I carry this belief into other areas of my work as well. My first experience as a team leader for Design for America (DFA), the project failed because it was all based on bias and personal experience of the team members. After this experience, I learned that you must take time to address all possible biases that may hinder your work before you start designing. When I was President, I designed an activity where the team used post- its to write down everything they know and all of their assumptions about their problem space.
After this, the teams cluster similar things they wrote and curate a list. After making this list, the teams do research to prove their idea’s validity. This would ensure that all incorrect assumptions were proven wrong and the teams had research to back up.
This work is an excellent example of my solution-focused method to data synthesis. For both situations, I saw that there was a problem with our current structure, and created a system to decrease personal bias and increased value for user feedback. I bring this structure and the value of unbiased design to all design projects I am apart of.
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