Vashon Green School, Covid-19, and Human-centered Design — Part 2
My Design Ideas
The Most Elegant Step
This article is a follow up to Part One where I laid out how I began work on this independent study with Sandy Cioffi and the Vashon Green School (VGS). When I first started my independent study back in September, my aim was to draw on principles of design thinking and emergent strategies to help VGS be nimble and develop ways to adapt to the restrictions around Covid-19. However, as I studied and developed my mindset as a design thinker, I soon realized that three months is not nearly enough time to properly follow the iterative process required to take a design project from beginning to end. As I brainstormed how to approach this time constraint challenge, I returned to the concept of “the most elegant step” described by Adrieene Maree Brown in Emergent Strategy:
The most elegant step is one that acknowledges what is known and unknown, and what the capacity of this group actually is. An elegant step allows humility, allows people to say ‘Actually, we need to do some research; or ‘actually, we need to talk to some folks not in this room’ or ‘actually we need a full day to build this plan out into something realistic and attainable.’ (pg. 220).
Drawing on inspiration from Brown, I shifted my attention away from coming up with a specific solution and I began to shift my thinking toward “what’s the most elegant step I can take?” I thought a lot about VGS’ focus on being self-sustaining and independent; for example, how they use solar panels to power the campus, and how they use a compost bin to turn waste into nutrients for their garden. I started to ask myself if I could find a way to introduce design thinking to the culture at VGS that functions in a similar self-sustaining way.
The Direction of Design Thinking
While this idea began to take shape, I began to notice a trend in many of the leading forward-thinking designers: they stressed the importance that design thinking has on the fate of the human race and the future of our life here on earth. One of the resources that inspired me the most is the documentary film by Gary Huswitt called Objectified. At the end of the movie, there’s a quote from renowned designed Dieter Rams that I keep returning to:
“The value, and especially the legitimization of design will be, in the future, measured more in terms of how it can enable us to survive on this planet.”
It’s not much of a stretch to draw parallels of this statement to the way Covid-19 has altered our way of life; not just in education, but across all disciplines and sectors of culture. After watching this documentary, I read a book called Change By Design by Tim Brown, CEO of the design firm IDEO. Towards the end of the book Brown shared how he distinguishes between design and design thinking:
“Design is about delivering a satisfying experience. Design thinking is about creating a multipolar experience in which everyone has the opportunity to participate in the conversation” (pg. 198).
I took this as a sign that I was on the right track by trying to find a way to bring VGS students in the design process. Then, almost as if Brown was reading my mind, he began talking about the importance of including design thinking in education:
Perhaps the most important opportunity for long-term impact is through education. Designers have learned some powerful methods for arriving at innovative solutions. How might we use these methods not just to educate the next generation of designers but to think about how education as such might be reinvented to unlock the vast reservoir of human creative potential” (pg. 228).
Not only does this quote add further inspiration for me to bring design thinking to the VGS students, it also hits on one of Sandy’s long term goals for her work at VGS: to prototype a new model of education as a viable alternative to the predominant public school system. A system that offers equitable ownership to the community members, something that is more organically integrated into society and culture. So, while the more immediate goal is to help VGS adapt during Covid-19, the introduction of design thinking to the VGS curriculum can also lay the foundations for the long-term goal of offering an example to the world of an education model that has been reinvented.
The Design Process as Ritual and Ceremony
One of the most powerful things about Dana’s teaching approach I observed is how integral rituals and ceremonies are for the whole VGS community. There’s a nature name ceremony at the beginning of the year, a day of the dead celebration, and an end of the year celebration where all the families gather at the school and camp out on the property, just to name a few. Many of these celebrations and rituals are compromised due to Covid-19, so one of the main challenges is to find a way to maintain the sense of community that these rituals and ceremonies typically foster. The intention behind my approach is that by developing a collaborative process that involves the students, VGS can turn these creative exercises into rituals and ceremonies in and of themselves. So, even if a plan must be cancelled or postponed because of a new Covid outbreak or inclement weather, the students will have already formed a sense of community around attempting to tackle these challenges together, which can still achieving much of what the traditional rituals and ceremonies did for the culture at VGS in the past.
In Change By Design, Brown described IDEO’s approach to developing their curriculum for Ormondale Elementary School with:
Our objective, when it comes to the application on design thinking in schools, must be to develop an educational experience that does not eradicate children’s natural inclination to experiment and create but rather encourages and amplifies it. As a society our future capacity for innovation depends on having many more people literate in the holistic principles of design thinking, just as our technological progress depends on having high levels of literacy in math and science. (p. 229)
My Design Prototypes
Drawing on inspiration from IDEO and the reading I’ve done this quarter, I have put together five prototypes of design thinking exercises that could be integrated into lessons at VGS. These can be assigned either as homework for students to analyze activities or chores done at home, or in person at VGS to involve the students in answering questions like: “how will we hold our end of the year ceremony when we can’t have large in person gatherings?” These exercises are based on some of the most powerful ideas I’ve encountered over the last three months, and offer a starting point for Sandy and Dana to pick up if they see value in my ideas. I deliberately did not get too specific about these exercises to allow enough room for Dana and Sandy to tailor the ideas to best fit with the goals for VGS and continue the interactive process of refining and perfecting these ideas after I’m gone.
1) Environment, Interactions, and Social Contract
I drew inspiration for this exercise from Darwin Mulijono’s model of breaking down an activity by looking at environment, interactions, and social contracts from his thesis The Relevance of Emergence in Human-centered Design. Students choose an activity that achieves an end, for example a chore they do at home like walking the dog, and they write out descriptions of the environment, interactions, and social contract present in this activity. For dog walking, the student could describe the environment of their local neighborhood, how they interact with other people and other dogs when out on the walk, and then the social contract or cultural agreement that exists between people around the activity of dog walking. Once these descriptions are written, the students will then hypothesize what would happen if they made changes to one of these aspects of the activity. For example, if they typically walk their dog on a path in the woods, what would change about the interactions and social contract if they went to a dog park with many other people? The goal here is to help the students practice breaking down an activity into different parts and develop an understanding of the relationship between environment, interactions, and social contract.
2) Experience Interview and Journey Map
This exercise mimics what I’ve done for UX projects in the past and was reminded of during my studies this quarter. It has the student interview someone about an activity they are responsible for and take notes about the stages required to complete this activity, starting with the inciting incident that inspires the person to begin the task and ending with the final thing the person does before the task is considered “complete”. They then ask questions about what the person thinks and how the person feels at each stage and take notes on this as well. After the interview, the students compile their notes and create a visual representation, or an “experience journey map” by mapping out the stages of the task from left to right and mapping what the person thinks and how the person feels with the negative thoughts and feelings toward the bottom of the page and the positive thoughts and feeling toward to the top of the page. Once this map is created, the student analyzes the journey by pointing out challenges and bottlenecks and begins to brainstorm ideas for solutions and opportunities to improve this journey. The purpose of this exercise is to teach students how empathy can lead to new solutions and can often be more effective than trying to come up with an idea purely inside your own head.
3) Simple Rules
This exercise was inspired by the book Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World by Donald Sull and Kathleen Eisenhardt. The strategy here is to agree on a set of criteria that a solution or idea should meet before starting the brainstorm or design process as a way to help guide you toward success. So, before starting on one of the exercises students will define boundary rules, priority rules, and stopping rules.
A boundary rule defines what either qualifies or disqualifies a potential solution. For example, if the school is trying to decide on a new game to play for physical activity, a couple boundary rules might be “all members of our group must be able to do it for at least 20 minutes”, and “no tackling or other forms of physical violence”.
A priority rule defines a hierarchy of the goals that are most important as a means to stay focused on the aspects that are most crucial for success. Using the physical exercise example, the group might decide that having fun is the most important, then aerobic exercise, and least important is building strength.
A stopping rule defines the threshold at which it is time to stop what you’re doing and try something new. For the physical exercise example, one stopping rule could be “the exercise will be complete after each person has had at least one turn” or “we’ll know it’s time to come up with a more challenging exercise once the whole group can do this one for 30 minutes straight without getting tired.”
The aim of this exercise is to show students how important it is to have direction, to be clear about where you’re headed as you start on a project, and to get everyone on the same page before you start. By defining and agreeing on these simple rules before beginning work on analysis or brainstorming, we will make sure all students are aligned on what the goals are and what needs to be achieved. Not to mention, you will also have an easy litmus test by which to measure possible solutions that are offered in the future.
4) Divergent and Convergent Thinking
This is a group exercise that breaks a brainstorm into a two-stage process. First, a practice of divergent thinking where students come up with as many ideas as possible by writing them on sticky notes and putting them up on the wall. Then, once the wall is full or the group is out of ideas, the group transitions to convergent thinking by giving each student three stickers to place one the sticky notes as a way to vote for their favorite ideas. This exercise helps the students gain an understanding of how you shouldn’t be too critical in the early stages in order to come up with as many ideas as possible, then it is much easier to become critical later on in order to narrow things down and converge on a few of the best ideas. This exercise can also be broken up with group discussions about the different ideas that are posed, and some of the other exercises could potentially be placed between the divergent and the convergent phase as a way to help some of the ideas develop further before voting.
5) Biomimicry
I drew inspiration for this exercise from Emergent Strategies by Adrienne Maree Brown. For this one, students choose (or are assigned) an activity for analysis and then look to nature as a source of inspiration to come up with ideas. For example, the teacher could share pictures or a documentary clip of an ant colony, take students to observe ants on the VGS campus, and then have students brainstorm ideas on teamwork and collaboration that they learn from watching the ants. Whether its plants, animals, insects, or even weather patterns, the goal of this exercise is to show students that there are many “problems” that nature has solved over millions of years of evolution, and sometimes the best way to come up with a creative idea is to go for a walk and observe the natural world.
My Thinking About Design Thinking
The main thing I’ve learned about design thinking over the last three months is that it’s still a very new field that’s rapidly in flux. Like I referenced before, Tim Brown of IDEO describes how the designers of the past who mostly developed products have evolved into interdisciplinary design thinkers who are tackling some of the world’s greatest challenges. One of the great fallacies of our age is what thinker Evgeny Morozov calls “solutionism”, which is the concept that every problem or issue that society faces can easily be solved through the development of a new technology. I see this new emerging role of the “design thinker” as an answer to the solutionist ideology by putting people ahead of technology. A return to the humanities and wisdom traditions by centering design around human needs rather than a technological capability or features. I see a kinship between the way design thinkers take on solutionism and the way VGS’ curriculum differs from a more “traditional” model of education; both are vanguards taking on the status quo. I am reminded of a religious analogy I picked up from a book by Joseph Campbell. He describes how in Hinduism they distinguish between what they call baby monkey religions and kitten religions: when danger nears, the baby monkey jumps atop its mother and actively participates in the escape, whereas the kitten lies limp and the mother must carry them by the back of their neck. I see VGS’ approach to education as a way to develop a baby monkey mindset as opposed to public schools which favor more of the kitten mindset. I believe that the integration of design thinking into the curriculum at VGS goes hand in hand with the type of learning that Dana so carefully crafts, and it will foster an active problem-solving mentality that will serve both the school’s community as they adapt during Covid as well as the individual students as they tackle challenges in their own lives.