Activity 4: Summary and next steps

In this activity you explored some soft skills that are essential for the designer, such as communication skills, teamwork, brainstorming and problem abstraction.

You examined recommendations for succeeding in professional communication. In particular, you learned that effective communication requires adequate and thorough preparation. In preparing for a communication task, written or oral, one must ask questions about the purpose, audience, benefits, objections, and context of this communication task.

You also learned that design problems are generally too difficult to be addressed by a single individual and that collective team effort is needed to address these problems. You looked at some guidelines for preparing for and engaging with other people in professional meetings.

You have also learned about brainstorming which is an effective technique for generating novel solution ideas to complex problems such as those faced in design.

Finally, it was shown that problem abstraction in design is important to avoid spending time and money trying to find a solution to the wrong problem.