Insights and thoughts from the first two Design Club sessions
I ran a Design Club taster session at the end of March. I’ve recently run two more sessions as part of a pilot.
For further background, see this post: Teaching Design Thinking in primary schools.
Here’s a quick overview of the Design Club pilot:
- Design Club is an after school club
- Ten kids have signed up (all girls)
- Kids work in teams of two
- Kids work through a project workbook
- The project workbook is activity-based
- The project workbook follows a Design Thinking process
Insights and thoughts
It’s early days, but I’ve noticed a few things. Here are my notes.
1. The workbook can be fiddly to use
Insight: Kids love the workbooks. They’re tangible, structured, and completable. The drawback is they require a lot of flipping back and forth, making them a bit fiddly. For example, the kids are frequently having to refer back to the “Frame your design challenge” worksheet or “Create your user profile” worksheet while doing ideation work.
Thought: A folder or filing system might work better, allowing the worksheets to be spread out on the table. This also means project workbooks are customisable and flexible, fitting the organic nature of a design project.
2. Kids seem to bias quantity over quality
Insight: Kids feel compelled to fill all the space in the boxes on each worksheet, even when they only need half the space.
Thought: I’m not sure what to do about this one, other than to remind the kids that sometimes they only need to write and sketch what they feel is important, and leaving some white space is okay.
3. Kids need space to doodle
Insight: Some kids used the backs of worksheets as doodling area, before neatly writing or sketching in the designated spaces.
Thought: Design the backs of worksheets to encourage doodling.
4. User needs is a tricky concept for kids to grasp
Insight: Some kids found it hard to turn user behaviours into user needs. This is understandable, it’s hard for grown up designers too.
Thought: Pre-filling some of this content might help, to show examples of what’s expected. A user story format might work well. Walking through this process as a group, on an example project, could also work.
5. Sketching quickly does not come naturally to kids
Insight: The kids enjoyed sketching user interfaces, but they spent a lot of time on detail, crafting logos and pictures. They draw user interfaces, rather than wireframe user interfaces. They’re having fun, so I don’t want to discourage this. However, I would like them to develop the ability to sketch ideas quickly.
Thought: Maybe some variation of Crazy 8s could work, where we sketch 8 interfaces against a timer. A stencil kit could be useful. Having examples of wireframes on the desks might serve as a reminder of the what we’re aiming for.
6. Facilitating completely different projects is hard
Insight: In the first workbook, during the first session, kids set their own design challenges. As a facilitator, it’s hard to provide advice and keep on top of five different projects, each with a unique design challenge and therefore different set of creative outcomes.
Thought: This is something I addressed in the second session. Instead of allowing each team to define their own design challenge, I provided project workbooks containing a predefined design challenge. Design a mobile app that helps 10 year-old Emily learn to play an instrument. This worked well. It allowed the whole group to share and compare ideas against the same brief.
7. Work on how to nurture skills and abilities
Insight: Some of the activities and concepts in the workbook proved hard to grasp. The first workbook was perhaps too advanced, and as mentioned above, the variety of options make it hard for facilitators to support the project.
Thought: Kids need the opportunity to develop their skills and abilities at the right pace for them. Project workbooks with a predefined design challenge certainly helped. Need to consider more projects, perhaps broken down as beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Introducing different activities or stages of the Design Thinking process as discrete modules might also help to scaffold learning more effectively.
8. Allow Design Club time and space to evolve
Insight: I’m keen to make progress and forge ahead. But I need to be careful not to rush things and make bad decisions. I have a good feeling about Design Club. A few organisations in this domain have already shown an interest in Design Club, especially the project workbooks.
Thought: Be Patient. Be willing to let things take time to develop and evolve and change. Consider how to get more people involved to help shape things. Perhaps a meet-up to discuss how to improve design education for kids. Or a group of critical friends, meeting every month or two to talk about and interrogate Design Club in more detail.
If anyone is interested in being a critical friend, please email me.
Photography: Paul Donnellon
