EDUC 5843 - Creative Design - Day 4

I enjoyed the opportunity today to go through the stages of the Design Thinking process. I felt it worthwhile to be able to learn one step & present it to the class. I, personally, am more apt to understand a concept better if we look at it one step at a time. I find sitting down & reading a new document to be a difficult way to grasp a new concept, but I enjoyed seeing the different groups present each step.

 

Our group was responsible for step 2, which is the Interpretation phase. This follows the discovery phase, where a problem (structural, curricular, interpersonal, etc) is identified. During the interpretation phase, your thoughts & observations begin to develop & change. While one of the more confusing sections of the design thinking process, it is one where you take your brainstorming & stories and help funnel them into more concrete forms. 

Interpretation has 5 steps: 
1) Learnings - interpretations of what stood out
2) Themes - what are created for you after you have organized your stories from discovery
3) Insight - what you have gathered from discovery
4) How Might We's - written directly from the brainstorming sessions
5) Ideas - these are generated from brainstorming, as well. No idea's are too big or elaborate...most importantly, judgement is deferred! 

Our example that we provided the class was the following: 

• Learnings
• Teachers have been talking about how the space in our room can be a bit congested
• Themes
• Classroom layouts
• Insight
• Student’s personal space is being overlooked & is an afterthought
• How might we’s
• How might we give student’s a more open-concept classroom?
• How might we create more productive work spaces for children?
• Ideas
• Eliminate desks in the classrooms
• Add rugs & comfy chairs to class to make for a cozier environment

I also enjoyed the challenge of checking for understanding following our presentation. I decided that a really cool way to challenge a class is to use kahoot . Kahoot is an awesome, free site where you can generate quizzes and have students participate via any mobile device or computer. It was a fun way to engage the our class one last time, to review & reflect upon what we went over.

Lastly, I really enjoyed exploring the prototype phase with the group that presented. I agreed with Andrew when he mentioned that graphic organizers can be meaningful when you can design them anyway you wish. I didn't intend on mine going in a circular pattern, but the fact that it ended up looking like this was representative of the process itself.