4 Hours In The Industry

In this week’s class we were blessed with the opportunity to do a four-hour workshop with Black Box design in Johnson & Johnson’s development center on the UL campus. We were given a design challenge. We had to come up with a startup in the area of UN sustainable development goals. We had to go through the full design process in four hours, we did this by speeding through all the stages in design process in timed 15-minute sprints. This made think on our feet and we didn’t waste any time. They showed us design aiding tools and techniques. They told us to build on ideas, for instance it is important to try say “and” instead of “but”. I particularly found this useful, it was key in our group ideating to be positive and encourage ideas rather than put them down regardless of how ridiculous they were.

After getting through the ideating stage, we powered through the other stages as time was a constraint. We had to think of how our idea would be financed and branded, this helped us shape our idea. Our idea was a battery pack that could be attached to the back of a bike and it stores energy generated by kinetic energy from the movement of the wheel. The idea was to help create energy for poorer people in 3rd world countries. I was baffled by the high standard of work produced by the class. We had produced such high standard solutions in 4 hours which would usually take us 4 weeks.

The Black Box team were very helpful, and I learned a lot from them. They proved to us that quite a good solution can be ideated, developed and refined in a short space of time. I was delighted to get a glimpse at the kind a work I could be doing in a few years. I was fascinated by how professional and fancy the development center was. It was full of cool technology. It is exactly the sort of environment I would like to work in. It was gratifying to see what we do in practice in the industry. Sometimes I think that the work I do in college is so fun that we couldn’t be doing this as a job, and it was very satisfying to see in firsthand the sort of job I could have. It gave me hope that (fingers crossed) I’ll be working in a company like Black Box in a few years.

This was one of the most beneficial classes we had, initially when I was going to class, I felt tired and unmotivated. During the class I got extremely interested and the tiredness wore off. When I was leaving, I felt positive and felt I had really got something from the class. There was a buzz about the class, everyone was chatting about how good it was for the next few days.