Unit Hurdle Requirement: Students must pass this assessment to pass the course and the overarching Deakin unit. 

Summative Assessment Task

Brief Description of the Assessment Task

For this assessment, you will be required to undertake a range of readings, watch demonstrations of how certain design thinking tools are used in practice and then attempt to apply those tools to understand and ultimately define a project definition for an industry problem. 

The key deliverables from you would include the following:

• A duly filled checklist for artefacts

• Annotated portfolio created using the artefacts that you worked on during the course

• Reflections on the artefacts and the portfolio

Assignment Overview

Your assessment task requires you to develop a nuanced and clear problem statement arising out of the insights gained using the process; you are also required to annotate a portfolio of evidence of the project completed to explain the benefits and uses of design thinking tools for understanding your problem and, specifically, how and why you might use these tools in your own future work lives; what you would do again and/or differently; what you have learnt about yourself; what your own learning style is; and, importantly, your own contributions to a team as a consequence of the work completed in this course. 

(Note: Every time you are asked to work on the Industry Problem, you are being asked to apply what you have learned in this course to the following problem.) 

Your focus in this course and this assignment would be on uncovering human needs and motivators or pain points that are already creating, or will shortly create, challenges for a player in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry in India. In the next course, you will, along with your teammates, come up with an innovative solution to one of the elements of the problem that you will identify in this course. 

As you may be aware, India’s central government has banned the manufacture, sale and use of identified single-use plastic items like plates, cups, straws, trays and polystyrene from July 1, 2022. However, it appears that there will be delays in rolling out or enforcing these new laws because of the complexities associated with such a fundamental change; the measures are seen as being too disruptive for the industry at a time when it is coping with an economic slowdown and job losses (Dasgupta, 2021). Single-use plastics, as defined for the relevant law, includes disposable items such as grocery bags, food packaging material, bottles and straws that are used only once before being thrown away or recycled (Plastic Waste Management Rules). 

While you may choose any aspect of the problem that interests you (for example, a specific type of single-use product or a specific element of the supply chain), it would be prudent for you to meet with your teammates early to identify a specific element of the problem that all of you would like to focus on and understand best. This will help you focus your attention on developing a solution to the element of the problem. It will also enable you to gather meaningful and useful data/insights that you can share with your team. 

You will be consulting participants in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry in India. FMCG is India’s fourth-largest sector, and household and personal care account for 50% of FMCG sales in India. 

FMCG Overview

Attaching the infographic in the downloadable format as well for clarity.

FMCG Overview

Download

The following infographic summarises key information about the Indian FMCG market as recorded in August 2022. It is published by the Indian Brand Equity Foundation, which also provides an overview of key industry data that you may find useful (click here). 

You will take your research and understanding of the problems that you identify into the next phase of this unit (the second course), and the data and insights you have generated will assist you and your teammates in focussing on some real pain points that will form the basis of the ‘solution’ that you will ideate in the next module. The stakeholders experiencing (or being likely to experience) the problem that you have identified will create demand for the solution that you will develop. It is important to clearly define your stakeholder group and deeply empathise with the issues that they are facing, or are likely to face, in order to address the problem and be cognisant of the potential market and opportunity for the solution that you are yet to design. 

You might find this interactive resume/example project prepared by a User Experience (UX) designer useful; it is a good example of a basic design thinking portfolio showing how the author used design thinking to approach a question very similar to yours. It provides examples of the ways in which different design thinking tools were used to find insights and incorporates clear statements about those insights as well as some examples of reflections. We are sharing this because you would have found it online anyway, with a reminder that it is okay to get inspiration from the work of others, but it is never okay to plagiarise that work! 

Through this course, you will be introduced to a range of design thinking tools that will help you understand the people and circumstances relevant to your industry problem. This assignment requires you to use these tools to identify and understand your stakeholder using design thinking approaches to problem identification. You also need to understand and elicit insights about your chosen subjects, their circumstances, needs, desires and frustrations with the aim of preparing a design brief that will be the basis for a solution design exercise (to be completed in the next module). You will submit a portfolio showing the artefacts that you have created during the problem identification stage of the design thinking process, together with annotations where you have outlined what you have learned (about the subject matter of the research and your use of design thinking tools) while using these tools and reflecting on the applicability of these tools to your own work and life. 

References

The following readings will help get you started.  One looks at the use of plastic in India through an anthropological lens, and the other examines the barriers that impede the elimination of single-use plastic in the context of India as a developing economy. The data and insights in each of these will be of enormous use as you begin to understand the problem and help you select an approach to undertaking your own ethnographic research, which, in turn, will be the basis of your portfolio. 

We have also included a link to a design thinking project undertaken by a user experience (UX) designer as a demonstration portfolio/resume. This is a good example of how you could put a portfolio together (though you are not required to use any technology beyond PowerPoint unless you want to) The portfolio covers a similar (but not the same) question as to the one that you have been asked to consider and includes examples of design thinking work in progress (artefacts) and the insights that the designer drew from the work that they had done. It also includes some basic reflections that might inspire you. (Remember, inspiration is great, but copying is a breach of academic integrity! Make sure that you are properly citing all your sources.) 

Articles:

• Pathak, G & Nichter, M 2019, ‘The Anthropology of Plastics: An Agenda for Local Studies of a Global Matter of Concern’, Medical anthropology quarterly, vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 307–326, viewed 25 November 2021, (Link)

• Vimal, KEK, Mathiyazhagan, K, Agarwal, V, Luthra, S & Sivakumar, K 2020, ‘Analysis of barriers that impede the elimination of single-use plastic in developing economy context’, Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 272 (Link)

Example Portfolio:

Rai, P., 2021. Plastic Waste Solution New - Design Case Study [online] Piyushkiranrai.com(Link)