As we grow, connect, learn, and build, we constantly develop and become leaders. The advantages that I took while learning at ODU has made me more of a leader, as I have gotten a full grasp on what it means to be a leader when applying it my career in engineering. As an aspiring engineer, my desire is to help to innovate and create new technologies to benefit humanity. Registering for these LeADERS courses, I only sought to complete them because they befit my requirement for graduation. But when taking them, I was able to learn much and adapt the concept behind careful and effective planning and decision-making, as well as incorporating creativity to aid peers and develop the community and overall society.

This was the aim behind the course I took during my junior year, Design Thinking for Leaders – CPD 414. This course fulfilled my Leadership area for the LeADERS program. In this course, we were exposed to human-centered collaboration and experimentation for actually designing something new that would help society. Design Thinking is about believing we can make a difference, and having an intentional process in order to get to new, relevant solutions that create positive impact. Design Thinking gives you faith in your creative abilities and a process for transforming difficult challenges into opportunities for design.

For this course, we were setup in groups to collaborate and design a mew tote bag for people who are suffering from Lymphoma disease. Over the course of the 8 weeks, we had to go through a step-by step process, where we would first work to understand the the requirements and consider design ideas that would create a tote bag, which would be appealing for use for everyone, including those diagnosed with Lymphoma. Taking advantage of a technological platform, Zoom and email, I was given the ability to connect with my group and come up with creative design ideas that matched with our goal parameters. Each member of our group was responsible for gaining enough information to generate creative design ideas that would go toward making the tote bag. While I was in charge of designing the product, the other members were responsible for interviewing cancerous patients for preferences on tote bag designs, research tote bags for a general design, and plan and developing meetings and manage the work for assignments. We all played our parts well and successfully made a great design. The project, Pamperpak as we called it, addresses all the needs for users, especially for more ill/disabled people, with the primary purpose of carrying important items, like medications.

Fig. 4 – Final Design

Taking this course was advantageous for me as it gave me an insight on collaboration and the experience behind designing prototypes from collective ideas, of which would positively impact the community. Prior to the course, I already had both knowledge and experience in applying the design process. Following this class, I now know to interpret the needs of consumers and users and consider their preferences and articulate more potential and realistic ideas that would work. Having done the interviews, it was great to know what was needed to incorporate on our tote bag design, as this has been our first experience with this sort of project.