Designing with Grade School Kids

On Tuesday I was fortunate to be invited by Mike Doell of Ross+Doell Design to kick off a design project that he has been running at his kids’ school for the past few years. Each year Mike guides a class through the design process to eventually create models and prototypes of all kinds of new products. In the past, Mike’s classes have created new toys, games, candy and clothing. This year Mike will be guiding the class to create entries for the Exploravision Awards, a design competition geared to K-12 students.

Mike asked me to join the class for a 1 hour kick off session as a “brainstorming expert”. Believe it or not, kids in the gifted program are already seeing the world in Gantt charts and project plans even at the age of 9 and need to be facilitated through lateral thinking exercises. While that’s a sad commentary on the education system, I’ll leave that for another blog post. Mike suggested that the biggest “problems” to overcome for the class were:

1. fixation on the first idea to pop into their heads
2. setting aside judgement of ideas.

So in the hour that I had between recess and lunch I decided to break out my old, reliable technique,  improvisation. As of right now, I feel that the principles behind improvisational acting are core to creativity and innovation.

Initially I introduced the group to the idea that “problem solving” is different from “design” by  asking them to shout out the answer to: 2+2. In 1 second everyone yelled out “4!”. I then asked them to shout out the answer to “What is the best video game?” There was a full 60 seconds of yelling out answers. Many people yelled out more than 1 answer. The point: Design processes have to let go of the idea of the “right/wrong” mindset because different designs might be better or worse depending on who you are designing for. The teachers pointed out at the end that this went against almost everything they’re used to. Startling at such a young age.

I then did a few rudimentary improv exercises that the group seemed to enjoy.

1. Association: While in one big circle, I told one student to say the name of an animal out loud and the person to her left had to say the first thing that popped into his mind based on what the previous person said. We went all the way around the circle. This exercise is meant to diminish the self-judgement that often occurs when brainstorming and to reinforce that there is no wrong answer. In the words of Bruce Mau, “the wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question.” We did this exercise twice, trying to improve our time around the circle, ie. be more spontaneous.
2. Malapropism: The kids walked around the room, pointed at an object and called it something that it wasn’t with conviction and enthusiasm. The kids seemed to find this easier than adults. Most adults find it difficult to walk up to a chair and call it a bowl of spaghetti. Our brains are so wired with patterns and taxonomy that we find it physically difficult to jump out of those well worn ruts. The mechanism that makes our brain so efficient at creating and recognizing patterns makes it difficult to force the illogical and nonsensical.
3. It’s Not A…: This game involves everyone sitting in a circle with a hat in the middle and people running to the middle of the circle, grabbing the hat and using the hat for anything other than cranial fashion. The point is to come up with as many possibilities for the hat as the group can. Lots of interesting, zany ideas emerged and there was definitely a “build” as we went on as the kids riffed on each other’s ideas. None of them were wrong.

Moving past the fun and games we talked about one of the jobs of designers being to identify problems in the world and to come up with creative solutions to those problems. To continue the theme of generative, lateral thinking we asked the kids to grab some Post-It Notes and write down a few things that were problems in their own life. The ideas ranged from “my brother is a dork” to “fossil fuels” to “internet is too slow at home” to “cottage cheese” and 50 others.

We sat on those for a bit. Next, I asked who in the class was an artist. Surprisingly only 6-8 people raised their hands. I thought it would have been higher. I explained the importance of being able to sketch out an idea, as words often can’t capture the essence of a design. As DeBono writes in Lateral Thinking, “it would be a pity to limit design by the ability to describe it.”

The task, in 60 seconds, was to sketch out a cup that wouldn’t tip. Awesome results. Even awesomer was that the kids attacked the problem from different angles. Some drew a cup with legs. Some drew a cup that suctioned to the table. One kid drew a hovercup that simply eliminated gravity from the tipping equation! Root cause analysis! I explained the importance of creating 40 possible solutions in 60 seconds and suspending the evaluative process of what was possible, affordable, etc.

Then I asked them to pick one of their “problems” from their list and to draw out the problem on a Post-It without using words. Lots of creativity here and one sad one. One student wrote “I Can’t Draw” on their Post-It.

And that’s where we ended after one hour. Lots of lateral thinking, free association, suspension of judgement and some drawing. All of the “problems” are stuck to the blackboard and next week they might go through an affinity exercise of some sort. Still TBD. The ultimate goal is that groups of 3-4 will form and create a product that will solve the problem of their choice.

To summarize:

1. Kids in grades 4-6 have trouble with notions of generative thinking and suspension of judgement.
2. The kids are being taught to map out their projects on Gantt charts.
3. Not many young’uns consider themselves artists.
4. Running things with kids shouldn’t be as seamless as with adults. Instead of handing out pens to everybody, they should go back to their desks to get their pens. They need to stretch their legs more often than adults. The one minute that it takes to get the pens from their desk will give you an extra five in attention span.