D:LAB WORKSHOP: Intentionally Designing and Innovating to Meet Actual User Needs.
One of the Project Teams that was at the D: lab’s maiden spring semester Workshop: NFT
Back to the Basics with Innovation: The D:Lab’s Maiden workshop
After forging a deep path in the journey for innovation, there is something eerily beautiful about returning to the beginning – back to the basics, as it were – to remind oneself about the problem one started from and gain a new perspective in hindsight. This was the intention of the action-packed workshop hosted on Friday, the 27th of January, themed: Intentionally Designing and Innovating to Meet Actual User Needs. The D:Lab’s valiant teams had made impressive advancements, so imagine their surprise in learning that the workshop took them back to the basics of design thinking: Identifying the problem space, creating a journey map and ideation via brainstorming. This surprise, though, quickly turned into appreciation as they gleaned the benefits of aligning innovation building with design making. Various D:Lab projects including Hydroponics, Vertical Farming, NFT, AI/Robotics, Machine Learning, IG Training, Helicopter Project, UGV, Escape Ghana Tungaane, JIG, ChatGPT.
One of the Project Teams that was at the D:lab’s maiden spring semester Workshop going through the Design Thinking Process
The workshop and its topic served as an excellent opportunity for project teams to gain valuable insight into the process and systems of design thinking and design making. Following its introduction, an engaging discussion ensued on user-centred design and the importance of understanding users' needs when developing solutions. Participants learnt how to use various design tools to create prototypes and user-centred solutions for testing and validating ideas.
The next part of the workshop was a hands-on session, where participants were tasked with developing a prototype using the design thinking remapping exercise. Teams worked together to identify their problem spaces and key users and construct creative solutions while being encouraged to consider the user experience when designing their prototypes.
Going back to the basics hinges on a unique kind of simplicity. The kind that Bill Jensen describes as “the art of making the complex clear” – providing teams with the “power to work smarter” and “leverage [untapped] innovation, creativity, and ideas that already exist” within them. This is highly essential as accomplishing the D:Lab’s mission and theme of ‘Innovation for Domestication’ is no easy feat. The question then remains: did the workshop provide the teams with this valuable kind of simplicity and all its accompanying benefits?
‘Hydroponics’ is a project that seeks to find an alternative method of growing plants in the absence of soil by creating a hydroponic system that is sustainable and feasible for African households. They have worked on an initial structure and are currently looking at developing it further and creating an IOT-based system that monitors environmental and nutrient conditions to allow the user to optimise crop growth in the system. According to Miriam Boateng’24, the workshop motivated her team, which she undoubtedly appreciated as the team leader. More importantly, it quieted the "noise" associated with their research. In this calmness – a renewed simplicity, if you will – the design thinking steps and processes “highlighted the diverse strategies the team could utilise to build a hydroponics system”. Edem Bleboo’24, another member, confirmed that the workshop did generate new insights. Specifically, in the ideation stage, they reasoned that biodegradable plastics would be an exciting and futuristic way of improving the project's sustainability. It is no wonder then that Miriam proudly exclaimed that she would encourage others to attend such workshops to “get acquainted with the diverse ways design thinking can be approached”.
Snacks break for every team:D:lab Workshop
The ‘Vertical Farming’ project team shared similar sentiments while reaping different benefits. As initially mentioned, going back to the basics also serves to remind the team of where they started this innovation journey from, as it happened in this team’s case. Project team lead Abdallah Salia’24 explained that the workshop allowed them to fully immerse themselves in their problem as they produced consumer-tailored solutions. Vertical Farming is a project that focuses on maximising farmers' harvest over small plots of land by planting crops in a vertical structure, using poles and plastic bottles. It goes to the root of what Salia describes as a “wicked problem” in Africa’s food system that is almost impossible to solve. Almost. But with the workshop, they were able to test out their solution, which is why he encourages others to attend D:Lab sessions if they are passionate about change-making and problem-solving.
Another project team that was fully represented at the D:Lab’s first workshop was the NFT project. The primary goal of the NFT project is to introduce an Ashesi NFT project that is minted via the OpenSea web3 marketplace and placed on the blockchain. The project aims to develop utility through various innovation projects that resonate with Ashesi's vision and also enable a worldwide audience to participate through transactions carried out with their NFTs (which they can rent or sell etc). With this initiative, Ashesi students are on the vanguard of advancements in the Web3 industry. The team was present to assimilate yet again, the design thinking approach to building the NFT project to a success.
Also, the Machine Learning project was a heavily represented team at the workshop. The focal point of this project is to build leak-proof recommender systems for businesses, individuals and corporations. One of the most popular and effective uses of machine learning in business is in recommender systems. Large-scale recommender systems are present in video on demand, music streaming, and retail. Aaron’25 intimated that “using machine learning and the Python Tensor Flow library, we are now constructing our very own recommender system”. Based on the users' specified interests, our recommender system will be able to suggest new movies to users. “I would call it a time well spent because I could apply my knowledge from FDE in a sprint format. It was fun and challenging. I'd encourage anyone who wants to solve problems to join the sessions in future.” - Ewurama, Machine Learning Project
Thus, the D:Lab's first-semester workshop was undeniably a success; yet it is only the tip of the iceberg for what the Ashesi D:Lab has in store for this year. Stay tuned to find out how the creative minds behind the various projects are bringing alive the theme of Innovation Building for Domestication. Whether that is through delving deeper into the problem or learning new ways to solve it, one thing remains quite clear: the bridge that leads Africa away from over-dependency to self-reliance is being built in Ashesi's very own D:Lab!