Lessons from the Inside:
What’s it like to be an instigator of change?
One of the last projects I worked on as a designer at IDEO ended up being one of my favorites: it was the first time I interacted closely with teachers on a design project. I led the team which evolved and expanded the Design Thinking for Educators Toolkit, based on real feedback, into a platform with more tools, examples, and stories for teachers.
As an IDEO designer, you tend to get exposure to lots and lots of projects. And over the course of four years working there — I had been placed on projects that took me from toy invention to the future of food. But, as it turned out, this last project had the most significance to me because it allowed me to work side-by-side with teacher co-creators- and made me passionate about what design can do for education.
Now, I am an educator at the Stanford d.school and Designer-in-Residence at Google where I’m tasked with spreading design thinking within a technical organization and collaborating with my team to make sure we’re creating user centered products. As a Googler, I’m now experiencing a rare opportunity to see the design for education work from another angle, as the Teachers Guild’s very first collaboration host — which is kind of awesome. With the evolution and expansion of the Design Thinking for Educators Toolkit into The Teachers Guild, and Google as the first partner, it’s a perfect storm.
The Guild’s first design challenge (How might we create rituals and routines that establish a culture of innovation in classrooms and schools?) feels a lot like what I focus on in my work at Google, where I tend to think of myself as a provocateur and instigator with my teams.
If you’re a teacher who, like me, wants to see change in the way your team, school, or organization works, you might benefit from some of the lessons I’ve learned trying to bring design thinking into new industries and spaces. Here are a couple tips I’ve collected along the way:
1. Model Don’t Teach
Design first, process later. Teach others about design thinking by practicing it yourself. Don’t start off by explaining the process- just dive into the challenge and design something together. People are excited by new design, by new output in any form. Around me, people want to see things being built. If you only talk about an idea, and don’t build it, you don’t gain any credibility. The more you create and design, the more people see the impact of the work. In this, the work can speak for itself. You won’t have to convince people that the design thinking process can be transformative, they’ll just be able to see it.
2. Design Every Interaction
At Google, I knew that my approach to collaborating would be unconventional, so I made a point of calling it out. To help set the stage that I’d be working differently, I started to develop my ‘visual brand’ and approach through every interaction:
- I designed emails to feel more like posters rather than text documents.
- My presentations were visual with few words.
- My meetings required sharpies.
3. Keep a List
In large or deeply entrenched organizations or systems, it can feel like you’re not making fast enough progress or doing enough. Often ideas and changes can take a long time to seep into the culture. I keep a list of all the exercises and experiences I’ve created, and projects I’ve worked on. Every few months I review the list to see what has stuck from the experiments. Day to day it can feel small, but month to month, you can see how much ground you’ve covered and impact you’ve made.
4. Find Air Cover
Try to find someone more senior than you, either in job title or in tenure, who can run interference for you so you feel safe to take risks. Ideally, put yourself in a position to test new ideas where you don’t feel like you’re risking your job or your reputation by doing something that’s culturally out of the ordinary. I’m fortunate to have developed trust within my team and organization such that I don’t feel scared to try crazy experiments — like when I convinced my boss that taking our team to learn improv or that participating in a live poetry installation was relevant to our daily work. Certainly, this kind of trust isn’t developed overnight, but seek out influential people who you think ‘get it’ and develop this trust over time.
5. Magnet Not Force
Design thinking is not for everyone, don’t force it. Work with the people who naturally gravitate to you and what and how you’re working. People will come out of the woodwork to find you. It’s not uncommon to find an email in my inbox or appointment on my calendar from someone I’ve never met or worked with who’s heard about this ‘design thinking stuff’ I’ve been leading. Often these people have had a little exposure to the process either through an article, mini-workshop, or lecture, and have just been waiting for the right opportunity to engage further. These folks often bring a lot of energy, passion, and enthusiasm with them and are excited to join a tribe of like-minded people. Working with people who are already excited and interested can make your job as a design thinker exponentially easier and more enjoyable.
6. You’re a Designer AND You’re an Implementer
At IDEO, I had the luxury of being focused on a single design project or brief with a dedicated team that thought only about the same goal. But at Google, we’re not just designing, we’re also maintaining large systems and products. As a teacher you’re doing the same. Keeping the ship floating while innovating upon it. To do this well, you’ve got to be flexible. As a result of this dynamic, I’ve been experimenting with the idea of a “ Revolving Door Team,” where we design intentional ways for teammates to roll-on and off design challenges while maintaining project momentum.
7. Sometimes, Design Rituals for Yourself
As an artist and designer, I am used to offering and receiving constructive feedback in ways not typical to corporate culture. I wanted a way to gauge experiences I developed and meetings I led, not through a survey, but through in-person feedback. At the Stanford d.school, we use a popular tool called, “I like, I wish, I wonder/What if;” It’s incredibly simple, powerful, and easy to use. At Google, I invited people around me to think about new ways to offer constructive criticism. It served a personal need and wish, but it was a solution that we all benefitted from. What do you wish you had more of in the classroom, and how can you design yourself a ritual to provide you with it?
8. Design for Team Interests
I feel like I finally figured out the secret sauce at Google when I designed a project that would allow my team to work on a project they were both interested and highly skilled in. I dreamt of experimenting with establishing behaviors around creativity, and initially went about it in my old school way. I grabbed a graphic designer to work with me on developing Camp Create. Then, I realized that I was surrounded by people who could hack together a global interactive platform in their sleep. I mistakenly thought I’d have to twist peoples’ arms to help me, but was instead inundated with volunteers. What I realized was that I’d given people an excuse to code, something they didn’t always have the opportunity to do, and were craving the outlet to do so. Figure out what your peers’ interests and passions are, and see if you can take advantage of them with your own design challenges.
There are endless lessons one can learn about designing and transforming cultures, and it can be hard work. As you try to be an instigator of change in your school, you can use these tips to help you shift the culture and mindsets around you. My parting words of advice: try to find at least one design buddy who always has your back, who is a thought partner, and someone who will empathize with your needs, so that you never feel like you’re in it alone. Be sure you’re feeding your own passion and inspiration -and not just those around you- along the way. Oh — and create design projects that you think will be fun (not just useful) to work on.
