Reflecting on Design Project #1

So, we're reaching an end to our first official design project.

It all went so quickly that I really don't know where the last few weeks went. Flew away in the wind, I guess.

(New logo for Design Lab!, drawn by Rachel!)

As a class, we've gone through the Design Thinking process; we've empathized with our classroom users (Mr. Heidt and 2 students), we've defined the issues/problems that we found in a needs statement, we went through the ideation (not a word) phase and created prototypes. Actually, we sort of went through the ideate/prototype phase twice (it really bothers me that the word 'ideate' keeps getting marked as incorrectly spelled. It's a word, Google - a word that I happen to really like). Now, all that's left is to test the design. Which will be really fun.

Final prototype (yayy!)

Before we can actually go through the renovation process, however, we have to get approval from the District Board. Oh, and money. We need that too. So one person from each design group - prototype, logo/branding, proposal, and finance - were given the task of synthesizing the last few weeks and pitching our entire marking period's worth of work to the principal and other really important people.

We're basically putting Mr. Heidt's passion and dream on the chopping board and potentially risking getting it diced to little bits.... no pressure, guys!

Since we're pretty much done with the design thinking process, we have to reflect on the past quarter as a whole.

I'm going to use the d.school's Seven Aspects of Design Thinking to do this, though I don't know how I'm going to fit everything in.

• Show, Don't Tell: We did pretty well with this one; we used plenty of visuals and drawings to show both our classmates and Mr. Heidt the ideas that we had. Even the simplest sketches (like the ones we do on Sketch-It Thursday, using circles, rectangles, lines, and blobs) could easily communicate what we were thinking or trying to say. Of course, it wasn't always perfect because even though we wish it, we can't all be Feynman who just learned how to be a professional artist on his own, but it was enough for us to reach a consensus and put our thoughts and ideas together.

• Focus on Human Values: I think that we achieved this aspect of design when we did the empathy interviews. We merged the needs that we came up with from those interviews with opinions and experiences that we ourselves already had, and came up with a 'How Might We..?" statement. Although, once we had that statement and we had addressed that part of the process, we kind of moved on to other things. Our overall goals were kept in the backs of our minds but we may have strayed a little once or twice. And knowing that finances were going to be an issue, we had to sacrifice some comfort and cool things because they would be too expensive/impractical.

• Craft Clarity: Now this one was a difficult one. All of the focus groups had awesome ideas and were working well together and all that, but we had a huge gap in communication. The different groups didn't even know what the others were doing and what decisions they were making half the time. I was part of the prototype group, and we built things that weren't even going to be part of the final proposal, because we weren't informed differently. But knowing how chaotic my mind can be, someone probably mentioned it to our group and my brain didn't get the memo. I don't think I actually ever saw the final grant proposal or the finances spreadsheet...... Bottom line is that we lacked good communication and we were confused on how the entire thing was supposed to come together.

(AKA when prototype group was told that their movable chalkboards weren't in the final design)

• Embrace Experimentation: I'd say that we got this one down pat. We came up with tons of different ideas, tried them out, and decided which ones would fit our needs. We had a lot of discussion, bouncing thoughts and solutions back and forth and giving each other feedback. We did pretty well despite the fact that we had very little time to go through the process.

• Be Mindful of the Process: Mr. Heidt led us through the Design Thinking process, and even though I had a rough idea of where we were and what we were doing, it go a little difficult to separate the theory from the physical action/going through the process. We didn't miss any step and we reflected throughout the entire thing (mostly).

• Bias Towards Action: This is a bit difficult to answer. We didn't have much time to "act" on our ideas, if you ignore the prototype-building part. I'm satisfied with what we did, because we didn't just sit around writing notes on how great the design thinking process is and how many amazing ideas and solutions can come out of it. We actually DID it and went through the steps, and these reflections are proof of the knowledge that we gathered as a result of that experience.

• Radical Collaboration: We smashed this one, if I don't say so myself. I don't know if it's just that we're all comfortable with one another or we're all just a special kind of weird, but the class as a whole works remarkably well with one another. Everyone has a strength and can contribute to the goal that we're working towards - we're like a puzzle that has certain, unique pieces and we can't see the whole picture without all of us working together. (OOOHH ANALOGIES!!!)

Even though we didn't completely succeed in all of the criteria listed above, we tried our hardest. To be fair, we were in a crunch for time so we didn't fully immerse ourselves in the aspects of design, but we did a darn good job this first time around.