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Step 2 of the Design Thinking process involves students identifying or defining a problem to be solved. Often, this may be a challenging process for both the student and teacher. Many students struggle with creating well defined problems to solve for others.

One suggestion that may be helpful, especially for students just learning about the Design Thinking process, is to complete a sentence stem for this stage. The one below comes from the design School at Stanford "Gift Giving" challenge. In the image below, notice that the sentence stem connects a need with a reason. Below are some examples to illustrate how to use this sentence stem:

________ needs ______________ because ________________.

• Lauren needs to organize her materials because her "crochet room" has too much stuff.

• Brian needs to keep up with his glasses because he loses them them all the time.

• Mrs. Smith needs to keep up with class relocation because she cannot locate students whose parents come to check them out of school on a regular basis.

• Mr. Chauncey needs a way to help students remember their passwords because students forget their passwords very often.

• The school needs a way to cut down on the time that it takes to serve students in the cafeteria line because her many students are not finished eating when the dismissal bell rings..

• The school needs to speed up the car rider line because too many students are late for first period.

Pushing students to identify and define "better" problems to solve causes better solutions that make a bigger difference to be created. Think of this as similar to helping students learn how to ask better questions. Use peer to peer feedback with guided examples to explicitly teach students how to define and identify better problems to solve.

Thank you so much for being part of this series. Please stay in touch with us and let us know how the implementation of Design Thinking is going.

BONUS: Our Appreciation Gift for You

• 5 Pictures & 15 Words Activity

• Force Copy of 5 Pictures & 15 Words