When thinking about studying there is not much more, a University can offer than opportunities like this. Having the chance to participate in an exciting course and learn about a fascinating topic while at the same time having an intercultural experience was amazing. We not only became familiar with Design Thinking but also established valuable contacts and learned about a new culture and a different approach to studying in general.
In the following, we want to go over our wrap-up of the week and go into more detail about what we liked and what did not go as planned.
When thinking about the introduction to the case, we must say that it took us a while to understand the topic itself as we had missed the introduction in New York the US students had received. At first, it was also hard to gain motivation to utilize Design Thinking as it felt more like a process optimization case. That is why we felt overwhelmed in the beginning by the huge amount of new information about the processes of an unknown company for us and at the same time were sometimes unsure of where to even start. After a few days, we felt like we really got into it. This was in no small amount due to having such great group members that put a lot of effort into understanding the process data also wrapping it around the Design Thinking approach. That said, we felt like we were slowly becoming experts, digging deeper into the data and utilizing Design Thinking methods like Dreamworld or Reverse Thinking. It was a fun time and really rewarding as we are very proud of our outcome.
Considering the overall organization, we were amazed at how smoothly everything went. Not once we had to wait or were unsure of what to do next as the whole week was planned out with exciting activities like the Braves game or the evening at the lake. We are very grateful for the huge amount of effort that went into the organization. Thus, we got a very good understanding of what Atlanta, Carrollton, and Milledgeville were like. We felt that, thanks to the planning of arriving earlier, we got to see a lot of the different sides of a city that we never could experience in Germany.
We are incredibly grateful for such a fantastic experience, being part of the Design Thinking class in 2023.
