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.

3…2…1….s-Lab launched

I’m very excited to have been at the launch of the Strategic Innovation Lab tonight in Toronto. A new think tank, research institute and consultancy affiliated with the Ontario College of Art and Design, sLab is a place that will use principles of design to help tackle some seriously wicked problems.

From the sLab website:

Our approach is rooted in a heritage of design thinking, which places human needs and desires, behaviour and culture at the centre of problem framing and problem solving. To this perspective sLab brings an understanding of complex systems and futures studies, through techniques such as horizon scanning, signal analysis, scenario planning, and technology adoption modeling.

One of the really neat things about the sLab perspective is its commitment to “Open”. The notion of “Open” in business and education is something that is really coming to the fore as a more sustainable way of being. In nature, cells are perfect examples of “open” because they are adept at letting in positive energy, resisting destructive energy and being incredibly good at adapting. Institutions, on the other hand, have had a very closed approach to operating and we can see that a disturbing number of seemingly rock solid institutions are on the verge of collapse and/or irrelevancy.

The sLab has pulled together some excellent academics and practitioners to be part of its rebirth (it was formerly the Beal Institute) and I look forward to playing a part in its curriculum and evolution. Dave Gray from Xplane is part of the team as is Michael Dila from Torch Partnership, Bob Logan and Greg Van Alstyne.

One of the principles of Open Space Technology is that participants must either learn or contribute, otherwise they must find a new place to be. I look forward to doing a whole lot of both at the sLab.

Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi!

It’s only Wednesday, yet this week I’ve had three separate conversations in three completely different contexts around moving conversations that occur in the same place and time (ie. face to face) and extending those conversations online.

Conversation One

Part of my continuing work with TV Ontario and The Agenda on the Road’s AgendaCamp is to figure out how to leverage tools such as wikis and Flip cams and YouTube and Twitter to move the passion and energy from the face to face AgendaCamps to the web so that people who weren’t at the camp can participate and people who were at the camp can continue to make real change as a result of the conversations started at the camp. This is a challenge. It take lots of effort from the folks at TVO and Mark Kuznicki to get the communities flourishing pre and post event. It also raises an interesting question around the role of TVO in this regard. As a public broadcaster they are providing a technical platform for the conversations to take place, but it’s more than technology that is required. It takes community management. Or to be more accurate, Community Management. The reason for the CAPS is that this role of community manager is an emerging discipline that takes real skill and finesse to do successfully.

Conversation Two

I went to a meeting at The StoreFront, a community space in my neighbourhood that started off as an OCAD student project but has now evolved past that and is trying to figure out what to become in order to serve the needs of the community. So there is a physical space but that can only serve so many people and only one thing can go on in the space at any given time. How to multiply the effect of a physical community space? Online, of course. And the question pops up again: How Do You Effectively Move the Conversation Online? It starts with having an infrastructure to support that movement, so The StoreFront should be putting all of their meeting notes on their site but don’t have that capability right now. In the mean time we’ll have to link to some of the artifacts from the meeting. I did some graphic recording of the conversations, even though I’m no professional. I also recorded some of the report outs using Flip cams.

Conversation Three

On Monday I met with some people from a company in Ottawa called Intersol and they do face to face facilitation for lots of government clients and private sector as well. We got together to discuss the impact of social media technology and its relation (threat?!) to the face to face market. Having spent the past five years designing and facilitating face to face events I have a good understanding of how to get people to work well together. For the past two years I’ve been looking at social media applications in the corporate/enterprise context and specifically how to use them IN CONJUNCTION with face to face collaborative methodologies. Ie. how to move the conversation online after a corporate collaborative session.

The King is Dead, Long Live the King

I feel strongly that social media technology is democratizing the world because the functionality is not hard coded into the tools. It’s the users of the tools who are constantly coming up with ways to use the tools. As a result, the people who are skilled in group collaborative methodologies, facilitation and event design are becoming more valuable in a world of social media.

Face to face gatherings will always accomplish more than electronic events and there is an opportunity to create additional and lasting value by using new electronic tools to extend the conversations into the online arena. People who are schooled in human dynamics and interaction are extremely well positioned to be thought leaders in this emerging area.