Design Thinking – Wrap-up

We finished up by teaching 11 workshops based on Design Thinking (the IDEO way) to around 225 second year Werklund students and Tammy and I have a few takeaways from the experience.

1. The sooner the better.  If we could teach “The Three Little Pigs” design thinking scenario to every student in the second year program during the first week of classes in January, everyone would benefit.  There comes a time in the third week where students have already looked at the 5 possibilities (Design Thinking, Discipline-Based Inquiry, Project-Based, Understanding by Design and Universal Design for Learning) to solve their problem of practice where our workshop is really too late.
2. No matter how much time you give, students want more.  In this case, we actually had students prototype an advertising “pitch” for a product or program that would solve “The Three Little Pigs” scenario.  Last year our feedback was that students wanted to prototype.  We allowed time this year for prototyping and presenting (testing) and then used Today’s Meet to collect feedback from the other students in the class.  Because of time limits, feedback was not rich with information to give groups ideas to change or rationalize why not to change their product or pitch.  Students still felt we did not allow them enough time to digest the feedback.
3. Instructors in the program should know what they are getting into.  We should have clear information about the workshop we offer since we are now considered to be “the experts” on staff for Design Thinking.  We tried to get students to come independently to the workshop in time away from class time.  We had very little buy-in for students doing the workshop without their classmates.  Given that students want to only come with their class, please see #1.

And we are already talking about changes we would make for next January.  I still think that Design Thinking, the process and the workshop, are valuable tools to give students in Werklund School of Education.  We would love to have a whole day, in the first week of January, with instructors and students to walk everyone through the process fully and completely but we are managing to give a good experience to those who sign up early and immerse themselves in the workshop.

Design Thinking 2.0 – Interview with a consultant?

We have had some very successful workshops in the first week of working with the second year students from Werklund School of Education.  We had both elementary and secondary classes working through the famous “Three Little Pigs” design thinking scenario with mixed results although most students came up with a convincing pitch to share with the class.  From the “Cattlepult” to a “wonderful community where pigs and wolves live in harmony,” pitches for a “solution” to the pigs versus wolves problem abound.

Our final workshop on Friday afternoon offered us the least number of comments in the definition phase.  We couldn’t cluster ideas or look for outliers.  We were left with very few ideas to talk about or work through to a solution stage.  Perhaps, students weren’t engaged enough to give back any evidence collected in the empathy phase but it was difficult to maintain any momentum through ideation, prototyping and the testing loop.

So here is the change we made to help with the definition stage.  We backed up to the Empathy phase and instead of having pigs and wolves empathize with each other, we introduced two “consultants” into each group to ask questions and gather information from wolves or pigs.  Each consultant was provided with a package of documentation containing some basic information about the pigs and the wolves that could prompt some entry points to begin to gather information.

This morning we worked through a class incorporating this change.  We did get many more ideas to write up on the board for our definition stage and some great statements to anchor the ideation and prototypes.  And, we gathered statements from each one of the four groups.  We will try this approach again on Tuesday.

The ironic feedback we received on just one form was “…if the student switch roles. …can have a better understanding of different roles.”

We will work with the consultant model for now but we will keep an open mind depending on more feedback that will come with future workshops.

 

Design Thinking 2.0

Did I mention that it is January again and for us at the Doucette Library, that means Design Thinking?  The second year Education course, EDUC 546, is looking a little different this year, widening it’s scope to include Universal Design for Learning, Project-Based Learning, Understanding by Design, Discipline-Based Inquiry, and the Design Thinking from IDEO and Stanford.

Tammy and I will be, again, contributing to the learning by holding a number of workshops for the EDUC 546 classes following last year’s model based on the Three Little Pigs.  Ah, but this year we have an extra few minutes in which to add PROTOTYPING!  We will be adding the final two steps in the Design Thinking process, prototyping and feedback/re-test into the Three Little Pigs scenario in a way that fits into our new time constraint.

In this iteration of the workshop, we will be asking students to ideate using chart paper divided into 4 sections.  We are hoping that students will come up with at least 2 different, viable ideas within the sections of paper.  They will find that the more ideas you have, the better outcome you will have.

For prototyping, we are asking them to take one of the ideas to prototype but not as an actual artifact.  Students will be coming up with a pitch or a way to advertise their chosen artifact.  It is an interesting way to have each group present an idea and sway the rest of the class to think about their solution.

Feedback will be given by other students in the class though the website, TodaysMeet in a “room” for each workshop we are giving.  A few minutes will be available for them to look over the feedback received in this fashion.  Critique comments will answer questions like, “how well does the prototype solve the problem as stated in the defining question,” and “how effective is the pitch?”

We are still asking for feedback about our workshop.  It helps to change what is happening in the Design Thinking teaching here at the Doucette.  So stay tuned, iterations are happening.

 

Design Thinking – Day 5 (Week 2)

By: Tammy Flanders

In reviewing last week’s workshops, I’m still wondering how the students who are headed to secondary schools would have accepted the scenario that we did use with students looking to teach at the elementary level.

Originally, Paula and I had thought to design a design thinking task around the scenario of the three little pigs and the big, bad wolf.  Because we felt that the point of the task was to teach about the process of design thinking and less so about the ‘content’ of the scenario that this would work.

One of the instructors recommended coming up with a scenario for the secondary students that would appear less ‘elementary,’ afraid that they wouldn’t buy into it. We did have other instructors also teaching secondary students who didn’t think this would be a problem.

So with this little encouragement, I’m still tempted (at some future time) to use the scenario based on the fairy tale with the secondary students. I think the advantages would balance the negative perceptions. For instance, we need to manage the expectations and make sure students understand that it’s the design thinking process that is the most important part of this.

Also, we think the ice breaker that goes with the three pigs’ scenario gets the students into talking more quickly and with less hang ups. This is done as a ‘roundtable storytelling’ where every student adds a line or two in retelling the story.

Compare this with the scenario that we do use with the secondary students that is based on current events around refugees coming to a new country and the challenges they face. The session starter for them is Paula and I reading/book talking the picture book, Home and Away by John Marsden and Matt Ottley. Next we have them chat about what they know about refugees or immigrants from things they’ve read or know personally. Many of them felt that they just didn’t have enough information about refugees in general and that thinking specifically about the Syrian refugees in Canada curtailed their imaginations. They just couldn’t seem to place themselves in the shoes of any new arrival. They were afraid that they would end up creating stereotypes.

However, the three pigs’ scenario wouldn’t have the same baggage as this is such a fanciful story that we encourage students to extrapolate on and take in any direction they want.

Today we had the opportunity to try this out.

Two classes that came to us last week, went through the workshop again (though not in its entirety) using the fairy tale task instead of the refugee scenario. They certainly had fun with it and came up with some really creative ideas.

Because they were already familiar with the introduction, we skipped that and focused the tasks around the scenario giving them lots of time to work through the empathy, definition, ideation and prototyping sections. This was much more hands on as we had the full 80 minutes to let them really get into the role playing, interviewing, defining and ideating and finally ‘building’ a prototype. Even though we brought out many of our building kits (wood blocks, Lego, foam discs, straws and connectors, etc.) many created prototypes that were programs or written informational literature instead.

Over all, I think these second workshops went over well with students but I can’t say for certain whether they would have bought in to it the same way if this had been their first exposure. We did ask if they would have felt it too elementary and some said yes. They also acknowledged that they could see how it would work using the fairy tale.

As I said before, maybe it’s all about managing expectations of the students from the first and reminding them the focus about the process not the actual task.

Thoughts, anyone?

Design Thinking – Day 3

By: Tammy Flanders

We had four workshops today – two for secondary level students and two for elementary level.

It was great having an opportunity to work through the elementary scenario of the three little pigs and the big bad wolf a couple more times. There is definitely a marked difference in the tone of activity between the elementary and secondary students. Whereas the secondary students worked through a more real life example (helping an immigrant/ refugee settle in a new country which they took very seriously) the elementary student teachers were able to let their imaginations go and have some fun.

Paula and I still think there’s merit in having the secondary level students work through the fairy tale scenario just to introduce a bit of levity into the workshop and highlight that the work is about the application of the process not the specific scenario we’ve centered the task around. We just have to screw up our courage and try it out.

Paula and I, in reflecting on today’s teaching, have noted that we have added an element in the definition component of the design thinking process for the sake of clarity. If you read through the literature written about the design thinking process it never actually suggests coming up with a defining problem that will then be ideated. But we found that students struggled to get down to the ideating part, the part about coming up with ideas that look for possible results to help move forward with whatever problem they might be working on. Giving the students a couple of minutes to focus on an actual question or problem made the process a little more apparent.  They had something to ideate or focus on.

Another recommendation that has come up in several of the workshops for the secondary level student teachers is providing them with ‘character cards’, that give them an immigrant character to become when doing the interview with an aide worker.  Some students did get into the role playing and came up with characters who had children, who had never worked before, had specific job skills (ie. Doctor, engineer) they were looking to transfer, etc.  Other students felt like they didn’t know enough about immigrants to make up a character.  Paula and I have resisted this idea so far thinking that using the imagination was of value. We’ve since reconsidered and will make up a few characters that students will have the choice to assume or not.

Stay tuned for tomorrow – two more sessions.