My group made great strides during our “Defining” session. Throughout the experience, I didn’t notice many new content or ideologies. Our team has worked hard on our persona, and the whiteboard/sticky note environment was quite familiar to the class. However, combining the two familiarities was challenging. For me, I had much more trouble brainstorming ideas that related to our persona, Sarah. She is a simple woman, a single mother to Sally (4th Grade) and works as a high school counselor. Our company, Hershey’s, also sells very simple products. Everything that popped into my head seemed redundant or useless — there are only so many ways that such a well-established company like Hershey’s can adapt to fit a persona like Sarah’s.
Thankfully, the rest of my group brought their A- Game. I noticed the bulk of our progress came after we placed our sticky notes in their respective places upon the white board. Because were one of the last groups to finalize our Living Principles, we had limited time to determine our HMW statements. However, as we began to discuss our sticky-noted ideas as a team, things really got going. We collaborated well! Most of our ideas overlapped, making it easy to vote on which HMW statements would be chosen. This kind of collaboration wouldn’t have been possible without sticky notes and sharpies. Although unorthodox, the method has proven highly productive for our team.