Design Thinking

It's not only for Design class!

The Design Thinking Cycle from Standford d. school follows a similar format to the MYP Design Cycle.

This is a great way to structure a project or an interdisciplinary unit.

We recently created a successful interdisciplinary unit with the Humanities and Design departments. The task was for students to create solutions to problems they identified in their local community using this Design Thinking process.

EMPATHIZE Students started with a walk around the community stopping at various locations. Each student has a role within their team to record data/observations about the location. Including looking at it through the lens of different user groups

DEFINE Upon returning to school, the teams noted down all of the problems they observed/recorded. The students then grouped the problems and selected the one their team would solve using a dot voting process.

IDEATE - Students brainstormed solutions to the problem generating as many ideas as possible without judgment or feasibility constraints. Once again they voted on ideas and selected the most popular to develop further through sketches/modeling.

PROTOTYPE - Students created low fidelity prototypes to quickly and easily translate their design concepts into tangible testable artifacts.

TEST- Students presented the first prototype to the other groups to explain their concept and receive feedback.

REPEAT! Students listened to the feedback, reflected, defined problems and came up with ideas for improvements to create a second higher quality prototype which would be used to present their ideas to the other students and teachers. We used a Sharks Tank / Dragon's Den style format in which students had to pitch their ideas to the panel.

Empathy Interviews

Testing ideas on users

Presenting prototypes

Real-World Design Thinking 2-Day Challenge

Helping organizations in Atlanta that work with at risk youth.

In a recent real-world Design Thinking challenge, students designed solutions for organizations in the Atlanta area which help "at risk youth." In the team I coached, the students interviewed two representatives from Horizons Atlanta. Through the interviews the students conducted, they realized the main problem Horizons had was recruiting teenage volunteers to work with their program. The students then interviewed teenagers in the community to discover what would encourage them to volunteer with the organization. They found that the teenage volunteers wanted "a fun, social experience which was easy to schedule" Additionally, they wanted to be able to share the experience with their friends and have information about other volunteers involved in the project. My students brainstormed a large range of ideas and voted on the best one to test on the users. They went through the testing and design cycle several times until they has a product that the potential teenage volunteers loved! The students then presented an App they had designed to the Horizons representatives. The app allowed potential teenage volunteers to see upcoming events they could attend. The App also made it easy to sign up and invite their friends, as well allowing them to see the profiles of other teenagers who are also volunteering on the project. The Horizons representatives loved the idea and hope to implement it in the near future.

AIS Schedule Redesign

I am currently co-mentoring a group of twelve Middle School students to use Design Thinking to redesign our school's schedule to enhance the students' learning experience and allow for more transdisciplinary, project-based learning. This is a year long project which we aim to implement in the 2020/21 school year.

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