Reflection 1: Design-Thinking

My first week at Stanford was filled with this conversation:

me: Hi, my name is Anisha. What's yours?
someone: My name is _______________. What do you study?
me:

*pause*

my thought process: well, what do I say? The more accurate I make my answer, the more confused people become. I could take the simple route of saying "Mechanical Engineering", but the idea of sitting in a room doing problem sets for hours makes me queasy and is completely inaccurate. If I say "Product Design" people still want to know what department I'm in. I respond to that with Mechanical Engineering. Now the other person looks confused as images of slogging over problem sets and of those of designing a prettier red sofa seem to clash. I suppose I could most accurately respond with "Design Thinking", but that often leads to confusion about how I am getting a Masters degree without specialization in any particular topic. I find that people seem uneasy about the idea of specializing in being a generalist.

The design that I have come to Stanford to study draws from a huge variety of skills and fields including (but not limited to) problem solving, shop/building techniques, abstract creativity, leadership, engineering analysis and design, an understanding of technologies and tools that exist, business and entrepreneurship, sustainability and other social issues, aesthetics and formgiving, communication, human factors, and digital and media skills. I will spend the next two years learning as much as I can about all of these areas from my classes, projects, professors, peers, and extra-curricular activities.

I am here to learn a process that I can apply not only to making innovative products that solve problems, but also to use innovation to transform entire systems and organizations. Any problem or question that a company, person, or community regularly faces has the potential to be alleviated by investing the time to design a better solution. This program is about learning effective methods to do so. The more I learn about what design is and its potential applications to a variety of fields, the more excited I get about the doors it can potentially open and the type of work I may find myself doing in the future.

Unfortunately, this first week has left me perplexed about how to concisely explain my area of expertise and the multitude of applications for what I have come to school to study. I can't wait until this crystallizes.