Assignment brief
As you work through the modules in this course on Innovation by Design, you will be required to undertake a range of readings, watch demonstrations of the way certain design thinking tools are used in practice and then attempt to apply those tools to understanding and ultimately defining a project definition for an industry problem. For this, you must recollect the work that you have done and identify the following based on your learnings from both of the following:
• The problem that you are investigating
• The tools and processes that you have been asked to use

As you undertake the work, record your reflections and insights. 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 an industry problem, you are being asked to apply what you have learnt in this course in relation 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 planned to ban most single-use plastics to take effect 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, will include 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).

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.

Please Note: The information given above is just a brief about the problem statement for your assignment for this course. Once you are done with your learning modules, please go through the Graded Assessment Module thoroughly which has multiple necessary references to understand the problem statement better. The module will also help you to understand the objectives and structure of the assignment with better clarity.
Expectations from you:
This assignment does not require you to identify a potential solution. In fact, if you move forward too quickly to a solution you will likely limit your opportunities to do well in this assignment. In the next course, you will be working as part of a team and you will take the work that you are doing to deeply understand and connect with the problem in this course with you to share with your teammates as you work with them to create an innovative solution.

To summarise, the key deliverables from you would include:
1. The filled-up checklist
2. Annotated portfolio created using the artefacts that you worked on during the course
3. Reflections on the artefacts
Your submissions can be in the form of a PowerPoint presentation (20-30 slides), a Word document(15-20 pages), or a combination of the two.
Assessment Criteria
You will be assessed based on the following criteria:
Criteria Explanation Weightage
Formulation of a design thinking approach to innovation Develop and submit a problem statement and design criteria for the industry problem based on the data collected and insights derived from the design thinking methodologies used in this course 15%
Application of design thinking tools Using the template checklist provided, collate and annotate a portfolio of work demonstrating the use of design thinking tools to achieve the learning outcomes 50%
Critical evaluation The extent to which your overall submission incorporates a critical evaluation of the ways in which the design thinking methodologies and tools used in this course have helped you develop an understanding of design thinking principles and articulates the benefits and complexities with the use of design thinking for identifying and defining problems wherein innovation, in its various forms, might be required 25%
Teamwork The extent to which you have articulated the benefits of collaboration in a design thinking context and an application of the knowledge and skills to team foundations and a plan that outlines your commitment to team success
References to the theories of team formation and planning for team success must be appropriately incorporated 10%
Deliverables and Submission
1. Checklist and Artefacts: At the conclusion of this course, you should have created the artefacts listed in the checklist attached below:
Checklist for Artefacts
Download
You can use the templates present in the following presentation for your artefacts:
Templates for Artefacts
Download
Please note: These are the same templates that are present in the assignment preparation tasks throughout the course.

With the exception of the SWOB exercise (which relates to teamwork), your portfolio need not incorporate each of artefacts/evidence of each of the activities but must include the checklist and justify why each artefact is or is not included.

2. Annotated Portfolio: Ultimately the artefacts and the annotations that you incorporate will ‘tell the story’ of your journey to finalise a problem definition and a final version of your design brief. Please use the following guidelines/criteria to perform a sanity check for your portfolio before turning it in:
Guidelines for Sanity Check
Download
The collated materials will incorporate your annotations, which must fulfil the guidelines defined in the document attached above. You can use the following file as a guide to learn more about the structure of annotated portfolios:
Annotated Portfolio Demonstration
Download
3. Reflections on the Portfolio: You need to incorporate reflective practice so that your reader understands what you have learned from undertaking the activities and creating the artefacts. You can read more about reflective writing here.

As you go about attempting the assignment, please keep the referencing guidelines in consideration.
Guidelines
We will be using Google Jamboards for multiple non-graded activities throughout the course. We will be using the Jams as whiteboards wherein you and your fellow learners can show their work while commenting on others works. In order to ensure that you have a smooth experience using these Jams, please ensure that you are logged in with the email ID linked with your upGrad account. Additionally, you will be required to download Google Jamboards mobile app if you are going through the content on your mobile phone and do not wish to switch devices.

You can visit this page in order to learn more about using Jamboards for whiteboarding along with the different features.
Please note: If you are getting the error Cannot display Jam. Please enable WebGL., enter chrome:flags in the address bar and enable the Override Software Rendering List Flag.
Assessment Brief
Unit Hurdle Requirement: Students must pass this assessment to pass the course and the overarching Deakin unit.

Summative Assessment Task 3 (Individual)
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.
Details of the Student Output Your submissions can either be a PowerPoint presentation (20–30 slides), a Word document (15–20 pages) or a combination of the two.
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
Grading and Weighting (% Total Marks for the Unit) 50%
This task Assesses Your Achievement of These Unit Learning Outcomes • ULO1: Work constructively and collaboratively with stakeholders, business networks and peers to formulate a design thinking approach to innovation.
• ULO2: Formulate and apply an integrated understanding of the design thinking principles and applications to critically evaluate how different approaches affect innovation in contemporary business practices.
This Task Assesses Your Achievement of These Graduate Learning Outcomes • GLO1: Discipline-specific knowledge
• GLO4: Critical thinking
• GLO7: Teamwork
How and When You Will Receive Feedback on Your Work The grader will provide feedback on each component that is mentioned in the rubric. They will also add areas of improvement/suggestions and recommendations for improvement.
Students will receive feedback 14 days after the assignment submission deadline on Grade.upgrad.com
When and How to Submit Your Work The submission needs to be uploaded as a zip file on the upGrad platform before the assessment deadline mentioned on the platform.
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 (an important part of the assignment criteria).

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.

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.

FMCG Overview
Attaching the infographic in the downloadable format as well for clarity.
FMCG Overview
Download

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)
Expectations From You
It is worth noting that the portfolio is made up of two parts. The first part (approximately 90% of the content) describes your design thinking journey to understand the industry problem by using design thinking tools. The second part (around 10% of the content) relates to the ways in which you have used design thinking tools to collaborate and build a team. While some of the artefacts for this part should be created collaboratively (by the team as a group), the annotations must be individual.

This assignment does not require you to identify a potential solution. In fact, if you move too quickly to a solution, you are likely to limit your opportunities to do well in this assignment. You will be assigned to a team during this course, and you will be expected to work with and communicate with your team. However, the work that you submit for this course must be individual work that will be individually marked.

To the extent that you identify key themes or focus points as a group that you plan to take into your next assignment, ensure that you acknowledge the input of your group members and express the ideas and show the exercises that are your own individual work.

You will continue to work with the same team in the next course, where you will collaborate to create a solution to a design brief that will relate to this same industry problem. The work you do, both individually and together with your team, requires you to have a deep understanding of the problem in ways that you can share insights with your teammates and then work with them to create an innovative solution to a problem based on a shared understanding.

To summarise, the key deliverables from you would include the following:
1. The filled-up checklist – This helps the reader understand which tools you have used and provides an opportunity for you to succinctly explain the value of that tool/artefact in your portfolio.
2. An annotated portfolio is created using the artefacts that you worked on during the course. The artefacts are examples of the work you have done. The annotations include your reflections that demonstrate your learning and explain the insights that you have gathered along the way. These are explained in further detail below.
3. Your reference list (Australian Harvard format)
Your submissions can be any of the following: a PowerPoint presentation (20–30 slides), a Word document (15–20 pages) or a combination of the two.
What Are Annotations?
The most important element of your submission is the annotations that you make in your portfolio. Reading the annotations is how your grader will assess whether you have achieved the learning outcomes. Annotations are notes containing your reflections and insights. They explain what you did, what you learnt by doing that, what you might do differently in the future and what insights you have. By reading the annotations, you learnt about:
• The theories and tools introduced in this course (design thinking as a means for understanding human-centred problems) and
• Your abilities to apply those theories and tools (what you now understand about the problem that you will ultimately be asked to solve).
Please spend some time looking at the assessment criteria carefully. The purpose of annotating the portfolio is two-fold:
1. To demonstrate the ways in which you use the tools that you will be learning about to draw insights about the problem, and
2. To reflect on the use of these tools and to articulate how and when these tools may be valuable to your future work.
Annotations do not need to be lengthy. However, they should:
• Be clearly written,
• Incorporate citations (as required),
• Be clearly linked to the relevant artefact (or part of an artefact), and
• Tell the story of how you arrived at the insights/conclusions you arrive at.

How Do You ‘Reflect’?
Even though it is delivered online, this course is designed to be a learning experience. Articulating learning by reflection has been used by design practitioners for many years to identify key learnings and insights. Reflection improves the quality of discourse, and consequently practising reflection will assist you to retain learnings from this course, articulate your insights and problem statements in the next course and clearly specify the features and benefits that are desirable for any workable solution in your group project. Design thinkers value iteration, which is something that is not possible without reflective practice.

-It is quite likely that you are already skilled at reflective practice, though you may not have previously articulated your reflections using a clear framework.-
-Schön, 1994

A good way to reflect on experience is to use a framework that prompts deep and purposeful thinking about what happened. The 5Rs (modified as 4Rs below) of the reflection (Bain et al. 2002) is one such framework. The five elements of this framework are Reporting, Responding, Reasoning, Relating, and Reconstructing. When used effectively, reflection can facilitate significant personal and/or professional growth. Using the following checklist will help you ensure that you have reflected on each of the tools.

The 5 Rs What to do What’s included (questions to ask yourself)
Reporting Describe the situation or the issue • What happened, what did the situation involve?
• Who was involved?
• What seems significant to pay attention to?
Responding Identify and record your emotional response to the situation or issue. • What worked well? how do I know it worked well?
• What worked least well? why do I think that?
• How did I feel, and what made me feel that way? how were others feeling, and what made them feel that way?
• How did I respond emotionally / personally / behaviourally to the situation?
Relating Explain your understanding of the situation/issue and relate it to the theory discussed in the readings/lectures. • What body/-ies of knowledge are relevant - and in what ways?
• How does this connect with other personal/professional experiences I have had - and in what way/s?
Reasoning Explore and explain the situation/issue (these often lead to insights) • What is my explanation for what happened, and on what is it based?
Reconstructing Draw a conclusion and develop an action plan based on the reasoning (your insights) • What conclusions can I draw? How do I justify these?
• With hindsight, would I do something differently next time and why?
• What has this taught me about my practice? about myself?
• How will I use this experience to further improve my practice in the future?

Important
Similarity
To avoid unintentional similarity, you are strongly encouraged to check similarities by using an online plagiarism-checking tool. The tool will help you obtain an originality report on your assessment drafts before submission.
• Final submissions containing a similarity of 20% and above will result in an immediate failure for the assessment.
You can submit your report with your student mentor, upGrad will help you in checking your similarity score.
Extensions
If you have experienced an unforeseen and uncontrollable circumstance that will prevent you from submitting your assessment by the due date, please complete the following request, outlining why you cannot submit it on time. Provide supporting evidence to assist with your request.
Note: Extensions will only be provided for genuine cases.
Assignment Preparation Task
• As a part of your submission for the graded assignment for this course, you will need to share your notes/plan for observing the industry problem in the real world using ethnographic techniques. It is suggested that you start working on the required ethnographic plan at this stage in order to avoid heavy work-load at the last moment.
• As a part of your submission for the graded assignment for this project, you will need to submit stakeholder maps for the industry problem. It is suggested that you start working on the stakeholder map at this stage in order to avoid heavy work-load at the last moment.
• For your graded assignment submission, you need to both plans to and undertake an interview with the stakeholders for the industry problem. It is suggested that you start working on it alongside the segments in order to avoid excessive work-load at the last moment.
• You will be required to submit an empathy map for the industry problem as a part of your submission for the graded assignment for this course. It is suggested that you begin working on the empathy map this point onwards in order to avoid excessive work-load in the last week.
• You will be required to submit a user persona for the industry problem as a part of your submission for the graded assignment for this course. It is suggested that you begin working on the user persona this point onwards in order to avoid excessive work-load in the last week.
• You will be required to submit a journey map for the industry problem as a part of your submission for the graded assignment for this course.
• You need to submit a design brief as part of your final submission for the graded project for this course. It is suggested that you start working on it from this point onwards to avoid excessive work-load in the last week as the assignment requires you to reflect on how your ideas about the brief changed as you used the different design tools.
Take a simple self-evaluation test to evaluate your own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and barriers. It is a type of variation of a SWOT analysis–the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis–that you must have come across often. Since we will be focused on ourselves, the criteria are slightly different–think about strengths, worries, opportunities and blockers (SWOB).
You can take 20 minutes to perform this self-evaluation.
• Think about your strengths in this course–your skills, experiences and abilities that you have and the insights that you drew regarding the industry problem.
• Think about what worries you, about this course, about working in groups or about the problem that you will be working on as part of a team.
• Think about the opportunities that you bring to the team and that having other team members could bring to your learning
• Then, think about the barriers or blockers–what could get in the way? There are behavioural blockers that we discussed previously, but there may also be situational blockers (for example, are you balancing study with work and family?)
It can be a good idea to do this with sticky notes and use the same colours as for the Rose, Thorn, Bud exercise. The reason for this is that when you are working in your group, you can ‘combine’ your various SWOB activities and gain some immediate insights regarding the way in which the team might work together.
SWOB
When you have completed your SWOB analysis, try to get at least three things in each quadrant. Ask yourself the following questions:
• How do I plan to use my strengths to take advantage of the opportunities that I have identified?
• How can I address each of the worries so that they do not prevent me from taking advantage of the opportunities that I have identified?
• How can my strengths reduce the probabilities of blockers getting in the way?
• What can I do to reduce the frequency of the occurrence of the blockers?
SWOB
You will be able to conduct this analysis to reflect on the following points:
• What are the development areas that I would like to focus on–specifically in the context of working in collaboration with others?
• What do I hope to get out of this experience (working in groups)?
• What will I bring to the team that I will be working as part of in the next course?
• What does successful teamwork look like to me?

The questions are as follows:
• On a scale of 1–10, where would I rate myself today in relation to group work?
• On a scale of 1–10, where would I like to be in 1 month / 3 months / 6 months?
• What actions can I take to harness opportunities in order to accelerate my development?
• What actions can I take to overcome barriers in order to accelerate my development?
• What will be my key actions in the short term (next two weeks)?
• What will be my key actions in the medium term (next two months)?
• What will be my success criteria for development? What signs will indicate that I am developing?
It will take you approximately 45 minutes to complete this task well. Your reflections will form part of your assessment portfolio. You can use the template provided below as an aid.
• You will be required to apply the 5 whys technique as a part of your graded submission for the course.In this session you’re going to be learning about a range of techniques and then you’re asked to take these techniques into the real world and use them to explore the problem that you’ve been asked to address for your assignment. Return to your interviews and look at ways that you might have incorporated 5 whys into your interviewing for empathy. Think about the persona you’ve created; how might you learn more about the root causes of the problem and identify countermeasures that might be helpful? Mapping out your questions and the responses, being careful to note which responses you’ve gathered from real discussions and which are thought experiments based on interacting with your persona will be really helpful for your assignment. It is suggested that you start working on the 5 whys application to the industry problem in order to avoid excessive work-load during the last week. You can use the template provided below as an aid.
• You will be required to submit an RBT analysis as a part of your final submission for the graded assignment for this course. It is suggested that you start working on the RBT analysis from this point onwards in order to avoid excessive workload during the last week. You can use the template provided below as an aid.
• Write Love/Breakup Letters - Each of you will write a love or breakup letter to an aspect of your industry problem. (Yes, I know that it sounds unromantic, but that is the life of a design thinker!) You will have 10 minutes to write the letter. Use the information that you gathered during your interviews in the letters. Try and think about the emotions that are associated with the findings. You will be required to submit the letter as a part of your submission towards the graded assignment. It is suggested that you start working on it this point onwards in order to avoid excessive work-load in the last week.
• You will be required to submit a JTBD analysis as a part of your final submission for the graded assignment for this course. Ideally, you are required to create a JTBD canvas based on the persona you have created. You can use the template provided below as an aid. It is suggested that you start working on the JTBD analysis this point onwards in order to avoid excessive work-load during the last week.
• Why don’t you write the POV for your assignment problem? Use all of the items that you have created so far and put together the statement. You can take 15 minutes for this exercise. Given below are some important pointers regarding your POV. Always make sure that your POV:
• Provides a narrow focus
• Frames the problem as a problem statement
• Is inspiring–a problem that you can fall in love with
• Informs criteria for evaluating competing ideas. You can use the template provided below as an aid.
• Can you create 5–10 HMW statements for your assignment problem?
• Revisit your design brief. Does your HMW question warrant revisiting the design brief?
Perform the goal-setting exercise as discussed in the video above for your team. When you have completed this exercise you will be well placed to write a mission statement for your team.
Use the Jamboard here for this exercise. Add two sticky notes: one with what you think the goal should be and one with what you think others would want the goal to be. Once you are done adding the sticky notes, take a moment to go through the goals shared by your batchmates and move them into the boxes for Authentic and Pseudo goals, as per your understanding.

When you’ve done this exercise, reflect on the outcomes using the 4Rs method to identify what you learned about yourself, your teammates and the way you might work together.
Did you use any of the strategies you developed when you did the SWOB exercise in the last module? You might want to go back and adjust or augment your SWOB reflections too. All of this will really assist with developing the teamwork elements of your portfolio – so don’t forget to take screenshots!

In the next segment, you will learn how to collaborate better with your team and understand each others needs.
• Take this moment to conduct the goal-setting activity for the industry problem with your teammates and narrow down the assignment goals for your team. You can use the Jamboard link shared with you for collaboration purposes.
• Take this moment to collaborate with your team members and conduct the -must have-no no-would like- exercise that Cathryn describes in the video. This will help you in coming up with your team charter in the next segment.
Take this moment to collate the learnings and outputs from the previous two assignment preparation tasks and come up with your team charter. All the team members will need to sign this document as well. Your charter should include the following:
• The mission statement
• Your dos, don’ts, and wishes
• Team coordination details such as the following:
• How often you will meet
• The technology you will use to meet
• How you will address and resolve disputes/disagreements
• How you will allocate tasks
To make this more exciting, give your team a name, a logo, and a motto. This should reflect who you are as a team.
You can use the following template for creating your team charter.