Theme 5: Design research after blog

After reading the papers this week and reading the other students blog posts I feel like I have a better idea on prototypes. I also attended the second lecture with Haibo Li.

Haibo Li wanted to talk to us about ideas; how to come up with ideas, how to filter them, how to validate, evaluate and communicate them.

When you come up with an idea you always have to filter. Haibo told us a few things to think about; does the idea address the real problem? Is the timing right? Is there a big enough market?  But before this stage you have to define the right problem. And this is the thing that Haibo highlighted and that I found most interesting. He talked about not starting with the solution and always going back to the real problem. He said that a lot of professors are famous for their solutions for problems in advanced reports, but the ones who get really famous are the ones who work hard on defining the problem. To make a point out of this Haibo told us a story about a professor and a student being chased by a bear. The problem was how to outrun the bear, but since one person would be good enough for the bear; the problem was no longer how to outrun the bear, but to outrun the professor. With this metaphor he wanted to show us that it is important think about the problem, not the solution.