Design Thinking Workshop STLinSTL
- 1. Design Thinking Workshop STLinSTL June 2015 Lynn Mittler, US English Department MICDS lmittler@micds.org
- 2. A Process, A Way of Thinking, A Way of Seeing • “Design thinking relies on the natural— and coachable– human ability to be intuitive, to recognize patterns, and to construct ideas that are emotionally meaningful as well as functional.”
- 3. A Process, A Way of Thinking, A Way of Seeing • “Culture eats process for lunch.” • “The first step to a great answer is to reframe the question.” (Tom and David Kelley) • Everything can be “hacked.”
- 4. Identify your bias • On your card, simply list your own biases about the design thinking process. • I was overwhelmed by it at first. • It took me several years to wrap my head around it. • I now see its application everywhere. • I find it an empowering process. • I probably wear out my colleagues with it. Why this process matters and challenges students face with it.
- 5. Identify your perceived constraints • Identify your perceived constraints to either learning this process or the application of the process. • My students won’t be able to follow this process. • I won’t be able to keep track of all of the moving pieces. • This is really only for people in Silicon Valley. • Time, time, time. These are traditionally listed as feasibility, viability and desirability, but can be defined any way that you choose.
- 6. Why it matters for students? • Empathy • Failure • Thinking process • Iteration
- 15. d.school: Institute of Design at Stanford
- 16. d.school: Institute of Design at Stanford
- 18. How DT arrived at MICDS How can individuals effect sustainable change in the world ? • Problems are big and overwhelming • Where to start? • Frame work for thinking
- 20. MICDS Iteration of Design Thinking
- 21. Applications • GAP • ALT • Ninth Grade Curriculum Retreat
- 22. Applications Half the Sky Design Thinking Assessment Challenge: Thinking back to your reading of Half the Sky, select one of the issues investigated by Kristof and WuDunn. Working through the Design Thinking process, create an innovation that addresses one of these problems.
- 23. MICDS Iteration of Design Thinking
- 24. Applications ALT 3.0 Design Brief Overview: The English department is submitting this design brief to you in hope that you will pursue a solution see applicable to your skills and interests. Below are the goals and specifications of the project, but beyond that, there is no predetermined answer or result required. Know that your process is as important to us as your final product. Goals: Your goal is to share to a new understanding about a topic of interest to you while exhibiting your fluency in the five skill strands of the English Department (reading, writing, speaking and listening, research, VML). Target Audience: Your classmates and the English department Specifications: All strands must be part of your process of determining a new understanding of the topic you choose.
- 25. MICDS Iteration of Design Thinking
- 26. Time to face the challenge yourself (or in a group) • Pick a challenge to attempt • A project in your class you want to address • How can I make learning modeling equations more relatable for students? • A curricular issue to address • How can the ninth grade team address our need to scaffold skills while engaging students in literature? • How can we build a more interdisciplinary model of 7th grade? • How can we address the teaching of vocabulary in a more viable manner? • School-wide issues: • How can we build empathy skills in our students? • Try to create an actual product
- 28. Discovery 1. Spend some time identifying your own feelings on this challenge. Do you think it needs to be addressed? Why or why not? It is important to begin your work fully understanding your own bias. 2. Establish constraints: while it would be nice to think that the sky is the limit, there are always limits imposed by the environment where the challenge is found. Be sure to examine the viability, feasibility and desirability limits that exist surrounding your challenge. 3. Frame the challenge: Once you have looked at the constraints and your thoughts, formally articulate what your group sees as the challenge. This should be a sentence or so in length to avoid any confusion. 4. Select appropriate methods: There are quite a few tools available to you in this stage including: individual interview, group interview, in-context immersion (observation), self-documentation, community-driven discovery, expert interviews, seeking inspiration in new places, empathy maps. Which of these methods will you employ?
- 35. Quick notes about this stage Don’t jump to a solution!! This is the hardest part for all of us. Sometimes students don’t really know how to define their own biases. Often there is confusion between viability (financial) and feasibility (technical) when examining constraints. When framing the challenge, sometimes students bring something too broad and need help narrowing it down. This is an opportunity to work with students on research skills in a more formalized manner.
- 37. Ideate • In the traditional Design Thinking sequence, the discovery stage also includes extensive research. The next stage, Interpretation, involves the sorting and grouping of this research in order to determine insights and develop a “how might we question.” Then it is finally time for brainstorming.
- 41. Quick notes about this stage This is often the most challenging stage for students as they are often not patient when creating “buckets” and do not often see the function to reorganizing their research in a new diagram. Students often produce fairly short brainstorming lists. Challenge them with a number of entries or by timing them. Remind them that inspiration can come from completely non-related places. (Story of the MRI, Chapter One Creative Confidence)
- 43. Iterate Iteration Stage: Here is where you take your ideas and start to formulate concrete solutions to the challenge. Now dreaming becomes more concrete and you will be asked to construct something from your ideas. Process: Test ideas: Take your top ideas from the brainstorming session and test them out against the constraints of desirability, feasibility and viability. Choose the one that stands up best to these three challenges. Formalize your idea: summarize your idea in a single sentence, describe how it will work where other things may not have worked in the past, explain how it addresses the needs and opportunities identified through your field research, list questions and challenges. Prototype building: create your product as well as possible whether it is a model, sketch, storyboard or role play.
- 44. Time to build Build to think; launch to learn.
- 45. Quick notes about this stage Prototyping can look like a million different things, but if your students are creating an actual product, it is important to bring materials for them to physically create something. Physically working through the concept often brings insight to potential problems. When asking students to formalize their ideas, it is very important to have them articulate why they will be successful where others have not before.
- 47. Evolve
- 48. Evolve Once you have one or two solid ideas, it is time to test them out and see if they may work. The first step involves presenting them to others to get feedback on your ideas. Following that, you will revise your solution and then finalize your work by defining how you will determine if your solution is successful and officially implementing your idea. Process: Integrate feedback Make changes Define success Build the idea
- 49. Quick notes about this stage It is helpful to have students record who they solicited for feedback and to record what the respondents actually said. It may be helpful to explain to them the range of people they may need to talk to. Explaining what they changed or evolved is important for the reinforcement of the iterative process of design thinking. Defining success can be challenging as students are not familiar with the concept of metrics. Often they need to be pushed to select concrete evidence that can be measured rather than generalities such as the community is healthier.
- 50. Pitch Ideas
- 51. Challenges to anticipate with students • Overall patience with process • Not rushing to a solution • The pain of thinking
- 52. Compass Points Check In • E= Excitements: What excites you about design thinking? • W=Worries. What do you find worrisome about design thinking? • N=Needs. What else do you need to know or find out about design thinking? • S=Stance, steps or suggestions. What is your current stance of opinion on design thinking? What are your next steps? What suggestions do you have?
- 53. Assessing
- 54. Further Implementations • Nueva school projects • Design Kitchen • Documentary film making
- 56. How my thinking has changed? • I feel more creative. • I have a concrete strategy for problem solving. • I now consider myself a designer and innovator. • Our department has shared language and that makes our thinking together more powerful.
- 57. Review resources