Framing the Problem with Design Thinking
A hands-on learning project from Betaversity.
Last week, Betaversity had the incredible privilege to lead a Design Thinking workshop at Saint Mary’s School, an all-girls high school in Raleigh, NC.
We were ready and eager to visit the students and share an assortment of hands-on projects with them: Everything from Altoid Phone Chargers, to Compressed Air Rockets, to 3D Printed Waveforms.
All of that changed, though, when it started snowing.
Class was cancelled for the day, but because Saint Mary’s is a boarding school, there were still about 120 students on campus. So we decided to try something different: An impromptu learning-by-doing workshop that would blend the creativity of Rapid Prototyping with the empathy and human-centered element of Design Thinking.
Because of the snow delay and the last-minute changes in scheduling, we had only a few hours to develop an easy template for students to design their very own laser cut glasses.
The workshop consisted of a step-by-step journey through the exercise of Design Thinking — One that you can replicate in a classroom of your own. We encourage you to take these steps, download the template, and let your students explore the infinite field of Design Thinking!
Reframing the Problem: A Design Thinking Workshop
Divide your class into groups of 3–4 students.
Step 1 – 10 minutes: Encourage your students to brainstorm and think of occupations: Anything from Skydiver or Chef, to Mother of 4 or Mechanical Systems Engineer. The idea here is for groups to exercise divergent thinking. Don’t let them say no to an idea!
Step 2 – 10 minutes: Have your students practice convergent thinking: Narrow down their options, converge on an idea, and make a decision — Have your students pick one of these occupations, and do some research about this job.
In this case, the more specific the occupation, the better. For example, instead of just letting a group pick ‘Athlete’ or ‘Chef’, encourage students to focus in on the specific type of athlete or a chef with a certain specialty— maybe a soccer player on the Boston Breakers, or a chef cooking Biryani. These details will help give the students direction further in the process.
Feel free to let them whip out their smart phones and find pictures or articles about what it’s like to have this occupation. Have them answer the following questions:
What is it like to have this occupation?
What kind of problems does someone with this occupation encounter on a daily basis?
What is something that you learned about this occupation that was unexpected?
What is the most difficult thing about working in this occupation?
Now that your students have started to see things through the eyes of their subject, it’s time to let your students start brainstorming!
Step 3 - 20 minutes: Give your groups paper, some markers/pencils/pens, and ask them to develop a pair of eyeglasses that might help someone in this occupation better accomplish their daily tasks. Remember, this step goes back to divergent thinking: No idea in this stage of the process is too wild. We’ll narrow in on the best idea in the next step of the process.
Step 4 – 10 minutes: Have your students discuss within their groups and talk about their designs. Why did they design their glasses in this way? What problems does this design solve? How is this design better than what already currently exists?
Step 5 – 20 minutes: Finally, have your students narrow down and pick one design, or combine several designs for a final prototype. Give your students Speed-of-Thought materials — then ask them to build a prototype!
Step 6– 20 minutes: Sharing and talking about results is an important part of the design process. Give each student a chance to share the insights they gathered and the things they learned during the workshop. Some helpful questions to spark the discussion may include:
What features of your pair of glasses make it easier for a person in this occupation to do their job?
What problem do your glasses solve?
How would your design have been different if your team had more time?
What mistakes did you make along the way? What did you learn from those mistakes?
What discoveries about this occupation led your team to design the glasses in this way?
Be sure that your students present their entire process — including any research insights, discoveries, mistakes, or misdirections. All of these are valuable parts of the learning process.
If you have access to a laser cutter, you can scan the students’ drawings, process the images in Adobe Illustrator, and laser cut the prototypes to get a taste of rapid prototyping.
We had the privilege of seeing some amazing projects, and we’ll be going back to Saint Mary’s next week to continue the workshops with BetaBox.
Overall, this exercise is meant to get students familiar with the Design Thinking process: A process of user empathy, ideation, brainstorming, defining and redefining the problem, prototyping, and testing.
We encourage you to download this template and do this workshop with your students in your local community. Let your students explore, have fun, and learn-by-doing!
If you have questions about this project, feel free to email me at nicholas@betaversity.com.
We make learning-by-doing accessible to everyone.
