During this week of lectures and discussion we were able to expand on what we covered last week and look at the material from a new perspective. Instead of focusing on the needs statements from a critical point of view, we were asked to take the more empathetic approach. This involved putting ourselves in the shoes and mind set of the person we were looking at in the video.

The lectures really dissected what it means to observe someone and determine their needs from that observation. It can be easy to look at a person and impose your own beliefs on them and determine their needs based on your own way of thinking. This lecture pointed out how problematic that can be. To decide what someone truly needs, you have to objectively examine their behaviors, actions, and understand what drives and motivates them to do what they do.

I especially enjoyed the example exercises incorporated in this week’s discussion. I had done this exercise previously in our senior design class, but with just a semester of time between when I last did it and now I had almost completely different ideas about each picture. The way of thinking outlined in the lectures allowed me to come up with more creative and insightful needs for each person.

This week’s assignment really reinforced this way of thinking. Redoing the needs statements with a different way of thinking also led me to come up with an entirely new list of needs. When thinking about the individuals in the problem more as humans than as employees or parts of the process opened my eyes to a new set of motivations and reasons behind needs.

I’m looking forward to applying this new way of thinking to upcoming assignments as well as real life situations.