Digital Reflection Tania Penaloza
ABOUT ME
Hi, everyone! My name is Tania Penaloza. I am a senior majoring in Interdisciplinary Studies with a focus on Leadership Initiative. I love singing, I enjoy sharing music with others. It was a rewarding experience to participate in this Innovate Monarchs. I have learned what design thinking is and how it is applied to solving complex issues. As a ODU student, I am pleased to collaborate with my team to make changes that will bring a positive impact to the ODU community. I feel happy to be able to incorporate design thinking in my future employment and to apply each step in approaching future challenges in my career. I hope to gain employment with a local company that is expanding its business to new countries. Within my career, I am eager to apply the knowledge that I have gained in Design Thinking and Interdisciplinary Studies, and to be a leader that creates innovative solutions.
Innovate Monarch Experience
My experience in the Innovative Monarch Program was valuable because we focused on development of the needs of students. Especially the minority groups attending ODU. Our team worked with ODU's efforts to "Design a University Ready for African American and Latin learners." We addressed the question, "How do we communicate campus resources in a way that raises awareness and reduces of stigma of getting help." My team focused on a new program, named "Wear Your Crown Proud." This program can facilitate and empower students to take advantage of ODU resources in order to succeed in their classes. Our program was designed for first time and transfers students, but all students can benefit from our program. We hope that this program can help students to feel confident and reduce the stigma of asking for help. It will also help faculty and students to work together to achieve academic success. Throughout the entire process we helped each other by listening to our different points of view so as to achieve the best product. The weekly team meetings helped us to stay motivated during the process. We learned how important is support each other and to work in unity. We created an effective website , presentation and a support team. At the end of the program, we proudly introduced our innovative prototype to ODU's President and staff. As a team member, I believe that this product can bring a positive outcome to the current Monarch as well as future Monarchs.
MINDSETS OF A HUMAN - CENTERED DESIGNER
I began the process of Innovation when I had to utilize elements from my designer's toolkit. These tools and knowledge helped me to unfold ideas and use experimentation to approach innovative solutions, and to be able to iterate and re-iterate until the effective idea comes. This was a challenge. It required determination to continue trying and accepting ambiguous responses. This taught me that sometimes the solution comes in different ways other than traditional rules and methods.
I practiced the empathy and human-centered mindset when I had to think about the challenges that face Latinx and African American students. Focusing on the students' needs was an important phase in developing our product. The design thinking helped me to consider that people need in order to create an effective prototype. I developed a more conscientious approach when I was able to be more sensitive to the needs of my fellow students in ODU.
APPLYING INNOVATE EXPERIENCES IN THE FUTURE
As a student in Interdisciplinary Studies, I see the importance of learning from people of different backgrounds and fields. This will help me in designing products that can benefit me in all facets of my life. Design thinking will be a powerful tool to develop critical thinking skills and to apply innovation in my future employment. In my volunteer job it will be useful when I have to plan new strategies and solution to improve my performance with my clients. Not only this process will be effective in my career, but also in my personal life to solve complex issues that require empathy, define the problem, ideation, and then, create and test the solution.
Credits:
ODU pictures publicly available on the internet.