Design Thinking

see I was born in the Ice Age at a time when these guys were all really popular and the best thing we had in terms of technology was this an old-school Mac and the biggest concern I had with technology was making it through the Oregon Trail without dying of dysentery and news flash I always died of dysentery in fact even when I moved up to Oregon now where I live I was a little disappointed to see that nobody around here seems to have dysentery at all just kind of a bummer and then what happened is I reached the eighth grade and this was the year that our school got the Internet but this isn't about the Internet and it's not about the technology this is what you see over and over and over again see the innovation was something very different it was something deeply human it was something that we all want for our students and I'll get into it in just a second when I was in Middle School in eighth grade I was the combination of incredibly nerdy and incredibly shy in fact I still remember that I had one friend and this one friend his name was Matt we would hang out together we were two nerds in a pod and I loved you know hanging out with him I carved out my own quiet space but my goal in the eighth grade was to not be noticed it was to fly under the radar and then Matt was gone from school one day and I still remember what it was like to stand there holding a tray and and stare out at the sea of students all around and hope for just one of them to invite me over to their table and it didn't happen I dumped my tray of food in the trashcan and then I hid in the boys restroom which if you've ever been in an eighth-grade boys restroom you would know it's kind of a patch of the third world inside of a very first world school I hated it I had accomplished my goal of not being noticed and it hurt and then I got invited to be part of something called the history Club now these two teachers mrs. Smoot and mr. Darrow they were amazing and they saw me as more than a test score more than a number they saw me as someone who could be creative they saw me as someone who cared about sports who cared about baseball in particular who loved history who cared about social justice so they invited me to do this project and it was absolutely terrifying the entire thing was straight-up scary for me I had to interview baseball players that I would script it out and I would call them and make phone calls and you could hear the the sheet of paper shaking from my script and then I was so glad every single time that I'd done it I still remember a moment where I was recording my script at a radio studio and I listened to it for the first time and I hated it and I told my teacher mrs. Smoot I said please do not make me play this in front of the class and she said no that you're going to have an amazing slide presentation and you're going to do this and I said no I I can't do it I hate my voice and she looked at me and she said when you withhold your voice from the world when you don't share your creativity you are robbing the world of your creativity and I won't let you get away with that and that stuck with me forever to this day they became my heroes mrs. Smoot and mr. Darrow and in that phrase of not robbing the world of your creativity became one of my core beliefs see I believe to my core the school should be bastions of creativity and wonder it's what will prepare students for the creative economy it's what prepares them for a creative life and honestly it's what increases student engagement I don't think I ever had a better behaved until I started actually incorporating creativity which is very counterintuitive it feels like if you let them make things and do things that'll be messy and chaotic and you always hear that but what I found was the opposite that when you empower them to be fully engaged with creativity that the behavior problems go down and yet we have these devices these phones and they can do everything that I had to physically do in person back in the day when I did the history project I didn't realize it at the time but I was using something called design thinking and I'm gonna get to that here in just a moment but our devices can let you do all of these things they're packed full of connective power and creative power I physically had to take my pictures with a camera and then take the film to Walgreens and develop it when I was in eighth grade now I could just snap it with my phone I had to make long-distance phone calls to talk to baseball players now I could Skype with them our world is so much more creative and so much more connective and yet I did a student survey to see how students use their devices do they consume or do they create 158 out of 160 consumed videos only four of them actually create something with it 160 so all of them consumed audio but only three of them had actually created and edited any audio with their devices a hundred fifty three of them had I had played games on their phones their tablets or their computers but none of them had actually coated and created their own game with something like scratch and the lesson for me was it's not about the digital divide it's about the creative chasm for all the talk of students being digital negatives they're actually consumer natives so why is this the case well this is our reality students are in this one-size-fits-all factory model and they are passively consuming content but here's the thing students aren't widgets and although one-size-fits-all is great for socks it is a lousy way to think about the mind now you can complain about this or you can advocate for solutions and so for me as a teacher realizing that I wanted my students to be creative that they needed it for the creative economy that they needed it for the creative life that it was a vital 21st century skill I had to help them gain this maker mindset and here's what I've realized number one making is the mindset that's the way you want students to approach things as creative thinkers problem solvers divergent thinkers iterative thinkers that is the mindset the process that makes it happen is design thinking and if you look at this right here when students embrace design thinking they become rebels and hackers systems thinkers explorers they become innovative and unabashedly and wildly different they're they're ready for the creative economy they're they're ready to take creative risks they develop a growth mindset they make connections between ideas they learn to think divergently they become problem solvers they grow more empathetic those are the things that they become that's amazing it doesn't work perfectly every project I've had has had flaws there's been mistakes there's been things that simply didn't work well but it's totally worth it it's something that works really really well and then launch is the framework and we're gonna get into that here in just a moment so again making is the mindset design thinking is the process and launch is the framework now if you're interested at all you can check out the book launch using design thinking to boost creativity and bring out the maker in every student Ajay Giuliani and I both develop this together and in the process we had both for for over a decade used design thinking his teachers and we've realized that there were bits and pieces missing from the Design Thinking frameworks that already existed out there for example we wanted to add an inquiry and research face because students really learn a lot from engaging in research and then the biggest thing is the launch going back to that History Day project I didn't mention this in the story but one of the proudest moments for me was when I actually finally launched my project to the world and I had to share it with an audience which was my peers at first and I still remember I pressed play and and then I did the slideshow and when it was done there was one of those like nineteen eighties slow claps and then it kind of went viral and then everybody else started clapping and it gave me such a boost in my confidence that it taught me that not only was I a maker and a creative thinker but that I needed to share my work with the world it reinforced what mrs. Smoot had told me when I was in the radio studio and then I went to the district competition I went to the state competition and eventually went to the national competition and had to present it in a giant arena and and it was powerful to realize that that my work my creative work was being seen by an entire audience and that's the power of the launch that's the last piece we're gonna get into it here as we dive into the launch cycle so first I'm going to show you a video of what the launch cycle is Design Thinking is a flexible framework for getting the most out of the creative process it is used in the arts in engineering in the corporate world and in social and civic spaces you can use it in every subject with every age group it works when creating digital content or when building things with duct and cardboard although there are many models for design thinking we have developed the student friendly launch cycle here's how it works in the first phase students look listen and learn the goal here is awareness it might be a sense of wonder at a process or an awareness of a problem or essence of empathy toward a group sparked by curiosity students move to the second phase where they ask tons of questions this leads to understanding the process or problem through an authentic research experience they might conduct interviews or needs assessments research articles watch videos or analyze data students apply the newly acquired knowledge to potential solutions in this phase they navigate ideas here they not only brainstorm but they also analyse ideas combine ideas and generate a concept for what they will create in the next phase they create a prototype it might be a digital work or a tangible product a work of art or something they engineer it might even be an action or an event or a system next they begin to highlight what's working and fix what's failing the goal here is to view this revision process as an experiment full of iteration where every mistake takes them closer and closer to success then when it's done it's ready to launch in the launch phase they send it to an authentic audience they send their work to the world and ultimately that leads back to a place where they can look listen and learn if you're interested in sparking creativity and boosting innovation in your classroom join us for the global day of design you can get your free one-day design challenge by clicking the link on this video so take a day and test it out see how your students respond to an engaging creative design challenge [Music] so again this is the launch cycle right here and we're gonna begin with phase 1 which is look listen and learn in this phase you're starting with a sense of awareness and it might be something like a product idea which is kind of the shark tank concept it might be observing a natural phenomenon this was the case when I was doing these really cool magnetic roller coasters in physics when I was in high school and we started with the natural phenomenon just being amazed by magnets and sometimes this curiosity leads to creativity sometimes it's awareness of an issue and and you can use Design Thinking for things like service-learning projects sometimes it's a problem that needs to be solved and you simply start with a problem and then as you solve that problem you move into actually creating a solution that is a a finished work a finished product and a lot of times some of the best products that have ever been invented started with that sense of a problem that needs to be solved but sometimes it could be geeky interests my students used to do geek out blogs and we would begin the school year with these geek out projects and they were Design Thinking projects and that would lead them to sort of geek out on whatever thing that they were most interested in whether it was skateboarding or fashion or foodie blogs and in it it sort of was that the beginning place for their genius our projects and you'll see this a lot if you love genius our Design Thinking is an amazing framework for seen genius our projects thrive sometimes you start with a sense of empathy you really care about a group out there and that empathy draws you in well that's gonna move you into Phase two which is understand the thats gonna move you into Phase two which is ask tons of questions and in this phase they're just engaging in as much inquiry as possible they're asking whatever questions they want they could be market based questions they could be questions about other products that exist that could be caused in effect problems that they're interested in it could be something about the physical environment it can be anything that that taps into their own inquiry based upon what you first had in the look listen and learn phase so that's L and a you now move into you which is understand the process or problem and this is the idea of students as researchers now if you teach younger kids you might be wondering how do I help them research if they're not good readers but I would encourage you to rethink research research could be interviewing people and it could be doing long distance interviews it could be looking at pictures it could be doing little experiments all of those things are another form of research it could be watching videos or listening to podcasts and in my experience kids are researchers before they are readers if you look at a two-year-old they're engaged in research right so something happens in school a lot of times where they actually lose that sense of knowing how to do research and I think a lot of times they get scared or they start viewing research as just reading and I've learned that it really requires you to take research off-road it's about student ownership and one of the things I love about design thinking and you'll see this as you do this yourself is is students own everything they own the L the a that you the in the C and the H they own the entire process and that includes this research phase but because it is structured right because it is something that uh allows them to know boundaries and have systems and have scaffolding they can own it but it's not chaos it's not anarchy so the student choice actually boosts their creativity but it doesn't get in the way of behavior which was was my biggest fear when I really started to refine this and develop this in my own classroom and by the way I taught middle school and and middle schoolers can be a little bit challenging but again this provided that structure to allow the creativity to thrive phase four is navigate ideas this is when they're not only brainstorming but they're turning the brainstorm around and actually creating a finished plan of what they're going to make and so part one again is to brainstorm together and then part two is to take that brainstorm and make an actual plan of action for what they're going to make so they're taking all that research all those questions and now generating their own ideas and then from there ideas they're going to move into a plan and the following is the example of the brainstorming technique I use with students brainstorming can be fun you get together and generate a massive list of ideas everyone is shouting all over each other it's exciting however this often leads to groupthink where everyone remains fixated on one particular approach often quieter members never get a chance to share ideas and the group jumps to a potential solution way too quickly here's a different approach that I've tried in my classroom it's not perfect and it takes a little bit longer but it's something that works for me so I've got it Sharon first students brainstorm alone some choose a list while others choose a wet next they meet together as a group we have one rule in this phase no judgment means no criticism and no commentary the goal is to reduce fear this part isn't time sometimes we even brainstorm on multiple days and students borrow ideas from seemingly unrelated fields next we have a member of another group join the brainstorm and add any fresh ideas that they had to consider the original group then gets together yet again and they add ideas to the existing brainstorm while also combining similar ideas finally they will analyze evaluate and narrow down their ideas until they have a single coherent concept this process reduces groupthink while ensuring that everyone's voice is heard you so after they've done the the brainstorm they move into a phase calls find the parts and this is the idea of the plan I keep the plan very simple we don't want to have them spinning forever on it but we do want them to know where they're going again um it might feel like they're restricting their creativity here but this is actually boosting their creativity because it's it's getting them to think and to be more intentional so the first part is product idea so they have a clear idea from that brainstorm then their audience and at this point they really need to know who their audience is going to be the next phase is the role so are do they know you know who's going to do what in their group if it's a partner or a small group they really have a sense of the roles developed and then the tasks and the tasks I have them break it down into to their own to-do lists and then their own deadlines and this actually allows them to engage in their own progress monitoring and their own project management which is a really powerful transferable skill that they'll use outside of the classroom when I taught middle school they lobbied really hard to change it from product idea to format idea so obviously it would be F a RTS but that didn't really fly so we kept it with parts after they've developed the plan they move into creating a prototype and in this phase they're actually making what they've done and you might be wondering you know why did you have to go through four phases before you reach this part you know why can't they just start making stuff and in my experience you know I actually did some research around this using design thinking led to a higher quality of work in the creative side so all of those pieces were necessary they were engaging in more divergent thinking they were thinking outside the box more often and they were actually more invested in the process they cared more about the work that they were doing when they had gone through the l-a you and in phases sometimes their product is a you know physical product which was the case when we did things like solar challenge sometimes it's art which was the case of you know what we did when we painted murals or when we did our social voice blog and sometimes it's an event or it's a community service activity which is what happened when we use design thinking in our service-learning project now you might be wondering you know what what if I don't have the materials you know what if I don't have one-to-one devices what if I don't have the greatest technology around but often the best choice in technology is a roll of duct tape or some cardboard you know there's some amazing Design Thinking products that are really low-tech because it's not about the technology it's about the thinking it's about the creativity well the next phase is highlight and fix and this is where you're getting students to engage in revision it's important to remember that every mistake is simply another iteration closer to success and I love giving the example of a skate park at a skate park everyone's making mistakes they're all engaged in revision but they don't hate it and part of it is that there's permission to fail there's permission to make mistakes and they grow into resilient people at the skate park right they develop that sense of grit and that's what we're looking for in students as creative thinkers we want them to develop that perseverance and that's why it's really important that they have this phase where they're given the time and the opportunity to highlight and fix their work the final phase is when it's ready to launch and that's where they're launching their work to an authentic audience it could be local it could be global it could be a small group it could be whatever and I found in my own classroom that you know we had some amazing audiences that were very small which was the case when my students developed these gift baskets for their the sweepers at our school and I'll still remember this forever that the moment when these sweepers got their gift baskets and they had never felt appreciated at our school and were streaming down their cheeks because my students had made something for them on the other hand when we filmed documentaries we had the community our local you know citywide community was our audience there's an amazing example of an audience that watched a documentary in Grand Rapids Michigan my friend Trevor and Mike he was Design Thinking and they did this World War two documentary and they had a red carpet event at a movie theater and it was powerful but it could also be you know online and and that was the case when we did our our blogs it could be something smaller like you know local within the school there's a great create a sport project that we've done and the audience there is is you know their own school and and and that works well as well you know that the point is that they're defining the authenticity and I love giving this example of the lunar landing you know when we went to the moon we chose an audience it was one of the greatest moments of TV history and it was unscripted you know it was alive and you know imagine if the astronauts had gone to the moon and they've collected their findings and they had published in a journal and and and never shared their work with the world what would have happened on the other hand when students share their work with an authentic audience they experience what the astronauts did which is they inspire other people I mean how many people who saw the lunar landing became inspired to be explorers and to push past the realm of human possibility it didn't just inspire scientists and inspired engineers artists writers to to rethink what was possible to think about the human potential and that's what happens with students now they might not get to go to the moon I mean let's be realistic kids aren't going to go to the moon but when they share their work with the world they inspire others and I love that when this is happening you as a teacher get to share this with your parents and they get to see the amazing things happening in your classroom and that's powerful they get a new view of who you are as a teacher and what your students are capable of doing see when you launch to the world you're saying I'm not afraid to be known too often though student work just ends up on the refrigerator and and that's it it gets shared to a backpack and nothing more but when they share to another at authentic audience what they're saying is I'm not afraid to be known and not only that they inspire others they grow more confident it gives them this positive peer pressure where they do better work and they work harder because they actually care about it because it's authentic it's also important that they share their journey and we get into this in the launch cycle as well Austin Kleon says become a documentarian of what you do and we saw this last year with the global day of design we had somewhere around sixty thousand students sharing their work on Twitter on Instagram on Facebook on snapchat and it was powerful to watch their teachers documenting what they were doing with design thinking and notice these are very low-tech projects right as we look back and forth but it doesn't matter because it's there and it's powerful and it's about the thinking it's about that maker mindset that they get when they engage in design thinking so I'm gonna share a story that's kind of sad but I think it's important to know it and to share it because they illustrate something powerful about Design Thinking my students wanted to solve the graffiti problem in our school and in our community and we'd painted over graffiti and then the graffiti just came back the vandalism continued and then students came up with a solution we finally used design thinking and their solution was to paint murals they said if we paint murals the people doing graffiti won't touch it and to our surprise it worked we painted eight murals in three years and not one of them got touched by vandals these became a source of pride for our community mothers would stop buying pushing their strollers they would point to the murals they would talk to their kids about someday you're gonna be at that school it was powerful and then we got a new principal and this principal thought that the murals looked unprofessional so she had them painted over painted them white put up data charts instead and I had a student who was really upset about it he was actually crying about it and he said I'm never gonna do creative stuff anymore this isn't worth it why even bother and I looked at him and I said here's why because it's not about the work that you do it's about your mindset it's about you it's about how different you are as a result it's about the way you think about what you do so you now know that you are a maker and nobody can take that away from you they can destroy your work they can throw it away they can paint it white but they can't take away the change that's happened in your mind and then I looked at him and I said when you don't share your work with the world when you refuse to share your creativity when you silence your creative voice you robbed the world of your creativity and I didn't know it at the time but as I drove home I remembered that's exactly almost verbatim what mrs. Smoot said to me when I was in the eighth grade and it's a reminder that we as teachers have the power to turn our students into makers to tap into something deeply human inside of them and when that happens nothing can take that away