We enable our students to develop their design abilities, empowering them to develop creative confidence, take risks, and persevere.
Our experiential learning approach allows students to practice these abilities through hands-on projects using various evolving tools, methods, and mindsets. The abilities include:
NAVIGATE AMBIGUITY. This is the ability to recognize and persist in the discomfort of not knowing, and develop tactics to overcome ambiguity when needed.
LEARN FROM OTHERS (PEOPLE AND CONTEXTS). This means empathizing with and embracing diverse viewpoints , testing new ideas with others, and observing and learning from unfamiliar contexts.
SYNTHESIZE INFORMATION. This is the ability to make sense of information and find insight and opportunity within.
EXPERIMENT RAPIDLY. This ability is about being able to quickly generate ideas – whether written, drawn, or built.
MOVE BETWEEN CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT. This ability involves understanding stakeholders and purpose in order to define the product or service’s features.
BUILD AND CRAFT INTENTIONALLY. This ability is about thoughtful construction: showing work at the most appropriate level of resolution for the audience and feedback desired.
COMMUNICATE DELIBERATELY. This is the ability to form, capture, and relate stories, ideas, concepts, reflections, and learnings to the appropriate audiences.
DESIGN YOUR DESIGN WORK. This meta ability is about recognizing a project as a design problem and then deciding on the people, tools, techniques, and processes needed to tackle it.
How does it work?
This suite of activities offers an introduction to 8 Abilities, including a 2.5 hour design challenge workshop paired with some fun take-aways. This is a more thoughtful and introspective introductory design activity than a linear process-based one. It doesn't have the satisfaction of designing a shiny new thing for your partner; the take-aways are a little more subtle and individual (but just as powerful).
This activity is music themed because we think learning design abilities is a lot like learning to make music—you can learn the basic tools (notes), and combine them in an infinite number of ways. Improvisation and collaboration are also both a part of music.
The activity
Step 1: Start Challenge. This challenge is not about coming up with a solution; it's about starting a challenge three different rounds, each exercising different design abilities. (For this activity, we used the messy challenge of redesigning suburbia, but we designed the tools so that any design challenge is possible.)
Step 2: Take Note. After each round, students reflect on how both they and their partner showed up. Students do get a chance to share what they and their partner came up with after each round, but the emphasis is less on coming up with solutions, as it is about self-awareness.
Step 3: Know Your Notes. The main toolkit booklet opens with a moment of reflection about a past flow experience, and concludes with an activity called In this activity, students map how they feel about different design abilities -- whether they're naturally in their range, more of something they like to riff on with others, or that is more of a reach.
Step 4: Sound Check. At the end, they get to keep a set of note cards as reference, along with a sleeve that has a "Sound Check" tool to continue reflecting on how they are exercising different abilities and when.
We also made 2 other bonus tools as part of this suite:
A “Design Abilities Activity Book” that could either be used as pre-work or a follow-on enrichment activity to go deeper. It allows learners to explore the abilities in a fun way, individually, and at their own pace.
A worksheet called "You And!" that prompts learners to think about how their abilities can combine with others.
It really does take (at least!) a full 2.5 hours to get through the main booklet and note cards!
NOTE: The sleeve for the “note” cards is designed to be printed on 11x17 paper, and then folded in half lengthwise (hot-dog style), then in half again, then gate-folded. The cards can then be stored inside with a mini binder clip or a rubber band.
Related Resources
Credit
Kelly Schmutte
Jess Munro
Emily Callaghan
LICENSE: CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION-NONCOMMERCIAL-SHAREALIKE 4.0 INTERNATIONAL