#5 Spreading Innovation Across Organizations

Seven stories to know about the k-12 lab
(because Edison would say that you won't remember more)

Q: “What do we know about Girl Scouts?"

A: "Cookies. They make really good cookies.” So began our first brainstorm session about creating a design thinking toolkit for the Girls Go Tech (GGT) program, a Girl Scouts initiative intended to expose girls to careers in science and engineering.

Research has shown that many girls begin to lose interest in science, engineering, and technology as they enter the middle school years. We've found that design can be a vital "bridge back" for many of these students. When students experience the human side of science and technology, they can rediscover a passion for these often challenging subjects. By approaching science and technology from a design framework, we are helping girls reengage in these subject areas.

Research-Based Design

We began by investigating what middle school girls care about. Through surveys and personal interviews we discovered that music, friends, social status and sports occupy a lot of their time and energy. But digging deeper, we also discovered some unexpected interests, ranging from religion and family to concern for the environment. These insights led the K-12 Lab to create a series of design-thinking challenges that are engaging and relevant to middle school girls.

To test these challenges, we organized several prototyping sessions with local middle school students (they included lots of pizza and plenty of building materials!) These sessions led us to focus on three introductory design kits: a "Hamster Habitat" kit, a “Day at the Beach” design challenge, and an activity that invites girls to design a full day outing for their whole family. Each of the kits focus on a different stage of the design process: prototyping, empathy, user-centered design, and brainstorming.

The prototyping sessions, run with Girl Scouts and their friends, provided valuable lessons about how teenagers approach the design process. We learned that that the girls engaged naturally and enthusiastically with the building and prototyping activities. Social and emotional conflicts also came into play, many of the girls faced challenges learning to defer judgment during the brainstorming sessions. We came away with a renewed focus on making the empathy and ideation activities more compelling for middle school girls.

Girls Go Tech at the Chabot Science Center

The K-12 Lab’s collaboration with the Girl Scouts deepened when we were asked to host a booth at the Girls Go Tech Career Fair at Chabot Space Center in Oakland. The team packed up the “Day at the Beach” design activity, Hawaiian shirts, and plenty of palm leaves for the event. The Scouts quickly flocked to the colorful booth and produced some amazing beach bag designs for their friends.

As the day went on, the girl's designs evolved into a multitude of devices and inventions to make a day at the beach more enjoyable. Ranging from snorkels that emitted dolphin calls and repelled sharks, lunch bags with sirens and motion sensors to warn off hungry seagulls, and even a friendly cyclops to carry everything, the designs were creative and revealed a natural talent for design among all the participants. Many of the girls connected with the idea that engineering and design ultimately rely on a deep understanding of the end user's needs. Asking the girls approach science and engineering from this perspective unlocked a flood of creativity and enthusiasm that is rarely found in middle school science classrooms!

"Save the Bay" Design Challenge

When more than 8,000 Girl Scouts and their families arrived in the Bay Area for their annual "Bridging" ceremony, the K-12 Lab was invited to host a booth for the Scouts and their families. The event, held at Crissy Field in San Francisco was an amazing opportunity to take our activities to scale. We organized a series of "Save the Bay" design challenges that asked the girls to work in teams to prototype solutions to protect the Bay and educate people about environmental problems. The booth was an explosion of creative activity throughout the day. Teams of girls were constantly running out into the field to interview users and returning back to the K-12 booth to create their prototype designs.

Many of the girls returned to the booth for multiple design "missions." In fact, some were so enthusiastic that they recruited other girls to send on their own design missions! The event taught us much about how design can be a powerful framework to help girls reengage with science, engineering, and technology. We can't wait to capitalize on this approach in future work with the Girl Scouts and other youth organizations.