Design Thinking: 5 Chairs — By Sophie Kim
Sophie has been an amazing addition to Next Century taking on leadership on one of our research projects AND doing brilliant User Experience Work. As a Principle User Experience Engineer she led a session at our recent Women in Computing Day that was focused on Design Thinking. It wasn’t a surprise that Sophie wanted to run a session that was at the core of user exerience. Thinking creatively with different design materials uses a different kind of muscle than other types of technology focused sessions. This session had almost no technology and demonstrated that thinking creatively is core to engineering too. This room was filled with giggling and girls wishing they had a few more minutes to make their design better. What more could anyone ask for in a session focused on design?
This is the second post in a series following our latest Women in Computing Event. The first is on 3D visualization.
Where do ideas come from?
When you think about ideas that are original or ones that improve upon and existing idea, do you imagine a lone person, engineer, scientist or inventor come to mind? The image of a single person working and creating innovations are a common misconception. Rather, innovation happens when people work together to create something new that no one has seen or improve upon something that people use everyday.
Projects that provide a hands-on approach to explore ideas through the design thinking process provides a way for students to collaborate with one another while problem-solving real-world problems using design thinking principles. Students working together toward a common goal teaches them to persevere when faced with challenges.
The objectives of the 5 Chairs Exercise is to encourage students to collaborate on designs and ideas with the goal to solve a person’s need while working with a variety of materials. This activity will encourage them to design prototypes of chairs based on a person’s profile and requirements. Students will learn to create a plan, build a prototype, test and iterate their chairs while keeping their designs and efforts focused on the person’s needs. This activity will encourage and challenge students to empathize with the needs of others, to think critically by adapting and learning when their ideas don’t work as expected, and to persist in solving the problem.
Conducting Your Own Design Thinking Exercise
Each session will take approximately 45 minutes. Attendees will work together in groups of 3 to 4 individuals. Each group will get a story card with an explanation of the activity.
The materials required for this exercise are paper for drawing, poster board, coffee stir sticks (easy to cut with child safe scissors), pipe cleaners, modeling clay or Play Dough, masking tape, glue dots (doesn’t make a mess like Elmers Glue), scissors, and markers.
Building the 5 Chairs
Step 1: Students will a draw a chair using the provided markers, draw sketches of a chair on a piece of paper.
Step 2: Using the scissors and the sheet of poster board, masking tape and/or glue dots, the students will make a paper prototype of their chair.
Step 3: Students will make an expression of theirchair using the provided pipe cleaners.
Step 4: The students will make a model of their chair using the modeling clay or play dough.
Step 5: For the final step, the students will builda chair using the popsicle sticks or coffee stir sticks, masking tape and/or glue dots to build theirchiar.
Understanding Design Thinking
After the prototypes have been created, have a time of discussion with the students to guide them through understanding the design thinking process. Ask each group who they designed the chair for and what they think he/she needed in their chair. Other questions you may want to ask:
· What was it like to build your chairs and what challenges did you have making them?
· What did you change along the way? What did you learn from your prototypes?
· Which material did you enjoy working with the most and the least? Why?
· Which model or prototype best represents the design of the chair your team drew?
This activity is a great way for students to collaborate, understand the problem, build, test and iterate while focusing on a person’s needs. It promotes empathizing with the person and their needs, critical thinking and collaboration through team work when faced with real-life challenges.
If you are interested in learning more about Next Century, please check our website below:
