Bad habits and biases, a newbie’s observations on design thinking in Japan (Pt 3): Tangible learning
What working in a completely different culture made me realise about my own behaviour.
Introduction
I moved to Japan six months ago, and it’s been a continuous education that has grown and changed me and my world views. During the first few months, I was invited to observe training sessions that focused on teaching design thinking to beginners — these were adults in a large company with little or no design experience. It was a brilliant experience. I implicitly understood the content because I have taught this topic to multiple students, colleagues and clients, but because I couldn’t understand the spoken words, I had to focus on the physical behaviours and interactions of the students and teachers. This led to new insights, some familiar to me, some from a fresh point of view, and some completely new to me. All of them will help me become a better teacher.
I decided to share these observations and insights with others, but please no hate mail; this is my opinion and only based on observations of a small sample — not to be taken as a sweeping generalisation of a country and its people. I also expect to change and develop these ideas and my viewpoint the longer I spend here and the more I learn, but there is a usefulness to observation made with the naivety of a newcomer that I wanted to capture and share.
Thank you for reading. I am not sure who will find this useful or even interesting but the audience I had in mind when writing was the person who wants to start working in design in Japan or to work with Japanese clients for the first time. I will state again that these workshops were with people who had no design experience, were complete beginners and not clients.
I began writing this and realised it’s a bit long to read in one go (TL/DR), So I am serving it up in more manageable bites. They can be found here:
Part 1: Trust and the importance of clear structure and instruction
Part 2: Playfulness, balance and managing group dynamics
Part 3: The tangibility of learning
Make it physical. I don’t mean physical prototyping — although that’s great, too – I mean make ideas and behaviours tangible. Here are some ways to do that:
1. Having each person’s ideas written on sticky notes is important. As a facilitator, you can look at people and prompt them when it is clear they have more to say because they still have a handful of notes.
2. Demonstrate activities with blank versions of the output – it helps people feel more able to complete the task if they know what the physical requirements are.
3. Acting out expectations with other trainers (or well-prepared participants) helps to demonstrate how a situation should look/feel.
4. “Has anyone heard this conversation before; raise your hand” — encouraging unspoken and small ways to interact helps build participation and the trust of the most reserved participants.
5. Move something to indicate the next step in a process. For example “take your ‘how might we’ statement and put it in the top corner of the next template” the act of moving signifies the next phase of an activity and this helps people orientate themselves mentally.
6. Students in Japan are used to sitting silently for long stretches, listening. Getting people up and moving around the room — set up boards in different spots, walk about, be active as a group etc. — indicates this is a different type of learning environment and encourages different behaviour.
Physicality should also extend beyond ideas, behaviours and environment to include props to facilitate communication. For example, use a microphone even in a small room of people, (where you might usually have raised your voice to be heard).
There are four specific reasons for this that I have observed so far:
1. Use the mic to indicate that you are giving specific instruction (remember the importance of structure from earlier).
2. Use it when people are doing individual work to address everyone together. Conversely, in group work situations, speak to each group individually.
3. Physical amplification is important because many people here are naturally softly spoken and even quieter if they are nervous, they may also be unused to speaking in front of a larger group.
NB. I learned last week in a bi-lingually facilitated workshop that my voice is considered more soothing in Japan than many of my European and Antipodean colleagues probably find it. My facilitation voice is based on an ‘English boarding school matron’ and I now realise that this, contextually, does not translate. My co-facilitators voice was a universally recognisable ‘don’t mess around Mom’ tone and was much more effective.
(Side note: I’d be super-interested to hear about your facilitation personas. How did it evolve? How different is it to you? Do you have different ones for different situations? Let me know in the comments.)
4. By handing somebody a mic, you are giving them permission to speak, helping them feel in control of the situation.
Somehow, I had lost some of the connection between the physical and intellectual in learning; I knew the connection was there but its importance had somehow become obscured. Maybe I had become over-familiar with the subject matter or perhaps complacent. Whatever it is, I have had a strong and timely reminder of the role of physicality in understanding and engaging in so many situations.
Part 1: Trust and the importance of clear structure and instruction
Part 2: Playfulness, balance and group dynamics
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I hope you enjoy reading my newbie observations about Design Thinking teaching and workshops in Japan.
Thank you to the teachers and participants who generously allowed me to join their learning. I apologise if I have misrepresented you in any way in this article, and for inflicting my terrible Japanese on you. Also, to my patient colleagues from many places who have read, critiqued and corrected my writing over a far too long period; thank you. All the mistakes are certainly mine!
ありがとうございました
