Looking Back on December and Looking Forward to the New Year
This month I had the opportunity to work with IKEA and exercise my creative juices, and I planned out what I want to achieve in the New Year.
First off, I could not have imagined a year ago that I would work with a top-tier company like Ikea to solve a huge problem of theirs. This is what consultants do for a living and get paid a lot of money !! So thank you TKS for giving me the opportunity.
The Challenge
Over the span of two weeks, our group had to come up with an answer to this prompt: “How can we make the customer experience better for you, your family, and your peers?” Our group understood that this was a vague prompt. We came up with many great ideas - partly because of how open-ended the prompt was. On the other hand, the wide scope of potential solutions made it difficult to reach a consensus. We decided upon the idea to improve IKEA’s existing chatbot “Billie.” Keep in mind we finalized the idea only 5 days before the due date! Nonetheless, me and my group grinded it out and embraced the challenges of such an assignment. In the end, we were quite content with our submission.
Shoutout to Guneet and Ryan for being awesome teammates!
My Learnings
It is ideal for all group members to do good research, instead of assigning one person to do it. This way we have a thorough understanding of what it is actually the problem
Making hard decisions early on is necessary for success. For example, as the PM I had to make the decision that our initial idea was not going to work.
If you notice something isn’t up to standard, fix it immediately rather than waiting for others to do it.
And obviously …. do not procrastinate
2025: What I am Focusing On
Finishing my last semester of high school
Preparing for post-secondary schooling
Completing my hypothesis for pay-as-you go Solar and financial inclusion
Dive deeper into the challenges with Renewable energy and storage, particularly solar
Explore python, machine learning and its applications with renewable energy
All in all, I am looking forward to a busy 2025 with lots of learning and achievements!