SIID Blog

The define step is really crucial to the design thinking process as a whole. You need a persona that captures your target market, whether that’s an existing market or a new market you’re hoping to attract. For my group, we created Cross-Country Karen, a middle-aged, married mom of 2 who travels frequently for work but […]

Over these past few months I’ve found myself frequently telling people “I’m in this really cool Sustainability and Innovation class” or “in my sustainability class we were talking about….”. I have truly enjoyed this class and it is definitely one of my favorites that I have ever taken in college. I know when I look […]

I really enjoyed the experience of pitch day. Listening to our class and the other classes section my group all commented on how there were a few reoccurring ideas (sustainability rewards programs and subscription services were common themes), and I thought that was really interesting. While the idea was to come up with new ideas, […]

The prototyping stage is when our idea really began to solidify. We started off this stage with an idea we wanted to pursue, creating a sustainability rewards program, but we were slightly overwhelmed by the scope of this idea. At first we were all just throwing out different actions that could be rewarded and new […]

When I took Design Thinking over the summer, it quickly became my favorite course. While some of my friends commented that they didn’t like how open ended or ‘disorganized’ the process was, I loved it. I think a lot of people are used to a linear path for problem solving, where, even if they don’t […]

Trying to find an airline that is considered “revolutionary” is a difficult task. Budget airlines like Spirit and RyanAir have “revolutionized” air travel by having incredibly low base ticket prices, however they are also generally considered uncomfortable and unpleasant experiences, with low customer support. Major airlines like Delta and United have moments of innovation and […]

My first thought when thinking about products wise consumers would purchase was thinking about how people in the coldest parts of the country approach buying winter coats. Although this might seem like a slightly obscure example, I think that it encapsulates a lot of what wise consumption is. A good winter coat may be worn […]

I really struggled with picking a ‘best’ framework because I felt that each framework had their strengths but neglected other aspects, so none were quiet at full-picture as I would have liked. I think my personal favorite for evaluating was the Total Beauty model because I felt that this was the only model that had […]

I really enjoyed learning about the brief cases because it opened my eyes to a lot of new aspects of sustainability. A lot of the cases opened my eyes to new sustainable products, like Thistle Farms and Loop, and taught me more about companies I’d already heard about with Bird and Founding Farmers. In the […]

I expected the google search of “well-being” to return the automatic dictionary result, maybe a few other dictionary results, and maybe even a thesaurus.com page with synonyms. I didn’t expect the third result to be a Center for Disease Control and Prevention page. Under the “Health-Related Quality of Life” section of the CDC’s page, they […]