- What is design thinking?
Design thinking is trying to think outside of the box and make something new or create another option that has not been done before. It is also important to note that design thinking focuses on how the option can help the user. Design thinkers test out their ideas and reformat them as necessary early on in the design process so they can save money by getting the big mistakes out of the way first. Design thinking creates an opportunity for people from all sorts of backgrounds and different knowledge bases to collaborate and be able to make something that can help other people and that hasn’t been made before.
- How has design thinking influenced a product I use?
I am a diabetic so design thinking has greatly influenced my life. I use an insulin pump to control my blood sugars in lieu of the job my pancreas was supposed to be doing. Before the insulin pump, all diabetics had to rely on injections either by insulin pen or by syringe and vial, so even the insulin pen was a step in the design thinking process. My insulin pump alone is a very complex computer that is able to communicate with other devices like my phone and a continuous glucose monitor in order to make my life as a diabetic easier. Somewhere along the line, somebody thought there had to be a better and less inconvenient way of managing diabetes, and they, along with many others, came up with the idea for the insulin pump and have changed the lives of so many people all over the world.
- What are the connections between opportunities and planning?
Opportunity and planning connect in a successful business venture. To have a successful implementation of an idea, the idea has to be sellable and it has to be feasible. There are countless opportunities in the world right now for successful ideas to emerge. The struggle is thinking of how to actually fix the problems that people might want fixed, and how to fix it in a way that is affordable and doable for the average person. When someone both has an idea that fits a need or desire and has a plan to make it a reality, that is how opportunity and planning connect.
- What opportunities have I missed?
I know that opportunities don’t only come in the form of business ventures and possible innovation ideas. I had an opportunity to get a degree from Penn State University, and I even went there for three semesters before coming home because I was not doing well enough in my classes there (it was also a fortunate time because the semester I came home to start online classes at TCC, covid happened and I would have been paying out of state tuition for the same experience I got at TCC). I could consider that a missed opportunity, but I have seized other opportunities since then which include being accepted into ODU after turning my GPA around at TCC, so an opportunity missed can be a path to learn and to take future opportunities.
- Can a successful venture be unethical?
A successful venture can be unethical, but then again, morality is in the eye of the beholder. One thing that has started to pop up as an ethically cloudy way of making money is property tax payoffs. Homeowners who do not pay their property tax go onto a list online. Other people with the money to pay the property tax have begun to come in and pay the tax off as a loan which these homeowners are unable to pay, as they are not even able to pay their property tax. These loan sharks are given a certain amount of time to be paid back before they take over the property and are then able to sell it and get the equity on the house. This, to me, is an unethical way of making money, yet it is a successful venture if you were to go by a purely financial standpoint.