Of Dowels and Design Thinking

There’s no better way to build teamwork and cooperation than to work on a design-thinking project as our third, fourth and fifth graders recently did because the entire premise of design thinking rests upon communication and collaboration. The cross-graded challenge we gave to our students: construct a freestanding structure using only 40 dowels and rubber bands that can house all of your teammates comfortably.

Prior to the exercise, the teachers discussed the social goals of the activity with the students and explained that the process of working together outweighed the end result. Most importantly, the students had to include everyone in the activity and listen to everyone’s ideas, even the ideas that were far fetched.

The students set out to the school field armed with dowels, rubber bands and plenty of enthusiasm.  Before they got started, the teammates huddled together and whooped a cheer. Each group was paired with a teacher/moderator to facilitate the brainstorming.

And then the ideas flowed:

“What about an airport?”

“I want something really tall!”

“Let’s build a castle with a moat!”

“Where are we going to get the water?’

“Listen!" one chimed in, " There are no bad ideas.”

“Everyone’s talking at the same time!”

“I like the idea of the moat, but maybe we should focus on the castle first.”

The facilitator gently steered and directed to keep the conversation positive as

students talked over one another and grappled at times to stay on task. Nonetheless, the students pulled each other along – the reticent student to the take charge one - to create their concept.  That’s teamwork.

Whereas some groups drew a prototypes of their design, other groups jumped right in on constructing their piece Students self- selected their roles as some worked on building a base, and others wrapped rubber bands to secure the dowels together which required a special technique. Elements of some structures collapsed and the students stepped back to discuss solutions. Where one student struggled, another offered a suggestion.

After discussing their group projects, each individual student reflected on their ability to cooperate by filling out a questionnaire: How well did you cooperate with your group? What does cooperation mean to you? What specific advice would you give other team members to improve their cooperation?

Through the exercise students demonstrated not only cooperation but assertion, responsibility, empathy and self-control. Design Thinking requires not only a great idea but also the social and emotional intelligence to see that idea to fruition.

Prototyping and Design Thinking

It's said that the famous inventor Nikola Tesla, who died in 1943 after contributing to many major projects in electricity and early advances in telecommunications, had the ability to sit at his desk and imagine all of the parts of his inventions.  Only once he was clear how all the parts worked would he bother to make a drawing and build a prototype.  Several of his former business and laboratory partners attested to his almost-magical ability to build a prototype from scratch, and yet have the machine work the very first time it was turned on.

The rest of us? We need to work at it.

Prototyping goes by many names in many different fields:

• In writing, it's a rough draft
• In fashion, it's called a sloper or a muslin
• In computer programming, it's called pseudocode
• In art, it's called a sketch or a doodle.
• In architecture, it's called a plan and elevation or a scale model
• In science, it's called a hypothesis
• In music, it's called jamming.
• In dance, it's called freeform movement
• In carpentry, it's called a scale model or a draft plan
• In sports, it's called a playbook
• In mechanics and electronics design, it's called a Lo-res prototype;
• In physics and mathematics, it's called a thought experiment.

The idea behind all of these, though, is that we rarely go from an idea in the mind to a finished product.  There are intermediate stages, and nearly all of those intermediate stages begin with what the writer Ann Lamott famously called a "sh$%#y first draft" in her book on writing, Bird by Bird.

Which is where Design Thinking comes into the educational process, and why prototyping — in any medium — is such an important part of Design Thinking.  Without a model that helps show the difference between what your internal vision is, and the reality you're trying to achieve, it's hard to show other people your plan or get them excited in your project.  You have to make something real, something tangible, something solid. Otherwise it's all just a vision, a mental dream.

This is why, in the Design Thinking Lab at IDS, we make a wider range of tools available to students than they commonly carry in their pencil bags: saws and drills, utility knives, heat guns, glue guns, cutting mats, carving tools, geometers' compasses.  It's why students get access to a wide range of materials: wood, plastic, metal, mesh, fabric, wire, string, rubber bands, paper, foamcore and more.

Access to tools and materials allow students a greater range of creative understanding.  It gives them the opportunity to cultivate their awareness of how different materials work, and what kind of processes and tools affect those materials.  It gives them a greater capacity to make and create in the future... and it teaches them to start working on projects earlier than they would otherwise, because they learn how difficult it is to make something real and beautiful.

In the IDS Design Process, Prototyping is represented by the geometric shape, the orange heptagon.  The seven-sided regular figure is nearly impossible to achieve

Prototype of Super-Cyborg Gadget Glove

with a straight edge and compass; and creating a vibrant orange color from only yellow and red paint is equally difficult.  Both the color and the shape serve a reminder that making real-world objects and processes has unique challenges — challenges that are only solved through practice, trial and error, and persistence. 

"Let go of "I think I know the answer...""

...that's how our 8th grade Algebra teacher started the class. Not so easy advice. We're all predisposed to believing certain outcomes. It takes an open mindedness to challenge our thinking plus two rulers, a stopwatch, a quarter and some textbooks.

The teacher asked the class to design a "racetrack", a clear plastic ruler,  and to observe how the choices the students made impacted the speed of the "car" or quarter. The height of the stack of textbooks was the rise and the distance between the edge of the textbooks and the end of the ruler was the run.

Working in pairs, the students gathered and charted data by observing what happens when you vary the rise and keep the run constant, vary both the rise and the run and lastly, to vary the run and to keep the rise constant.

It's amazing what a little wonder can do for learning in a classroom.

What Does Design Thinking Look Like?

Some have asked the question, “What does Design Thinking look like? “ Well, the simple answer is, “It depends.” From building models with egg crates, straws and pipe cleaners on the floor to small group discussion planning classroom rules, Design Thinking utilizes different formats for different types problem solving. What is consistent from each DT challenge is identifying the problem and working collaboratively to reach a resolution.

In the simplest terms, design thinking is problem solving with empathy, with a human touch. It starts with listening to and understanding the needs of those around you and working together to address the challenge. Students test their ideas, use one another’s creativity, see if they work, create new one if they don’t. It’s messy a process and it is designed to be that way. Students build a better end result by continually accessing their work. Rather than the teacher driving the process, the students have a voice, which increases their engagement and deepens their understanding.

Take for instance, Ms. Ravid’s Sixth Grade English class authentic problem: how to build a color coded library sorting system representing various genres of their choosing so that students could access their books more readily. The goal: students should be able to find a specific book title, locate a type of book or add and classify a new book to the collection.  Ms. Ravid. told the students to think through future problems that might arise. Working in small groups of three to four, she said that each group should recommend possible solutions. Ms. Ravid said, “This is not a competition to win. Our most important resource is each other.”

Everyone had a job to do: a recorder to capture the ideas and suggestions, an individual to collect a selection of various books, another to read the book jackets to understand the genre. After twenty minutes of this exercise one member of the group rotated to another group and discussed their findings. Eventually the four groups became two as they continued to brainstorm working together and in different combinations.

From this exercise, the students developed and defined seven categories that were common to each group: biography and autobiography, realistic fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, non-fiction, reference and science fiction. Although the categories may not be academically correct, the process challenged students to think about nuances between the different genres. For instance, the students defined fantasy as a genre that “uses powers beyond the forces of nature such as magic or superpowers”. Their definition for science fiction includes books that feature “futuristic technology that the world has not seen yet but seems reasonable given our current understanding of the universe.” Additionally, the class researched various classifications of books authentically learning as they developed their own categories. For the outlier books that the students could not fit into easy classification, the class will review and see how they may fit into the current classifications. Students will then color code the books and live with their classifications for a few weeks. Next, the seventh grade class will be invited to use the library. The true test is to see if someone who was not part of the original group can readily use the library and locate a book.

Ms. Ravid’s  project engaged the students on a whole new level. As the students worked through the library project they were able to name their problem, grow their ideas and critique their ideas as a group. Why did this project work so well? Because the students made their own definitions, solved a problem and dug deeper into the material they were learning. The students were invested .They had a voice. Not only did they master the objective of the assignment by defining what each book category means, they went beyond to figure out how their own definitions need to be adjusted to accommodate books that don’t fit into any category yet. This is Design Thinking. It is always a work in progress. These are skills that will serve our students for a lifetime.