Project Journey
How can we encourage youth initiated community experiences?
Inspiration Phase
The inspiration phase started the previous week when we were asked to brainstorm a minimum of 5 Human Centred Design Issues. We then bundled the ideas into similar themes. This was valuable because it provided a shorter list of clearly defined areas of study. We were fortunate to go through this iteration and divergence with ease and little conflict regarding the bundles. All of my topics were under the teenagers or single parent umbrella, which demonstrated to me that I need to think bigger.
On campus with our cohort, we built our teams by either advocating for or joining a topic that we had brought forward from the previous week. I advocated for exploring activities for teenagers to do. We ended up as a group of 5, 4 of whom had just completed a large collaborative project that went well in our previous course.
Framing our Design Challenge went smoothly at first, and we all left with a sense of what we would be pursuing the following week. We did challenge each other to define work selections and assumptions, such as 'disengaged', 'inactive' and 'disinterested'. This was helpful because we had to examine our assumptions, or knowledge of the participants and their habits, and how our experiences and biases informed our assumed direction. That evening, one of our team reached out to request a change in direction. The team member shared a disconnect to the topic, and felt that we were making an assumption about the participants that was not his experience. We met early the next morning to continue to brainstorm our understanding of the topic. Once we clarified some terminology differences, we realized we looking at the same challenge, but that our environments were influencing our perception of a potential problem. When we redefined our environment as one that did not have as many resources as Calgary, we were back on track and able to move into Defining our Audience and deciding on Recruiting Tools. By defining our audience, we were able to select locations that might be ideal for finding participants. We made a list of potential experts, locations and participants, and divided the tasks to we could gather as much data as possible. Our next step was to set meetings. We had to continue to remind ourselves not to articulate possible solutions along the way, and to keep the process ambiguous. If we signed for an end, we could miss weak signals and miss out on the most important data.
That afternoon was spent Interviewing an Expert who works with teens through a local school division as a lead psychologist. He reaffirmed some our assumptions that we discussed the previous morning and afternoon. The most valuable activity that came out of the afternoon was the time spent together as a team off campus. I think it is important for the development of empathy to know more about the people we are working with as well as the participants we want to study. We spilt into two groups after our expert meeting - one group went to interview participants at an Airdrie skatepark while the other went to interview an Expert who works in the correctional system. The information we gathered provided us with information about the Extremes in both the larger youth demographic, as well as the Extremes who use the skatepark. The Interview experiences provided us more questions to consider, and gut checked whether this was still a need for the Design Challenge we had defined. We all agreed that it did confirm that we need to explore whether or not teens would initiate engagement in their community. We also engaged in Secondary Research to provide us peer-reviewed insight into strategies that had already been implemented, if there was any. While we didn't find any research that addressed our topic specifically, we found research that could support some of the potential solutions we ended up with, so we banked them. I assume that independent organizations have engaged in research on the topic of engaging kids in community through teen initiated, so the fact we didn't find any peer reviewed articles doesn't indicate to me that the research isn't being done. Perhaps it just isn't accessible through the platform we were seeking. If we had more time, I would have taken the information we learning from the Expert Interviews and absence of journal articles on this specific subject Secondary Research, and I would have interviewed organizations that service teens in the community such as Big Brothers and Big Sisters and Youth Centre Calgary. Because they may have internal research, we may have accessed research that had already been conducted and could provide more insight.
We continued with our Expert Interviews the following morning, with one group going to the Calgary Young Offenders Centre, and the other going to the Leisure centre to find more participants, then meeting with a community planning person from the City of Airdrie. The Expert from the City of Airdrie provided us with an Analogous Inspiration from a city he had worked in previously. He also saw a need for the type of Design we were exploring, and has asked that we follow up with the City Planning department. He provided us with the context of the City priorities and planning, which contributed to our understanding of some of the considerations we would need to explore if we were to go ahead with the Implementation of the Design. This was helpful to us at the How Might We stage, when we could build statements that considered accessibility and willingness on the part of the City of Airdrie to work with youth. At the skatepark on Day 2, there was one girl, and more youth outside our targeted age range (below 13 and older than 17). At the leisure centre, we found one participant in the age range, but no other participants. We attributed this to the time of day - the participants had mentioned the previous day most of them stay in bed until late morning, as we were trying to conduct interviews at the wrong time of day. We had anticipated this challenge, and as a result were more open to accessing Extreme participants than we may have been if we had hoped to interview a large number of Mainstream participants. However, we had enough responses to develop preliminary themes and insights.
Ideation Phase
I enjoyed presenting our Design Challenge to the cohort and hearing their challenges as well in the Download Your Learnings Activities. The questions asked of our group were the same ones we had been asking ourselves, which affirmed that we are being self-aware. The most impactful activity we did during the Ideation phase was Share Inspiring Stories. We were each inspired by different events or people, but we were able to summarize the inspiration into an Insight - There are numerous people out there who want to help teens be successful. Finding Themes was helpful in joining our collective experiences, since we had separated to expand our access to environments and Experts. We had numerous Themes to make Insights from, which again helped us check our path and focus. We misunderstood the Top 5 step, and just bundled our Top 5 as a group instead of doing that method individually. Instead of 25 Statements to draw from, we had 5. Which became our Insight Statements. By Bundling the statements and insights, the process of summarizing the content with a phrase or statement is much more effective. This allows us to focus our next step using a smaller amount of information, and continue to converge in a focused way. Convergence help decrease the time spent debating importance, priority and ownership of ideas, and facilitates progression, and helped us bundle a large amount of ideas into a few that represented the problem best.
With our 3 Insight Statements articulated, we turned to "How Might We" questions. We had challenges maintaining the structure of the task through these Ideation Methods. We did not have a chance to recover as a whole group, as our Implementation phase was completed with one member missing. The challenges started in the How Might We? method, when ideas were being dismissed and the conversation was dominated by a member playing 'Devil's Advocate' to ideas shared. Because this group has passionate members who can be vocal and committed to an idea, stepping away from the framework led to frustration and some conflict. When we moved to the Brainstorming Activity, a suggestion was made to abandon the rotation of ideas, and add our ideas when we had them. The dynamic of the group shifted significantly. The physical space by the paper was taken up by a few people, others had to reach around to contribute and we did not listen to One Conversation At a Time, and we did not Build on The Ideas of Others. Our group would have benefited from reviewing the Brainstorming Rules before we engaged in the Brainstorming. Because this activity was done at the end of the day, and the group members were already tired, we did not have a chance to reflect on how the process went, if everyone felt successful and how we might value structure and quality over quantity when the process is altered to benefit some but not others. We briefly made plans for the Implementation the following morning, and had a framework for how we wanted to proceed. We wanted to ask teens questions using humour, a Speakers corner type idea that seemed to be headed in the direction of a helmut, and to meet at the Skatepark in Airdrie. We aimed for about 8-10 responses, including any Extremes. At this point, I still had trust in the process, and was eager to prototype in the field.
Implementation Phase
I am very grateful that we had the opportunity to go out and test our ideas. It was really fun, very informative and a great way to end the week after the challenges the previous afternoon. Keith and Chris created an amazing Speakers Helmut. Four of us were able to test the Design Challenge in the field. We were able to engage teens, gather answers to our questions, iterate our questions when needed, and draw attention to ourselves. While we didn't get a chance to Prototype for a few weeks and engage in other Implementation Methods based on the activity, we did discuss how that would look. Because the teens were willing to take part, we did have a few stragglers who followed us around the park and made suggestions to improve the helmut, recruiting, and point out locations teens hang out, we feel there would be sustained interest for a longer period of time. Feedback such as allowing teens to answer in pairs, having a spot that was visible but ore isolated for privacy, and starting at a later time were all helpful if we were to move forward. We would want to use a variety of locations, a larger 'helmut', and have better questions to get more comprehensive answers.
In the end, I felt we were very successful in our Design Challenge. We progressed through the Methods listed in the Field Guide for Human Centered Design, and experienced when it worked well and how a team could veer off track and experience challenges. The handbook is going to be a foundational resource for me as I continue to iterate and prototype our Field Experience.
The inspiration phase started the previous week when we were asked to brainstorm a minimum of 5 Human Centred Design Issues. We then bundled the ideas into similar themes. This was valuable because it provided a shorter list of clearly defined areas of study. We were fortunate to go through this iteration and divergence with ease and little conflict regarding the bundles. All of my topics were under the teenagers or single parent umbrella, which demonstrated to me that I need to think bigger.
On campus with our cohort, we built our teams by either advocating for or joining a topic that we had brought forward from the previous week. I advocated for exploring activities for teenagers to do. We ended up as a group of 5, 4 of whom had just completed a large collaborative project that went well in our previous course.
Framing our Design Challenge went smoothly at first, and we all left with a sense of what we would be pursuing the following week. We did challenge each other to define work selections and assumptions, such as 'disengaged', 'inactive' and 'disinterested'. This was helpful because we had to examine our assumptions, or knowledge of the participants and their habits, and how our experiences and biases informed our assumed direction. That evening, one of our team reached out to request a change in direction. The team member shared a disconnect to the topic, and felt that we were making an assumption about the participants that was not his experience. We met early the next morning to continue to brainstorm our understanding of the topic. Once we clarified some terminology differences, we realized we looking at the same challenge, but that our environments were influencing our perception of a potential problem. When we redefined our environment as one that did not have as many resources as Calgary, we were back on track and able to move into Defining our Audience and deciding on Recruiting Tools. By defining our audience, we were able to select locations that might be ideal for finding participants. We made a list of potential experts, locations and participants, and divided the tasks to we could gather as much data as possible. Our next step was to set meetings. We had to continue to remind ourselves not to articulate possible solutions along the way, and to keep the process ambiguous. If we signed for an end, we could miss weak signals and miss out on the most important data.
That afternoon was spent Interviewing an Expert who works with teens through a local school division as a lead psychologist. He reaffirmed some our assumptions that we discussed the previous morning and afternoon. The most valuable activity that came out of the afternoon was the time spent together as a team off campus. I think it is important for the development of empathy to know more about the people we are working with as well as the participants we want to study. We spilt into two groups after our expert meeting - one group went to interview participants at an Airdrie skatepark while the other went to interview an Expert who works in the correctional system. The information we gathered provided us with information about the Extremes in both the larger youth demographic, as well as the Extremes who use the skatepark. The Interview experiences provided us more questions to consider, and gut checked whether this was still a need for the Design Challenge we had defined. We all agreed that it did confirm that we need to explore whether or not teens would initiate engagement in their community. We also engaged in Secondary Research to provide us peer-reviewed insight into strategies that had already been implemented, if there was any. While we didn't find any research that addressed our topic specifically, we found research that could support some of the potential solutions we ended up with, so we banked them. I assume that independent organizations have engaged in research on the topic of engaging kids in community through teen initiated, so the fact we didn't find any peer reviewed articles doesn't indicate to me that the research isn't being done. Perhaps it just isn't accessible through the platform we were seeking. If we had more time, I would have taken the information we learning from the Expert Interviews and absence of journal articles on this specific subject Secondary Research, and I would have interviewed organizations that service teens in the community such as Big Brothers and Big Sisters and Youth Centre Calgary. Because they may have internal research, we may have accessed research that had already been conducted and could provide more insight.
We continued with our Expert Interviews the following morning, with one group going to the Calgary Young Offenders Centre, and the other going to the Leisure centre to find more participants, then meeting with a community planning person from the City of Airdrie. The Expert from the City of Airdrie provided us with an Analogous Inspiration from a city he had worked in previously. He also saw a need for the type of Design we were exploring, and has asked that we follow up with the City Planning department. He provided us with the context of the City priorities and planning, which contributed to our understanding of some of the considerations we would need to explore if we were to go ahead with the Implementation of the Design. This was helpful to us at the How Might We stage, when we could build statements that considered accessibility and willingness on the part of the City of Airdrie to work with youth. At the skatepark on Day 2, there was one girl, and more youth outside our targeted age range (below 13 and older than 17). At the leisure centre, we found one participant in the age range, but no other participants. We attributed this to the time of day - the participants had mentioned the previous day most of them stay in bed until late morning, as we were trying to conduct interviews at the wrong time of day. We had anticipated this challenge, and as a result were more open to accessing Extreme participants than we may have been if we had hoped to interview a large number of Mainstream participants. However, we had enough responses to develop preliminary themes and insights.
Ideation Phase
I enjoyed presenting our Design Challenge to the cohort and hearing their challenges as well in the Download Your Learnings Activities. The questions asked of our group were the same ones we had been asking ourselves, which affirmed that we are being self-aware. The most impactful activity we did during the Ideation phase was Share Inspiring Stories. We were each inspired by different events or people, but we were able to summarize the inspiration into an Insight - There are numerous people out there who want to help teens be successful. Finding Themes was helpful in joining our collective experiences, since we had separated to expand our access to environments and Experts. We had numerous Themes to make Insights from, which again helped us check our path and focus. We misunderstood the Top 5 step, and just bundled our Top 5 as a group instead of doing that method individually. Instead of 25 Statements to draw from, we had 5. Which became our Insight Statements. By Bundling the statements and insights, the process of summarizing the content with a phrase or statement is much more effective. This allows us to focus our next step using a smaller amount of information, and continue to converge in a focused way. Convergence help decrease the time spent debating importance, priority and ownership of ideas, and facilitates progression, and helped us bundle a large amount of ideas into a few that represented the problem best.
With our 3 Insight Statements articulated, we turned to "How Might We" questions. We had challenges maintaining the structure of the task through these Ideation Methods. We did not have a chance to recover as a whole group, as our Implementation phase was completed with one member missing. The challenges started in the How Might We? method, when ideas were being dismissed and the conversation was dominated by a member playing 'Devil's Advocate' to ideas shared. Because this group has passionate members who can be vocal and committed to an idea, stepping away from the framework led to frustration and some conflict. When we moved to the Brainstorming Activity, a suggestion was made to abandon the rotation of ideas, and add our ideas when we had them. The dynamic of the group shifted significantly. The physical space by the paper was taken up by a few people, others had to reach around to contribute and we did not listen to One Conversation At a Time, and we did not Build on The Ideas of Others. Our group would have benefited from reviewing the Brainstorming Rules before we engaged in the Brainstorming. Because this activity was done at the end of the day, and the group members were already tired, we did not have a chance to reflect on how the process went, if everyone felt successful and how we might value structure and quality over quantity when the process is altered to benefit some but not others. We briefly made plans for the Implementation the following morning, and had a framework for how we wanted to proceed. We wanted to ask teens questions using humour, a Speakers corner type idea that seemed to be headed in the direction of a helmut, and to meet at the Skatepark in Airdrie. We aimed for about 8-10 responses, including any Extremes. At this point, I still had trust in the process, and was eager to prototype in the field.
Implementation Phase
I am very grateful that we had the opportunity to go out and test our ideas. It was really fun, very informative and a great way to end the week after the challenges the previous afternoon. Keith and Chris created an amazing Speakers Helmut. Four of us were able to test the Design Challenge in the field. We were able to engage teens, gather answers to our questions, iterate our questions when needed, and draw attention to ourselves. While we didn't get a chance to Prototype for a few weeks and engage in other Implementation Methods based on the activity, we did discuss how that would look. Because the teens were willing to take part, we did have a few stragglers who followed us around the park and made suggestions to improve the helmut, recruiting, and point out locations teens hang out, we feel there would be sustained interest for a longer period of time. Feedback such as allowing teens to answer in pairs, having a spot that was visible but ore isolated for privacy, and starting at a later time were all helpful if we were to move forward. We would want to use a variety of locations, a larger 'helmut', and have better questions to get more comprehensive answers.
In the end, I felt we were very successful in our Design Challenge. We progressed through the Methods listed in the Field Guide for Human Centered Design, and experienced when it worked well and how a team could veer off track and experience challenges. The handbook is going to be a foundational resource for me as I continue to iterate and prototype our Field Experience.
Application to education
I have been reviewing this week from two frameworks - one from a Human Centered Design Lens, and the other through a teacher educator lens. The Human Centered Design framework works so well for me as a user because it provides structure without structuring the content. I value frameworks that provide tools that have been proven useful, so coming across one, and putting some of its Methods into practice, has been excellent professional development for me. I have been thinking about how I will be implementing the framework in my work. I have numerous ideas, but 2 that have crystallized enough to consider how I would apply the Framework right now.
Application 1 - Field Experience
I have an application that I am working on at the moment that would benefit from the methods listed in the Field Guide to Human Centered Design. My Challenge is to:
Design a Field Experience that prepares our preservice teachers for classrooms that are defined as 21st century learning environments.
Inspiration Phase
I feel that I could use this framework to help visualize the process for the faculty and students, our Advisory board, and our partner teachers.
By making clear our Design Challenge, I will invite participation.
Through the development of a Project Plan and Building a Team, I can begin communication and invite ideation. At this stage, I would value input from the largest body of stakeholders possible.
I will be engaging in Interviews - of past graduates, partner teachers, administrators, human resources for different school divisions, assistant superintendents, and other Field Experience Associates and Directors. This will give me a broader insight into the areas they see as working, and areas that I need to ensure we address at the teacher education level.
I will continue to engage in Secondary Research to broaden my understanding of peer-reviewed research conducted in large scale studies.
I will need to define my audience - who do I need to design for? Partner Teachers? Preservice Teachers? Our program?
What about the Extremes and Mainstreams? Will my design be designed well enough to be generalized to honour the extremes as well as the mainstreams?
Where can I find some Analogous Inspirations in Universities that are also small, cohort based programs? What have they done well and what will transfer to our environment?
I will continue to engage in guided tours to maintain relationships and knowledge of the environments we serve.
Ideation Phase
During this phase, I will be able to gather, analyze, and group the responses, suggestions, observations and questions we get back from the field. I will still engage the largest group of participants, mainstreams, extremes and experts that I can.
Our team will download our learning on a regular basis over the coming year, Find Themes, develop Insight Statements and articulate Top 5's. I am tempted to make assumptions about the topics, but don't want to limit my awareness to those that I assume. Based on previous Downloaded Learnings during callbacks, I am going to anticipate we will hear about the flexibility of certain learning environments, classroom management development, understanding students with high emotional-behaviour needs, accessing resources, and relationship building. By engaging in Finding Themes, we can will be able to monitor what themes come up more frequently and require more attention. By examining Top 5's and Insight Statements, we can help the preservice teachers manage what may seem overwhelming, and we on campus can respond to the particular areas that pop up. I will be able to bank some of the Statements because they will fit more ideally into other areas of the program, and focus on the areas that I can impact. It will still be important that I make these visible in a space on campus so that we can keep the Design Challenge front and centre.
I think it will be very important to focus on Sharing Inspiring Stories. Practica are very emotionally charged times for the preservice teachers, and it will be important for us to celebrate those stories. I will make sure to make these visual, and use them as mini-analogous inspirations song the way.
Implementation Phase
I will prototype the Design Challenge Insight that seems like it would make the most impact first, and if others that can co-exist come up, I will be open to implementing those as well. I hope to have an opportunity to engage in rapid prototyping, which will depend on the time of year we get through the Inspiration and Implementation stages. I hope I can gather enough data by the middle of October to prototype in January. That will give me 5 weeks to prototype and integrate, iterate, iterate. In between October and January I will be able to explore the Implementation phase. I can see the Roadmap, Resource Assessment, Building Partnerships, and Monitoring and Evaluating being methods I could use immediately.
Design a Field Experience that prepares our preservice teachers for classrooms that are defined as 21st century learning environments.
Inspiration Phase
I feel that I could use this framework to help visualize the process for the faculty and students, our Advisory board, and our partner teachers.
By making clear our Design Challenge, I will invite participation.
Through the development of a Project Plan and Building a Team, I can begin communication and invite ideation. At this stage, I would value input from the largest body of stakeholders possible.
I will be engaging in Interviews - of past graduates, partner teachers, administrators, human resources for different school divisions, assistant superintendents, and other Field Experience Associates and Directors. This will give me a broader insight into the areas they see as working, and areas that I need to ensure we address at the teacher education level.
I will continue to engage in Secondary Research to broaden my understanding of peer-reviewed research conducted in large scale studies.
I will need to define my audience - who do I need to design for? Partner Teachers? Preservice Teachers? Our program?
What about the Extremes and Mainstreams? Will my design be designed well enough to be generalized to honour the extremes as well as the mainstreams?
Where can I find some Analogous Inspirations in Universities that are also small, cohort based programs? What have they done well and what will transfer to our environment?
I will continue to engage in guided tours to maintain relationships and knowledge of the environments we serve.
Ideation Phase
During this phase, I will be able to gather, analyze, and group the responses, suggestions, observations and questions we get back from the field. I will still engage the largest group of participants, mainstreams, extremes and experts that I can.
Our team will download our learning on a regular basis over the coming year, Find Themes, develop Insight Statements and articulate Top 5's. I am tempted to make assumptions about the topics, but don't want to limit my awareness to those that I assume. Based on previous Downloaded Learnings during callbacks, I am going to anticipate we will hear about the flexibility of certain learning environments, classroom management development, understanding students with high emotional-behaviour needs, accessing resources, and relationship building. By engaging in Finding Themes, we can will be able to monitor what themes come up more frequently and require more attention. By examining Top 5's and Insight Statements, we can help the preservice teachers manage what may seem overwhelming, and we on campus can respond to the particular areas that pop up. I will be able to bank some of the Statements because they will fit more ideally into other areas of the program, and focus on the areas that I can impact. It will still be important that I make these visible in a space on campus so that we can keep the Design Challenge front and centre.
I think it will be very important to focus on Sharing Inspiring Stories. Practica are very emotionally charged times for the preservice teachers, and it will be important for us to celebrate those stories. I will make sure to make these visual, and use them as mini-analogous inspirations song the way.
Implementation Phase
I will prototype the Design Challenge Insight that seems like it would make the most impact first, and if others that can co-exist come up, I will be open to implementing those as well. I hope to have an opportunity to engage in rapid prototyping, which will depend on the time of year we get through the Inspiration and Implementation stages. I hope I can gather enough data by the middle of October to prototype in January. That will give me 5 weeks to prototype and integrate, iterate, iterate. In between October and January I will be able to explore the Implementation phase. I can see the Roadmap, Resource Assessment, Building Partnerships, and Monitoring and Evaluating being methods I could use immediately.
Application 2 - recess
I would like to see a redesign of recess in our schools. I appreciate the focus on physical activity, and agree with the need to promote active, healthy lifestyles. I don't buy into the fact that healthy, active lifestyles come exclusively in the form of a few hundred kids going onto a playground with minimal supervision and minimum strategies for success to play a few types of sports. We should be providing options for students who require brain breaks that are less stimulating and more rejuvenating for their personalities. I would like to see recess that supports artistic outlets, building outlets, or reading or music spaces centres. The focus on sports to develop healthy lifestyles is narrow and exclusionary to a significant number of youth.
Inspiration: Building a Team that consisted of literary and arts specialists, community members with a desire to network with schools, psychologists, parents, teacher, counsellors, and students would provide perspectives and alternatives that could produce some unexpected Design Challenges. This challenge would ideally include Recruiting Tools, Secondary Research, Analogous Inspirations and Expert Interviews.We would need to define our audience, as every school culture is unique, as are the demographics and resources available. Because of the age groups that tend to have recess (K-4), visual representations would be important to the Inspiration Phase. Card Sorts, Collages, Draw It would be invaluable communication tools for the Team. Defining Extremes and Mainstreams would be vital to this process and this Design Question, because Extreme kids tend to be the ones who are at risk when they are older. If we can provide exposure to areas of interest that validate the intelligences and passions of our Extreme youth, we may be able to channel their talent into productive activities when they are teens. By expanding the community the Extremes are able to connect with, we can provide them opportunities to find their authentic place in a school environment. We heard from a number of Experts during our Interviews for our Project that at risk kids were often also outliers in their younger years. They tended to have a harder time finding their place in the social structures at school, and had little exposure and mentorship in areas of interest both inside and outside school.
Ideation: would take place over a specified period of time. Ideally long enough there was enough useful data and consideration of the seasons in the school area, but not so long that valuable time is spent in a cyclical divergent/convergent stage. If the Insights, Themes and Top 5 continue to net the same results, advancing the process would be necessary. Again, engaging students would be integral to these stages, so visual methods such as Getting Visual with photos or drawings, Storyboards, and using Role Playing would be a necessity.
Implementation: would be sustainable and require frequent reiterating as the population of the school changes. Using Ways to Grow Frameworks, Funding Strategies and Staffing your Project would all require buy-in from the staff. Using Ian Prinsloo's example that 15% will agree, 15% will disagree and 70% will come along. By Creating a Pitch and Defining Success, we can hopefully get enough of those 70% to support the change and Re-Design recesses to meet a broader audience.
Inspiration: Building a Team that consisted of literary and arts specialists, community members with a desire to network with schools, psychologists, parents, teacher, counsellors, and students would provide perspectives and alternatives that could produce some unexpected Design Challenges. This challenge would ideally include Recruiting Tools, Secondary Research, Analogous Inspirations and Expert Interviews.We would need to define our audience, as every school culture is unique, as are the demographics and resources available. Because of the age groups that tend to have recess (K-4), visual representations would be important to the Inspiration Phase. Card Sorts, Collages, Draw It would be invaluable communication tools for the Team. Defining Extremes and Mainstreams would be vital to this process and this Design Question, because Extreme kids tend to be the ones who are at risk when they are older. If we can provide exposure to areas of interest that validate the intelligences and passions of our Extreme youth, we may be able to channel their talent into productive activities when they are teens. By expanding the community the Extremes are able to connect with, we can provide them opportunities to find their authentic place in a school environment. We heard from a number of Experts during our Interviews for our Project that at risk kids were often also outliers in their younger years. They tended to have a harder time finding their place in the social structures at school, and had little exposure and mentorship in areas of interest both inside and outside school.
Ideation: would take place over a specified period of time. Ideally long enough there was enough useful data and consideration of the seasons in the school area, but not so long that valuable time is spent in a cyclical divergent/convergent stage. If the Insights, Themes and Top 5 continue to net the same results, advancing the process would be necessary. Again, engaging students would be integral to these stages, so visual methods such as Getting Visual with photos or drawings, Storyboards, and using Role Playing would be a necessity.
Implementation: would be sustainable and require frequent reiterating as the population of the school changes. Using Ways to Grow Frameworks, Funding Strategies and Staffing your Project would all require buy-in from the staff. Using Ian Prinsloo's example that 15% will agree, 15% will disagree and 70% will come along. By Creating a Pitch and Defining Success, we can hopefully get enough of those 70% to support the change and Re-Design recesses to meet a broader audience.
In the past month I have come to embrace a confidence in my creativity. I have been designing for years without knowing the terminology, the framework or that it was design. I have been prototyping and iterating in my classrooms (in public school and at the University) under leaders who have been very encouraging and supportive.
I now have the tools to design in a way that moves me towards progress with data that can inform my path. I will be applying this framework to my designs going forward so that I can make well informed decisions that are based on collaboration, ideation, bundling and converging to knead the challenge to the surface.
I now have the tools to design in a way that moves me towards progress with data that can inform my path. I will be applying this framework to my designs going forward so that I can make well informed decisions that are based on collaboration, ideation, bundling and converging to knead the challenge to the surface.