Are you ready to launch?… 🚀 In this post we’re going to learn about the launch cycle! The launch cycle is all about design thinking, it’s about getting the most out of the creative process. It’s used in EVERYTHING! My group used the launch cycle in a project where we had to create a sport using certain materials. Our materials were a roll of duck tape, a bag of balloons, a spool of string, a stack of plastic cups, two squash rackets and a whiffle ball. 
Step one is all about awareness. This is where you want to really think and wonder about your challenge. Start to recognize it and think about what your ideas are? What the overall goal is? And where can you go with it?
In my group there had was Grace, Emerson and Jason. To start off we watched the Launch Cycle video…
After watching the video we did some assignments and wrote some notes about the video. After that we did a survey.
We came up with questions and everyone in the class had to have one to go around to all twenty of our peers and take the survey. My question was, what length of game do you prefer to play? We did this so we could all get an idea of the kind of sport we needed to create for people to enjoy. These were my survey tally’s. 👇
My group members and I got lots out of this survey. We found that in order for our sport to be something our classmates would find enjoyable, we needed to create a something that was long, encourages whole body engagement, has a scored system and uses teams.
Step Two: Asking tons of questions!!!
In step two my groups members and I brainstormed question after question. The point of step two is two think of all the questions people might have about your sport. This way when our classmates go to play, we’ll be able to answer all their questions about our sport.
These were some of the questions we came up with…
How many players are playing at once?
Are there boundaries?
How are points scored, or is it timed?
What is the objective of the game?
What are the rules?
After we came up with tons of questions, we created a web of them. Then we walked around the classroom looking at others people webs, this way if anyone missed some good questions people could add to yours. This was our web in the end. 👇
Step three was a step where our groups got a good chance to think about our challenge. We needed to create an original sport out of certain materials we were given. One of the challenges in this was that we had to actually create a sport our classmates would enjoy and have fun playing. This meant our sports had to be well thought out and created.
As a class we took some time looking, researching and talking about different sports and all the things that make them fun to play. We also thought about what thing might not be great about the sport and how we can change that when we create our sport. This was going to help us to create a sport that was well executed but was still enjoyable and fun for our classmates to play!
Step Four & Five: Navigate Ideas And Create A Prototype
In step four and five we created a web of things our sport must include. Below is a picture of the web my group members and I created.
After we created the web we thought out different ideas and possible sports we could create based on our research and surveys. Once we had come up with our first draft of our original sport, we tested it with our group!
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Step Six: Highlight And Fix
For this second last step of the launch cycle we played our sport and critiqued all the things that didn’t work or didn’t fit quite right. We had many areas to change and fix which is why The Highlight And Fix step is so important. Before you launch any new idea or product into your audience, be sure that you have highlighted all the problems and gone to fix them. The little extra work will pay off when your happy with your finished product.
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Step Eight: LAUNCH!🚀
In step eight we got to launch our Sports! Our classmates got to come and play everyones sports and enjoy what we’ve been working hard to create.
