© Singapore Polytechnic

General Education Programme

Reg. no.: ______

LC8003 Social Innovation Project (SIP)

CA1: Reflection Journal (20%)
Submission Cover Sheet and Scoresheet

Note to student:
1. Ensure that you include this cover sheet as the first page of your reflection journal.
2. Ensure that you read, understand and complete the Declaration of Original Work below.
3. Ensure that you clearly provide all the following details for the work to be accurately identified as yours:

Full Name Sean Hong Wei

Admission No. P1608959
SIP Class (e.g., GD/SIP/FT/1B01) GD/SIP/FT/2D01
Lecturer Annette Neo

Declaration of Original Work

Singapore Polytechnic views plagiarism as a very serious offence. To strengthen your academic credibility
and demonstrate your personal integrity, it is important that you check and confirm that your work meets
the following conditions. All boxes must be ticked, failing which 5 marks will be deducted.
I confirm that all work contained herein is my own and not plagiarised.
I have properly cited all my sources in instances where I have used text, images, diagrams and other types of
information from the Internet or other published sources.
I have not provided my work to any other student for any purpose whatsoever.
I understand that I will be held accountable in the event that I have copied another person’s work or allowed my
work to be copied by another student.

For Lecturer’s Use

SN Feedback to Student Marks

Q1

/50

Q2

/50
Sub-total
Penalty for late submission (if applicable) Minus
Incomplete declaration of original work (if applicable) Minus

Final mark /100

Note to lecturer: enter “AB” in cases of non-submission

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General Education Programme
A soft copy of this cover sheet may be downloaded from BB > Module Information > Module Map > Lesson 6.

1. How did you apply the Design Thinking tools and what was the impact on your project during
the Empathy Stage? (50 marks)

From the lessons, I have learnt a few design thinking tools – such as POEMS, interviewing,
clustering/insight gathering and persona. All these tools were important and useful to me
throughout the empathy stage.

I feel that one of the most useful design thinking tool I used was clustering/insight gathering. It is
because at the start when we first created our interview transcripts, I was at lost because there
was so much data and information to look at. Clustering the information into succinct and short
points made it clearer and easier to deal with the data.

I also used the SPICE design thinking tool. It helped me to identify our target members easier. It
helped me be more aware of the issues that the targets audience were facing and the change that
they wanted to see. It helped me empathize with them more.

An example of design thinking skill that was challenging to apply to me was Empathy Study Plan.
It was hard to curate questions to know about the demographics of the interviewee, their personal
motivations and the problems they faced which was related to our project statement. However,
with teamwork, my team and I manage to create the questions to find out about their
demographics. It made us realise and correct a lot of the misconceptions and assumptions that we
had.

To sum it up, I feel that the design thinking tools help give us a more in depth understanding of the
audience that we are dealing with. It allows us to carry out the project more efficiently and make
the interviewees feel that we are communicating with them in an efficient and professional
manner.

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General Education Programme

Q1)

clustering/insight gathering

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General Education Programme

2. What have you learnt about yourself and the people you are serving through this
project? (50 marks)
My group project’s issue is “How can we help Singapore drivers improve road safety?” I feel my
group’s issue is important today because car accidents have been more common nowadays and
has always been an issue ever since there were cars on the road. We hope that through this
project we will be able to inform the public and drivers about road safety so that we can prevent
accidents from happening.

I have learnt from the interviewees that most of them do have suggestions on how we all can
make the road a safer place for everyone. Most of them agreed that there are many areas of
improvement to be worked on. I have observed that the interviewees whom family members have
gotten involved in car accidents before were keener on offering more opinionated answers
instead of short answers compared to others. I can tell that they do not want similar accidents to
happen to others.

Creating a persona has helped my group and I understand and empathize more with our target
audience. Insights about the person what my group and I have created are as follows – his
motivations are alcohol, challenges included not caring about the safety of other road users and
being impatient, needs include following the traffic rules strictly, give way to pedestrians more,
and not driving when under the influence of alcohol.

Personal learning points included being able to empathize with people more, being able to plan
interviews in a more productive and efficient way and stepping out of my comfort zone to
interview strangers because I’m a more reserved person in a sense that I don’t like to
communicate with strangers. Some areas I could improve on include being more of a team leader
rather than contributor. Also, I have learnt to analyze smaller details for more accurate
information. This is from being able to identify the key points in the transcript of the interviews
that we got and summaries them up to one-lined straight to the point points.

One team mate that I appreciate is Felicia. Having missed the first two weeks of class, I was in a
blur when I attended my first SIP class. She was kind enough to update me about what was going
on in class and guide me through the whole interview project process. My group has a WhatsApp
group where she regularly sends reminders to make sure that we are on the right track in our
project.

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General Education Programme

Q2)
Creating a persona

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