A 7 year old’s journey to build grit through lessons in design thinking and entrepreneurship…with some help from her mom. Think of it like Product Management 101, but with a 1st grader.
….
→ Elena is looking for beta testers aged 8 and under. Sign up here!
A recap
Elena is in the middle of her Design Thinking journey. To catch up, I recommend you start at Part 1.
In Part 8, Elena designed a test that will allow her to determine whether making good dreams or catching bad dreams leads to a better bedtime experience.
Through that process, she learned:
- When designing a test, you always want to have a control for comparison. For all you know, your solution could make the problem worse!
- Follow Teresa Torres’s advice and don’t let lack of traffic stop you from testing. If you can’t hit stat sig, find other ways to learn and move forward.
Prototype time!
The time has finally arrived for Elena and Luisa to start making prototypes. The girls place all their supplies from Michaels on the table and start to plan their projects. (You can read about their Michaels shopping trip in Part 7.)
The next 20 minutes is a bit of a frenzy as the girls try to do everything at once. It is almost like a crafting binge, where they take a bite out of each project instead of finishing one before moving on to the other.
While you’d expect this over-eagerness and lack of patience from a 5 and 7 years old, you might be surprised to hear this occurs in adults too.
Design Thinking, Lean, and Agile development are all about moving fast with rapid experimentation. “Move fast and break things” is the popular saying. But those methodologies aren’t about launching fast. They are about learning fast. You want to learn fast so you move fast in the right direction.
If the prototype for your test is not in a state to allow you to learn anything about your assumptions or hypotheses, why bother releasing it? You’re just wasting time waiting for experiment results that won’t help you quickly and strategically make your next decision.
So, I slow the girls down and help them complete each of their prototypes.
Idea #1: The dream squid
One of Luisa’s Crazy 8s ideas was a squid that catches bad dreams. (She originally described it as a squid/unicorn/rocket in Part 6 and a Half, but it has since evolved into “just” a dream squid.)
During our trip to Michaels, Luisa found some fabulous supplies to make her dream squid.
I am all for letting my girls make these prototypes by themselves, but this one required a hot glue gun, so I ended up doing most of the work gluing the squid together.
I’ll let Luisa explain how her prototype works.
Idea #2: The dream book
One of Elena’s Crazy 8s ideas was a book where kids can draw the dreams they want to have at night.
A few days ago, she happened to find some fun looking notebooks at Walgreens and she decided to use them for a prototype.
So, the girls don’t have to actually build anything for this one.
Idea #3: The dream seed
Both Elena and Luisa independently came up with the idea of a seed that grows good dreams. For Elena, it was a flower. For Luisa, it was a mushroom.
During our past trip to Michaels, Elena and Luisa found some small flower pots to plant their dream seeds. They decided to paint them dreamy, spacey colors.
They really gob on the paint to make the pots extra golden. “They will sparkle like constellations,” explains Elena.
I also painted a pot as well because they came in sets of three. If I had let one of the girls paint two pots while the other could only paint one, there would be a mutiny. So, we went with one pot each and everyone was happy.
Once the pots dried (with all that paint, it took an entire day!), Elena filled the pots with “crystals,” which turned out to be sharp little bits of glass. Definitely not child-friendly, so she will need to find an alternative before giving this to another child for beta testing.
Then she added the cool blue gems as the dream seed. Aren’t these amazing?
Elena explains how it works.
Idea #4: The dream box
This idea was a spontaneous riff on the dream seed concept. Elena saw a wooden treasure box and thought it might be a great mechanism for making good dreams.
The process of creating these prototypes was similar to the dream seeds — gobs of paint, unsafe bits of glass, and a dream seed.
Luisa added some feathers as a decorative touch.
Idea #5: The stuffed animal
The stuffy has been Elena’s favorite idea from the very beginning of her journey.
It may seem surprising that she waited to make this prototype last, but she tends to procrastinate or completely avoid things that she thinks will be difficult.
If you remember from Part 1, this whole journey is about giving Elena opportunities to practice grit. And boy, was this prototype a great opportunity.
Here’s Elena explaining why she’s nervous to start the project.
After watching that clip, you must think I am an amazing mom and all my efforts are a complete success. After all, Elena understands grit — she knows failure is no big deal, you just start again.
If I wanted to be fake and perfect, I would end with this video. But this isn’t a fake journey. This is real life, and stopping here wouldn’t actually help Elena learn any lifelong lessons.
You don’t have grit because you know what it is. You have grit by doing grit. Saying is one thing. Doing is another.
The first step for making the stuffy prototype is to draw it. Elena decides she wants to make a cat, but the drawing is not turning out how she wants. She gets more and more upset with each attempt.
Yes, her emotions are slowing her down, BUT she keeps trying! She does not give up, which is a success in its own right. She is getting grittier.
Eventually, she makes a drawing she is happy with.
I help turn it into a (sort of) pattern so she can plan out all the pieces of fabric that need to be cut.
Together, we cut out the pieces using the furry rainbow fabric she picked out at Michaels and some pink fabric I happened to have in my craft closet.
“But pink is too girly!” Elena complains. “Oh, wait. This is just a prototype,” she remembers. If/when she makes the real thing, it can be any color she wants. I mentally pat myself on the back. Celebrate your wins, folks!
Now, it is time to sew all the pieces together.
Elena’s stuffy prototype is complete. It didn’t take a thousand years like she thought, but it did take two days to finish.
The cat is not perfect, but it is good enough to create an opportunity to learn.
Want to help Elena and Luisa test their prototypes? Are you aged 8 or under? Sign up here:
https://forms.gle/py5gB9BTauihQ4vM9
…
Want to know what Elena does next?
Follow, like, subscribe or whatever the kids are saying nowadays to get the latest update on Elena’s journey → Medium | Instagram | Linkedin | Twitter
You can also join this email list for an early bird announcement of the launch of Elena’s yet to be determined solution. She is still a ways away from this, but it’s never too early to start building your Kickstarter list!
…
