.”
Though I find that Beckman made a complicated ordeal out of an already abstract idea, I fully accept her four-step process. Observation, Frameworks, Imperatives, and Solutions. The steps itself were logical, and they worked together quite well. In terms of real-life application, I want to look at our previous in-class assignment: Designing an open-house event for the Henry Angus building.
During the designing process, my group faced numerous obstacles. We did not appear to follow a logical sequence, and halfway through our allotted time, we had already circled back to the ‘observation’ step. Though Beckman fully supports a fluid movement throughout the innovation process, my group had skipped several steps. We were all abstract, no concrete. A quick ‘guide’ to our process follows:
Brainstorming (best initial idea: slip n’ slide | It really wasn’t that great) -> Spending 10 minutes justifying our slip n’ slide. -> Scrap the idea. -> We tried to refocus and begin by identifying the main problem. (frameworks) -> Went off on a new tangent, this time with loud music and paint involved -> We repeated the previous process, and with 2 minutes left, we found ourselves scrambling to find a feasible solution. Fortunately, we had brainstormed plenty of ideas, and our ‘thinking outside the box’ entrance idea was appreciated by the class.
In conclusion, our innovation process was nothing like the one Beckman recommended. We did not have a proper sense of leadership, and we did not move between abstract and concrete.. we stayed on the edges. The safe edges. Thankfully we reached good conclusions, but we were in no shape to present one coherent idea. I have learned that design is indeed abstract, but it should have a clear structure.
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