by La Selene Dommu, Aditya College of Engineering & Technology

Trailblazing

A LEGACY TO BE CONTINUED....

by La Selene Dommu University Innovation Fellow Aditya College of Engineering & Technology

UIF has been a great opportunity for innovating and to bring a change in the Ecosystem of our college. From the day the journey of UIF started, it has opened the doors for new perspectives. The interactions that we had with diverse students by getting into their shoes and understanding their views, brainstorming on picking up the problem that would help most of the students were some of the challenges. The approach of Design Thinking made it easy to go in a step by step manner and tackle the problem at each level. It takes the first step of empathizing to actually start whatever you want to work on. There by defining the problem which has to be ideated later on to generate a “HMW” (How Might We) question. Then comes the phase of prototyping which gives a scope to use a wide variety of tools depending on the requirement and the interest. The final phase of any product is testing, which actually validates all the hard work done so far.

Design Thinking offers us a means to think outside the box and also dig deeper into problem-solving. This can be a continuous recurring process until the desired outcomes are seen. For example, if I have to talk about one of our 4 strategies that we implemented, “AlFaSt” — connecting ALumni, FAculty, STudents — we had to use empathy to figure out what would actually help the students, define the problem statement to be able to be precise and concise, ideate on the ways of bringing it a shape, take it to a next level by prototyping and finally testing it recursively. This whole process made us get into those narrowed down problems and their solutions as the final 4 strategies. The results that we saw after this sequence of action made us go from “aw” to “wow”! Though it was a time taking process to actually get your hands dirty in making things happen, all the work done is worth it. The long-awaited in-person 2022 Silicon Valley Meetup at Stanford’s d.school for the 2019 cohort was another great opportunity to go through the same approach and work with diverse teams on different problems. It was an awe-mazing experience to witness such an environment and network with people all around the world. The whole community of UIF is a place to get inspired from. It’s always a feeling of admiration to see the UIF core team Humera, Leticia, Laurie, Lupe, G for all their great efforts and for always being there. I got to learn from UIF alumni through their ignite talks including Tara Rahmani, who moved me and made me feel through her poetic story. I enjoyed all the workshop sessions, getting to meet new people, learning about different ideologies and also fun activities like doodling around our pictures. We also had the chance to know about the programs regarding how to get into Stanford, the senior Design impact students gave a glimpse of the work and innovations they were working on. It was indeed a proud moment to be there as a UIFian in Stanford and was a great experience to get to know new things and perspectives. The moments spent there would be something that I will cherish. This experience and journey is not something we would like to keep with us for our Cohort. We want this legacy to continue and make more students be part of the UIF family to experience all the fun and emotions. With that idea, we nominated the next Team of UIFians from our college to go through this roller coaster of feelings. This is an opportunity to come forward as a Change Agent, be the Voice of the Students, to lead a movement to ensure that all students gain the attitudes, skills and knowledge required to navigate a complex world. These are the ones who can demonstrate a passion for innovation, creativity and the entrepreneurial mindset. Some of them were the ones who were inspired by our efforts and were already ready to take this up forward. Hope this continues and expands in leaps and bounds, where people inspire each other and grow together. #doepicshit

The author (left) at the UIF Silicon Valley Meetup 2022. Credit: Patrick Beaudouin