design thinking – Page 2

A Reflection on Design Lab 1 with GEM…

Posted on December 16, 2013September 3, 2014 by Jenn Chan

Just over a year ago I met Rochelle, the Founder and Executive Director of Girls E-Mentoring (GEM) and we started a discussion about what the GEM program would look like. After an initial conversation about what mentorship looked like and how it might look like for GEM, I posed a question about what GEM might look like if the girls who would ultimately be in the program designed it?

And so we begin…

“GEM’s mission is to mitigate the adverse effects of poverty through electronic mentorship. Our vision is to bridge a social divide between at-risk girls and high-achieving women to motivate the next generation of leaders, innovators and mothers to reach their full potential no matter where they started. “

It all starts with empathy.

We hosted our first Design Lab with 18 girls at the Flemingdon Neighbourhood Services. This was our second time meeting the girls, but the first time we were really digging into figuring out what GEM might be. We spent a short amount of time doing a lot of work. The goal for first phase of the design process is to learn more about the people at the centre of GEM.

Design Lab 1 was intended to start exploring what the girls are interested in, know more about personalities in the room, aspirations and specifically pains and gains in the immediate and long term. Following the Design Lab, we met with GEM’s Advisors to further dive into some of the themes that are coming up and were met with some design challenges coming from the perspectives of mentees and potential mentors. This is a great reminder of why we are actually doing this. The design process is revealing the elements that we need to spend more time thinking about.

Moving forward from Design Lab 1 and the Advisors’ meeting, we will be spending time unpacking all the insights and trying to gain clarity moving into Design Lab 2 in February.

All this to say, we are still learning and that is why this is so much fun!

Learning at //fuse 13

Posted on August 29, 2013September 3, 2014 by Jenn Chan

Over 2 days, 100 educators from 10 different States gathered together at Mount Vernon Presbyterian School in Atlanta, Georgia for an intensive design thinking workshop.

The design challenge: How might we improve the first week of school?

Earlier this year, at EduCon in Philly, I had the opportunity to connect to two amazing educators who are just as enamoured with design thinking as we are. Mary Cantwell is the coordinator for the Centre for Design Thinking at Mount Vernon Presbyterian School and Greg Bamford is the co-founder of Leading is Learning, these two made me feel more than welcome as part of the facilitation team.

W hat is Fuse? “Fuse is the circuit that sparks new action. It’s the fusion of two people working together to make something new.” Together, Mount Vernon Presbyterian School and Leading is Learning created a jam-packed two day adventure to bring educators through the process of design thinking and the task and maintenance of team work. It was a lovely blend of learning the complex process of solving for wicked problems while navigating the complexity of working with people you don’t know on wicked problems. It honoured the fact that as learners, we are used to a certain level of comfort and in this case we were purposely putting you in an uncomfortable space.

As part of the facilitation team, I got to learn and share with a team who are practicing and doing everything they can to spread design thinking throughout education and to co-facilitate with Scott Sanchez, Stanford d. school instructor was simply phenomenal. I am thankful for Mount Vernon’s open and collaborative approach to //Fuse. It was clear that we were learning together and that we were all facing similar challenges that we didn’t have the answers to. I specifically remember our facilitation meeting after the first day and the time we spent going over the participants experience, the iterations we need to make to build their learning experience and our reflections as a team and as individual facilitators.

I was honoured to be a co-facilitator of the Empathize phase. At Mount Vernon, they have adapted the design thinking process to work for their whole school. They use D.E.E.P – discover, empathize, experiment, produce. Empathize is the phase where they get to know their user. It is hugely important that participants make the shift of seeing themselves as users towards seeing themselves as designers. This is the part that I find most people struggle with and the fog continues as you move into defining your “Point of View” and coming up with your own “How Might We”. Together with figuring out your team, going through the process while trying to connect and relate to your design challenge; this is the combination for a tiring day 1 and I am always grateful when everyone still shows up for day 2.

Being part of //Fuse was seriously so rewarding. To see a school that has embraced design thinking for nearly 5 years, go to Georgia to meet fellow #dtk12 educators and really get to build a lasting bond.

How might we bring design thinking to Glen Shields public school?

Posted on June 11, 2013September 3, 2014 by Jenn Chan

We are doing design thinking at Glen Shields Public School. We started this process with a conversation about the school and what the culture was like and how might we be able to work together on professional development, student engagement and learning design thinking.

Glen Shields is a school that hosts a community of diversity, equity, inquiry and empathy. Their principal and teachers are committed to bringing opportunities to their students and engaging their school community.

We are starting our work with Glen Shields through teacher training on design thinking, workshops with students on design thinking and working towards building a language and foundation for work to come next year.
We have requests for more workshops and teachers saying that they are already bring the ideas back to their classrooms. It is exciting to see where this is going. The students are just embarking on their journey and we meet with them again this week. Can’t wait to see where they go!This year we are focusing on the design thinking process with 44 students and 11 educators to prototype the process.

Launching EdCamp Design Thinking

Posted on February 3, 2013September 3, 2014 by Jenn Chan

In 2011, I joined the inaugural EdCamp Toronto organizing committee. In 2012, I instigated EdCamp Hong Kong (the first EdCamp in Asia), participated in starting the harvest team for the second EdCamp Toronto and attended EdCamp Ottawa. Needless to say, I am a fan of the EdCamp movement and have been watching it grow over the years. So, I was pretty excited when I passed an idea past the co-founders of Dan Callahan and Mike Ritzius to launch a spinoff of the original EdCamp with the addition of design thinking methodologies.

On February 20th, we will be hosting our first meeting and planning EdCamp Design Thinking!!! I am pretty excited 🙂

At the meeting we will be building a model for all future EdCamp Design Thinking, a model to be tested, to be hacked, to be spread. A model that is going to share the the process of problem finding, idea generation, empathy mapping, to design solutions and to pitch. The goal of EdCamp Design Thinking is to promote the 21st century skills: creativity, collaboration, critical thinking and communication as well as entrepreneurship.

I love the beginning of projects, so much potential! Our planning team currently is made up of designers, educators, innovators and people who are passionate about education.

For more information, check out the EdCamp Design Thinking wiki.

Make it happen,

Jenn

Youth Environment Camp

Posted on August 28, 2010September 4, 2014 by Jenn Chan

At the end of July, I had the privilege of spending 4 days with the Leaders in Training (LIT) at the Albion Neighbourhood Services Boys and Girls Club Camp. I programmed a week of activities to discuss sustainable cities, environmental impacts and community engagement.

We covered the room in paper and drew sustainable cities. The blank canvas gave the youth an opportunity to create amazing landscapes about recycling, transportation systems, free community centres to get fit at, buildings with green roofs and garbage free zones.

We worked on a Needs-Assets-Ideas map. We produced hundreds of ideas. And from that we pulled 10 ideas to turn into projects for the week.

Did you know that youth between 12 and 16 really like post-it notes? They hoard them by the bundles.

Teamwork was very important to getting the projects done, so we worked on collaboration, competitiveness and action.

The very popular marshmallow challenge inspired by Tom Wujec from Autodesk. This challenge promotes prototyping, idea generating and rapid building.

Working with 20 pieces of spaghetti, 4 marshmallows, masking tape and string.

This project had a slow start, there were lots of questions and doubt, but with a little encouragement and curiosity the teams started assembling tiny towers and through their competitive nature they continued building strong and taller towers. Eventually the winning tower was 15inches tall.

All teams were happy to eat marshmallows as prizes.

Outdoor scavenger hunt and marshmallow challenge both created an ambiance for teamwork and creative ideas flow.

The outdoor scavenger hunt was overwhelmingly successful.

Each team ran across the field collecting answers to clues and figuring out items that are recycled, well designed, playful, squeaky, bouncy to name a few.

We drew “I wish” statements in chalk outside. Each statement was made with the intention of coming true when the rain washed it away. This was a commitment to making action to making our dreams come true.

There was lots of learning and discovery between team mates and between all the LIT’s. They were growing more confident with their team work and collaboration skills. We began work on the ideas that had been chosen from the Needs-Assets-Ideas mapping exercise.

In teams, LIT’s worked on signage to help promote healthy living, recycling, and ultimately saving the earth. Additionally, two healthy living programs were implemented as well. Dancing and Basketball skills. We also spent a lot of time playing with clay and making recycled jewelery.

After all the LIT’s hard work, we talked about making commitments to making change in our communities. Respect goes a long way to keeping a community connected and maintained. Each person can make change in their community by simply making the decision to do so.

I had a great 4 days with the Albion Neighbourhood Services Boys and Girls Club LIT’s!!!!!

Thank you so much, I learned something from each and every one of you.