Question: The Love Letter & The Breakup Letter - An attitudinal Design Methodology applied to process

As leaders you will need to be experts in motivation and in innovating new processes/products/services. The "Love Letter & Breakup Letter" is ahuman-centered design tool that allows us to express our sentiments about a product, service, or process. A key element of human-centered design is understanding the user's experience. This innovation process can also be applied to leadership and your experiences as well as your followers.

The love-breakup letter is a tool that has been used to have people understand the users' experiences with a product, for example. In this case, instead of writing to a person, this design tool asks you to personify a motivation ‘artifact' -- the process of being motivated, the +/- outcomes you receive, and your reaction and write a personal message to it. For this part of the wrap-up of the motivation segment of our course:

• Reflect on how you experience being motivated/not motivated to do or not to do something. This can be the process of being motivated at work, in a learning situation, in your family, etc.You want to think about your feelings, your actions, your attitudes, and how being motived affects your perception about the experience, the people involved, and your actions.

• Based on this reflection, decide if you want to write a love letter to the motivation experience and its tangible outcomes or if you want to write a break-up letter to the motivation experience and its tangible outcomes.

- The love letter gets at the heart of what people feel during those magical moments of connection with, in this case, a process. Descriptions that elicits delight, infatuation, and loyalty are common themes.

- The break-up letter provides insight about how, when, and where a relationship with, in this case, a process turns sour.

• Write your letter. This is first person. Do not over-think its content - this is you talking conversationally to the ‘artifact.' You want your ‘voice' to be sufficiently detailed to capture yourthoughts, feelings and perspectives but not so long that it becomes academic. Please do not write about it to another person. You are to write TO the experience.

• For the maximum points you should be able to use motivation concepts we have used in class.

• Create a word document and the letter needs to be 1-2 pages single spaced.

• Upload your letter to the appropriate D2L Dropbox by the end of class on 20/2