Overseas Social Innovation Program

Rebranding, streamlining business operations and inventory, and formulation of business models for a small business in Malang.

Diploma in Architecture, Year 2

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I spent 2 weeks in Malang, Indonesia for the LeX trip - The Learning Express Trip. I cannot express how grateful I am for this opportunity in LeX – Malang. The experience I had to be able to visit a beautiful country, to learn its culture, to make a difference to a community, to change and improve the lifestyle of a family, to forge unbreakable friendships, to endure hardships together as the MeowBloop Family. The experience is indeed life changing, and I feel like I’ve evolved as a person, and I have learnt to be more open minded, to let loose, and to love my life.

In this trip, I’ve discovered that I am not just capable in cooperating with people with little exposure to design experience to render digital designs, but I’m also able to bring my basic knowledge of the principles of accounting and business management into a real world application. I also found out that I am able to dive deeper into situations to piece together probable outcomes or causes by applying deductive reasoning onto data points and interviews with the help of my teammates.

Through the ideation process, I've learnt that insights, requirements, and prototyping are very prevalent and inevitable. However, through the Learning Express’ Design Thinking aspects, I’ve understood the true importance of Empathy. Many times during the projects, students design with only their wants in mind, and disregarding the requirements of the end users.

During the Abon Lele (Catfish Floss) project, it was during the Empathy Studies that the group understood as a collective that the true issue with Bapak’s business was not his products, but instead it was his own management.

Without the Empathy Studies, I’m certain that the team would not have been able to spot this issue, and our final prototype would simply be a redesigned label, and missing out on direr and more critical points. I’m very appreciative of the implementation of the Empathy Studies, as it has helped us to tackle Bapak’s bigger unspoken issues, and not just scratch the surface.

Nothing worth fighting for is ever easy, and through this beautifully tough journey, I’m ecstatic that I got to improve the lives of a family that truly needed help; who needed our help. I’m honoured and so proud for my team and me, as we know that we’ve left our footprints on the markets of Malang and Batu, showing everyone looking that these few teenagers - individually studying different subjects from Law to Engineering to Architecture; living through different seasons of their lives - can change communities if they work together.

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