Soo…! The visit to LCCS. It was a bit of a hike, visiting New Jersey first time in my life, seeing how a new state looks like at the other side of the river, even if passing across with PATH, you don’t get to see that much. It was very interesting to see how a middle school looks like in the US, as compared to the one I attended in Poland. The environment was certainly new and the introduction a bit too fast-paced. I have gone through the material that we registered on our class before (really strong material in regards to Design Thinking skills and the more technical alike) and to some degree I found it to be a bit varying, perhaps just too constraining (but in the end, that’s how I sort of always felt with design thinking techniques anyway)

1. What did you think of the visit?

The visit itself was grand, I am a big fan of field trips and especially changing the environments is good for anyone (can’t keep spending all my time at D12!). LCCS looks like a decent school, the environment was quite different compared to other schools that I have gone through and that I know at least from the conceptual viewpoint (I studied at a faculty centred around Architecture). Interestingly, the students seemed to be dedicating their extra time to this project as well but that’s just my observation. I had trouble following the rules however, especially the 10 Whys and the pace seemed a bit quite extreme. Or perhaps I’m just slow?

2. Was there anything you learned from the interactions with the LCCS Students?

I learned that taking a role of design facilitator does not quite work in terms of interacting with middle school students. Usually that’s what I would do, facilitate a co-design session, drive brainstorming sessions but being rather as a person who provides all the necessary utilities and the environment and try keeping to the guidelines and techniques and make sure as to not deter the people involved with the design thinking from their own thoughts or channel them in some way or influence in any form. That does not quite foster engagement from middle school students, where active participation seems to be just required. Although I wonder at which point does the line start to blur, after all, design thinking despite as an idea, supposed to facilitate coming up with new, refined and great ideas; at which point does it just turn to just play if not adhere to the rules?

3. Your general thoughts about collaborating and ideation with this population.

The students themselves vary greatly in terms of their personality and that is highly reflected in terms of their attitude and and performance. As a design facilitator I left the ideation on the students’ side, rather prompting them with questions in relation to what would they want to create? What inspires them and whether they know of anything they like or don’t like and how that could fit the whys (these were not exactly the questions I asked, these were more questions to make them think about the subject, from their own personal standpoint and so they could come up with their own solutions and share among themselves as to how they would like to prototype it). In such case, I can’t really comment on the collaboration part. I believe I received feedback in relation to the need to engage at a much more dynamic level, literally do all the activities along with the students in order to direct a pace and just keep things moving. Regardless, I liked the ideas that the students came up with and where they originated from, as the thinking process was elaborated on by the students. And the setting, creative part and all reminded me of my own childhood years of me being a kid, which was a kind reflection to have but that didn’t really prompt me to change the collaboration form. In the end at the time (during my childhood years), I kind of wanted to do whatever I wanted and so I gave the freedom to the students to do exactly just that. But at times, even at kids’ age, I guess some goals need to be drawn so that motivation is enkindled.