Oya’s Akbank Düşünce Kulübü Journey
In June, I become a member of ‘Akbank Dusunce Kulubu’ (ADK), which is a think tank for Akbank. This year’s cohort was only ten people who had different backgrounds and aspirations. We were told that we will be working by ourselves but trying to solve the same problem: “How Akbank should shape their Youth Academy to be prepared for 2025?”. Before we can jump and shoot ideas, we received training from ATÖLYE, which is a creative hub with remarkable people and even better educators. The training was for Human-Centered Design. Previous students of GLLP & GLLS might know this concept; maybe they even done a project with it, but the ones who do not know, different design methods put different values to their center and work for/with these values. For example, an employer-centric design would only work to make their employer happy. Thus, an employer-centric design would design a not environmentally friendly product that could harm the environment, while making lots of profit over an environment friendly one with less profits.
In human-centered design, we try to understand and engage with the population who is suffering from the problem which we want to solve. To find the solution there are couple of steps to take. Firstly, we engage with the problem to do so and gain insight into the problem, we speak with suffering individuals. We ask an endless amount of ‘Why’ and ‘How’ questions since these questions are the gatekeepers to insights. In the conversation part, Halit Soysal, who was one of our educators, explained that we should push people to share their experiences while not pushing people. This was a task for Yoda; thus, I channeled my inner Yoda and asked many poorly formed questions. People who talked to me know that I also speak pretty fast. This fact, combined with poorly formed questions, created a set of funny moments which was another catalyst to get insights. Thus, my advice is if you are trying to force an answer from someone try to make them laugh.
Going back to the topic at hand, after we got insights, about digital education, we formed our ‘How Questions’. Mine was, ‘How do we make similar/same educations personalized for everyone?’ We were led by Begum Ural, to endless brainstorming sessions to answer this tough question. These sessions differ from normal ones because in these you have supplies and resources, but you must solve the problem you are dealing with in a dystopian universe. One of my suggestions was, creating robotic animal-shaped companions. These companions would be picked by students to company them anywhere, and students can talk to these animals which have high AI functionality and spend their day with them. This suggestion was inspired by Pokemon. But I saw how uncreative I was when one other fellow in ADK said that they would create a time machine and go back to a time when there wasn’t any digital education or dystopian universe. My answer to this suggestion was: ‘cool! ‘
After returning from these brainstorming sessions, we went back to our whiteboards. We shoot many ideas, and we wrote them onto post-its. Having one upside to whole digital training, we wrote our ideas onto digital post-it, so this was a huge relief for little Bulbasaur that lives in me. (BTW check out MIRO for a cool environment where you can do anything). Then the selection process starts, where our third instructor Barbaros Kaptanoglu who was the moderator of this entire ATOLYE education, comes and helps you eliminate some of your ideas. It hurts to give up your babies, but it is better to focus on only one idea and start to prototypes on it. Although, another fellow focused on 3 different ideas and conjured them into one at the end (You go, girl!). This part is one of most challenge parts in human-centered design, therefore, you may circle back to this part again and again, but design process is not linear instead it goes in zigzags and many different shapes.
Finally, the dread storytelling part comes. I sucked at this part but first, let’s talk about storytelling. So, we all know Disney, right? (If no, insert a Kim Possible binge-watch with me here), the giant rat created the Storyboard concept. The storyboard consists of squares, in each square, you illustrate (yikes) one crucial moment of the story you are trying to tell. A square could be a movie scene where the villain kills the hero (let them win for once) or a critical step for a machine to work. But in the squares, you can only illustrate or use numbers since they are universal. I cannot draw to save myself, but this part was crucial to transform your ideas from thoughts to actual products. Because while you illustrate you will probably see some plot holes or problems that need little tinkering. After you are done with the storyboard you are mostly done for human-centered design process, but as ADK we also needed to present our solutions.
Did you ever wonder why some guys’ presentation sticks with you forever? There is a secret recipe for that, they first make you believe that the problem they are solving is huge and needs to be solved immediately. Then they introduce some challenges and improvements about the problem, while actually leading you to aspects their solution has. For example, they show you Bluetooth is a blessing and can be used to improve some devices, meanwhile, their solution is air pods. Then they give you some facts to appeal to the Sherlock side of you. Finally, they lead you to conclude that only a solution with the aspects they have shown can solve the problem. With this process, they took you on a journey and made you believe that you come up with a brand-new solution, and your solution is the same solution the presenter has. Thus, you are more inclined to agree with them. Just wow, there is serious manipulation there, but it works. This technique needs a lot of time to practice, and it is also the part I suck at. Therefore, Halit gave me a huge tone of feedback about my presentation, and I took it like a champ (not really, I cried a little, but I turned off my camera and blame the internet for it).
So yeah, this is kind of a bird-eye view to human-centered design which focuses on the humans the problem affects. Approaches them with no prejudice and a lot of why and how questions gather insights and come up with ideas for a solution. Then goes through solution elimination and prototyping to reach storyboard stage and finalize the solution. This is a very summed up version of human-centered design if you want to learn check out this source!
Oya Suran
