Happy thoughts

Students engage in empathy interviews based off a happy memory from childhood. Through these interviews, students create a personalised object, or five-word story, to capture something memorable from their conversation.

Design thinking stages

Empathy, prototype

Curriculum areas

English, Personal and Social Capability

Activity 1: Empathy interview

Empathy interview.pdf

Ask students to consider a happy moment from their childhood. Working in pairs, have students conduct an empathy interview, where students interview each other about their happy moment.

For round 1, one student should be the interviewer and the second students should be the interviewee. Allow time for a 2 - 3 minute interview, then swap roles.

For round 2, allow another 2 - 3 minutes. This time, ask students to dig deeper into something that hooked their attention from the first round of interview.

Activity 2: Crazy 8's

Crazy 8's.pdf

Based off the information collected during the empathy interviews, ask students to create something meaningful for their partner. Use the Crazy 8's ideation tool to generate 8 ideas in 8 minutes.

Activity 3: SCAMPER

SCAMPER.pdf

Use the SCAMPER process to improve on one or two ideas generated during the Crazy 8's ideation time. We suggest providing students with only two or three options of Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, Rearrange, as the full acronym can be overwhelming. For example, you might instruct students to take one of their ideas and Modify it and Combine it with a second idea.

Activity 4: Prototype

Option 1: Students can create a "thing" using resources such as pipecleaners, cardboard, Lego, bluetack, matchsticks, etc.

Option 2: Students can write a six word story that captures their partner's childhood moment, similar to Hemmingway's famous story "For sale: Baby shoes; never worn."

Activity 5: Present

Ask students to present their creations to their partners. They should open with the phrase "You inspired me to create this..."