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DESIGN THINKING FACILITATION

Position- ' Makery Specialist', CMR National Public School

Key responsibilities-

Develop and facilitate Design Thinking workshops for middle school students

Work Process

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Creating a space for creativity and innovation.

Challenge was to create a framework of the workshop that allows children to have creative freedom and innovative thinking. The workshop needed to look different than usual theory lectures for students by being more ‘making’ oriented. Design thinking itself is a process that involves a lot of mapping and analysis. Children with their enthusiasm were obviously interested in ‘making’ of the first idea they had rather than understanding ‘process-oriented’ Design thinking. Yet it was important to familiarize children to basic design thinking steps. In order to warm-up children to the terms and not present them as jargon, several introductory activities were included. ‘One thing, many uses’ activity was conducted before starting a brainstorm session. ‘Unravelling the object’ activity was conducted after interview sessions but before analyzing and mapping responses. For this activity, students brought any non-working device, spare object and dismantled it to understand the working of the object, construction of the object, importance of each part within the object. They had to draw and label each part after dismantling. This activity paved the way for unravelling interview responses by organizing and mapping them. Ideation process included making idea zines while final ideas were explained through a comic strip. These activities served as an engaging way to take students through stages of the design thinking process and visually represent their ideas.

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‘Unravelling the object’ activity

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Idea zine, Idea board – a visual representation of the ideation process.

 

Comic strip to explain the final idea.

Apart from these activities, the workshop included several filler activities like designing board and paper games, collage making, mix- media exploration, weaving on looms, wool art, design sprints, to keep children engaged and interested. ‘Making’ was involved at every stage until they finally reached prototype stage. These activities gave students a space to build their creative confidence. Children created a space for dialog, discussion and exploration when they engaged and demonstrated their work. Display of the work done helped them see the formed connections and the way that has led to their final idea. It made their thinking visible and gave them the confidence to share their story through a small exhibit at the end of the workshop.

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Design sprint, craft, mix media activities

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Board and paper games

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Providing scaffolding to push students to engage with an increased level of complexity and think deeper.

Themes of Water- scarcity and abundance of a natural resource, Traffic- the problem of, Sustainable packaging, Elderly in interior and exterior spaces. Through these themes, I attempted to help children design with social awareness and responsibility. Children were more interested in themes rather than the actual design thinking process. Sections that got traffic and water received it with more enthusiasm as these were the relatable problems faced by them first hand. In addition, these themes appeared to them to have a better scope of intervention. Introduction of themes and DT process through examples, stories and videos made the session interactive and increased excitement about the themes. Students arrived at their final solutions just after the theme was brainstormed and intervention areas were fagged. It was a challenge to keep them from jumping to a solution without curbing their enthusiasm. Another observation was that of children being impatient to start prototyping. Patient group discussion, idea discussion, final solution discussions with each group were helpful in making them build on their ideas, develop their concepts, providing relevant examples and sources to study. Tech-savvy, as they are, most student groups presented Hi-Tech, solutions to their own identified problem within their class theme. Most of these solutions included designing of the new product. Though all of their ideas were loaded, through examples understanding of systems working, low tech, readily Implementable, context-specific ideas were given to them. This pushed them to think deeper about their design solutions, design systems, understand the impact of their design.

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The group, grade 6, ideated and designed new package for milk along with the new circular system of packaging. The milk carton is made of thick banana fibre from outside and thin waterproof aluminium foil from inside. Banana fibre is biodegradable and aluminium can be recycled and reused. Using locally available materials, connecting with KMF and BBMP for production and collection of milk cartons, they mapped a complete system.

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This group of grade 6 worked to educate children about traffic rules through an interesting game. They designed a board game that can be played by 4 players for children above 5 years of age. The game has vehicle shaped pawns, game money to be earned as rewards and lost in fines, question-answer cards regarding traffic rules and mystery cards to make the play interesting.

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This group, grade 7, designed an app for ‘Amazon’ that gives options to the buyers to return their boxes. Further, they designed a system that helps the company reclaim its packaging, recycle into boxes, and reuse it. They also included the provision of additional discounts on returning cardboard boxes to nudge the buyers. This service design intervention shows that companies are responsible not only for their product or services but also for their packaging.

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DT workshop at a glance

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DT workshop at a glance

Facilitators along with group of Class 7 Students at their exhibit.

Image & content Credits- CMRNPS

Ms. Gayatri Chudekar

Ms. Vandana Shrinathaiah

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