Co-creating the mentor experience for Design Club — Part 2
Some notes and learnings from our SDFF workshop last week
A quick introduction
On the basis of our experience so far, Design Club already seems to have enough inherent appeal to whip up a good amount of interest and goodwill from some really talented people who are eager to help.
The level of interest has undoubtedly been boosted by the excitement created by our materials - which have received much praise. Overall, such curiosity is an important indication that we’re onto a ripe idea.
But as we gradually begin to open up Design Club to a broader network of potential mentors, it’s important to ensure that more focused attention is paid to the experience of becoming one.
As with all education, delivery really is key, and so ensuring that future mentors are supported to achieve the best level of engagement is a top priority for the team now.
So, we decided to host a Design Club event at this week’s London Service Design Fringe Festival to a) gather feedback on current materials and b) to co-create some new ways to make the mentor experience even better.
The workshop plan
With these objectives in mind, between the team (Noam, Rachel, Vala and myself) our plan was as follows:
- Introduction to Design Club and journey so far.
- Break into three activity groups: 1) ‘Co-creating support materials for mentors’ [one group], and 2) ‘Journey mapping the mentor experience’ [two groups.]
- Reconvene and share learnings.
Co-creating support materials for mentors
What did we do?
After a round of introductions, we took a quick poll to gauge the level of comfort each participant would have delivering a Design Club session armed only with their existing expertise.
Our group was an interesting mix of service designers, UX designers and design students, so the numbers averaged at around 7.5 / 10. Quite high already, as all were design fluent.
We then guided the group through the Design Club workbook — a 14-page handout to help the kids work through a simple design process. We then explained some tips and tricks to delivery that we’d learned, along with some recurring challenges we’d noted.
Once we’d completed this guided tour, we then opened a challenge up to the group:
How might we best support mentors to deliver Design Club — before, during and after each session?
Each member of the group shared ideas in a facilitated brainstorm on post-it notes, which we then grouped into themes. These themes could then be tackled, rapidly prototyped and tested at a future Design Club event. In fact, Design Club had already lined up a workshop at a CoderDojo event on the following Saturday (23rd September).
We had planned to go one step further and sketch visualisation of our ideas, but were so absorbed in discussion that we never made it that far!
Once we’d completed the session, we then repeated the poll we took at the start gauging comfort levels. This time, participants averaged around 8.5 / 10 — an improvement of 1 point each after reviewing the Design Club materials.
What did we learn?
Well, the level of design fluency (and therefore confidence) within the group was already high. But nonetheless, all agreed that the existing Design Club materials would be a big help in providing a platform to teach from.
To enhance the mentor experience even more the group came up with the following ideas — clustered into approximate themes under three sections below: before, during and after.
Before a Design Club session
- Build a mentor community. Could we start a forum or Slack channel? At least begin an FAQ or documentation session on the site.
- Add a mentor hierarchy. Should their be degrees of seniority within the mentor team, to ensure a certain level of quality?
- Plan a mentor onboarding process. Should there be a loosely structured onboarding process — eg. shadow for 1 session, co-facilitate 1 session and then lead the next?
- Add to website resources. Ideas included: videos illustrating exercises, a menu of session plans and to-do lists for facilitators, a resource of simple primers on subjects/concepts for non-designers, a section to explain why design is important/data explaining the ‘why’ of design for young people.
During a Design Club session
- Repetition and reinforcement. Help kids to connect the outcome of solving problems, with a realisation of the process of how they got there.
- Encourage personal investment. For both mentors and kids — could we insert a simple exercise to get kids to set their aims at the start, and revisit them at the end? Advertise the professional benefits of being a mentor.
- Enrich the physical environment. Provide downloadable assets to have up on the walls — make the space more interactive, tactile and full of prompts.
- Monitor timings. Make sure that sessions flow well, and that the time each task takes is acknowledged (big clock?)
- New mentor shadowing. Could new mentors be offered an opportunity to observe experienced mentors in action?
After a Design Club session
- Retrospectives and documentation. A quick check in after each session to establish what worked, what didn’t and any tips to be passed onto new mentors (in a wiki or forum?)
- Plan the next one quickly. Offer opportunities to the kids and mentors to take learnings forward, and continue practicing! Eg CoderDojo — a consultation with a technologist to code a prototype?
This post is part 2 of 3 . Read part 1. Part 3 coming soon.
Finally, a big thanks to Noam for inviting me to contribute to such a great initiative. And to Vala and Rachel for being wonderful co-facilitators :)
