Design Thinking Solution for Malaysian Student Time Management

Question: Have you ever invented something?

This assignment is designed to help students:

• Apply design thinking principles
• Use creative, critical, analytical, and decision-making skills
• Design a new product or solution for a real-life problem
• Use AI tools as a support for idea generation and improvement

Assignment Task

Students are required to design a new product or solution that addresses a real problem faced by:

• Students
• Campus community
• Society

The product may be:

• A physical product
• A digital product
• A service

Assignment Requirements

Students must apply the following Design Thinking stages:

1. Empathy (The problem you want to solve, Who is affected by this problem) – Introduction.
2. Problem Definition (What exactly is the problem?, Who faces this problem?, How does this problem affect their daily life?)
3. Idea Generation (How did you generate ideas?, What thinking skills did you use?)
4. Decision Making (Why did you choose this idea over others?, What factors did you consider?)
5. Product Design / Prototype (How the product works, How users weill use it?, What problem it solves)
6. Testing and Improvement (Who tested your idea?, What improvements were made?)
7. Reflection (What did you learn?, How did AI help you?, What challenges did you face?)

Experts Answer on Above Design Thinking Task

Product Selected for Analysis

The product selected for analysis is an AI powered student assignment planner app known as SmartStudy.
Introduction – The smart study app will be quite useful for the Malaysian University students in managing their assignments, quizzes, presentations and deadlines all together in a better way. The app will affect the students from different Malaysian Universities including UiTM students, UM students, UPM students, polytechnic and college students.
Evidence – the interview has been carried out with a group of 10 students, and most of them have missed their assignment deadlines because they record the deadline across different platforms including WhatsApp, Google classroom and University portals which makes it quite challenging for them and they often face the issue of missed deadline cases.

Problem definition

The main problem is the increased number of cases of missed deadlines and often underestimation of the time required to complete the assignment. The problem is quite evident especially within full time students who already struggle in balancing their studies, part time work and extracurricular activities.
Impact on daily life – as a result of this problem, they often face the issue of late submissions which leads to deduction in their marks, lower academic performance and increased level of stress.

Ideas generation – the ideas were generated through brainstorming sessions which indicated the need for a physical study planner, a reminder bot that integrates smart calendars as well. The thinking skills that were applied are creative thinking, critical thinking, problem analysis and users centered thinking.
Role of AI – the role of AI is significant as they help in generating additional features and also allows for undertaking a comparative analysis using existing productivity apps.
Decision making – the selection of a SmartStudy app is considered because it is quite useful in prioritising the tasks based on urgency and workload. The factors that were considered are the ease of use, cost of development, demand among the students, mobile accessibility and scalability.
Product design/ prototype – the product is a Smartstudy app that requires students to enter their deadline for assignments, and the integration of AI helps in calculating the priority levels. The app thereby creates a personalized study schedule and the student gets notification with respect to their upcoming task. The students will make use of this app by entering them subject and deadlines and there by getting automated study plans. The problem is ultimately solved in respect to the increased cases of missed deadlines and also helps in enhancing academic planning.

Testing and improvement

The testing process is carried out by using students from UiTM and UM, and based on their usage, they have provided feedback such as integration of Google calendar, and some of the students also requested colour coded priorities. As a result of this feedback, the integration of Google Calendar is performed along with colour coded task categories, and their pussy notification introduced.

Want Detailed Answers with References?

The design thinking app as created above with the objective of solving student problems is quite efficient and highly accepted by students as well. If you need similar types of innovative design of products to solve real world problems, visit our assignment help Malaysia page to get professional innovative management experts for your task.