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.

As I write these words, I wonder if it is week 2, week 3 or next week week 4 already? Weeks are passing quickly but that should not deter from me addressing the scheduled homework:

1. Many of the entries are very detailed. I don’t know what ELA and wingspan subjects stands for. It’s interesting to see that many young students’ favourite subject is Science. Back when I went to primary/secondary/high-schools the favourite subject would’ve likely been Physical Education for most. I’m finding many of the answers quite interesting too keep my input modest. There are many that made me think that ‘oh my, these kids figured out major stuff of the world!’ but there is also much idealism happening, which I guess is good.
2. I wonder why solar panels are not as effective as ‘conventional’ power plants.

I wonder why humans decide to migrate to a world of concrete (cities) instead of settling in the rural areas by nature?

I wonder why does natural world not quite cope with our progressively increasing consumptionism?

(these are 3 example ones, now as to the links that were presented:)

I wonder how much energy does a household draw?

I wonder how much energy can be saved by turning off machinery that is not used constantly but remains on standby for most of the time?

I wonder how much energy do contemporary TVs draw?

I wonder where do all the 1.8 trillion garbage come from?

I wonder if it is possible to clean up the oceans in an affordable way?

I wonder how much does it cost to create the world’s largest ocean cleanup and who’s paying for it?

I wonder how they created this video for the largest ocean cleanup?

I wonder if the oysters feel comfortable in New York?

I wonder how clean our harbour can be if the oysters come back to New York/New Jersey?

 

I asked around what my friends think about the question: ‘where do all the 1.8 trillion garbage come from?’

 

None really have known. So I did a straightforward research and googled the questions, after which the following pops up:

 

Well, the first link that pops up is the following: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/science/2018/09/07/great-pacific-garbage-patch-where-did-all-trash-come/1133838002/

And it is said that ‘the garbage patch’s trash comes from countries around the Pacific Rim, including nations in Asia and North and South America, said Laurent Lebreton of the Ocean Cleanup Foundation.’

 

Why is that?

 

There are more details that follow but all in all, it seems that most garbage comes from the most populous developing countries.

 

Why is that?

 

Well, they focus on production at the lowest cost without taking under consideration the impact it is making on the environment (that is my assumption).

 

1. Reviewed! I have some concerns in relation to the affinity diagramming module, other than that the material looks good 🙂
2. I have a Mouse Create account and all good!

I added the contact information to the sheet and put a picture of myself (it’s a bit old but I don’t think my appearance changed much in the last few years)

Writing a few thoughts:

Weeellll, I’d consider waiting 25 minutes for the elevator to bring me up on time to class to some degree memorable but other than that, I feel that the narrative tools presented are a very powerful tool to convey a message or a set of messages. I personally enjoy a variety of media that embed a strong narrative in conjunction with other features, I usually prefer a set of audio-visual cues. I did know of the hero story technique, although did not quite use it that often, I don’t believe it should be so rigidly followed as good stories don’t need to (in my opinion) follow such tight constrains. If they did, there would be no innovation and all of a sudden every second movie being released would be considered cliche (now that I think about it, every movie could probably now be considered cliche. Perhaps that’s why I don’t go to the movies or play video games anymore?).

I did however really like the level of originality presented by each pair in case of the stories being told, I think I recall one of the alien destroying earth and our coffee cup, which I was surprised I managed to tell in a somewhat fair fashion.

Also, why is the map below on the post creation site showing Houston? (WordPress, we have a problem? Bad pun intended.)

I’m still looking through the videos provided in the syllabus.

1. What did you learn about we are doing in this studio for the semester? Did anything stand out as something that you like/dislike?

I have learned that we will be working with middle school children in tackling with environmental issues for Earth Day for which we will be involving different sets of tools, all the way from physical computing to augmented/virtual reality and co-designing solutions with the children to design and develop proposed solutions in the forms of an MVP-grade solution.

So far there is not that much that I can tell that I like or dislike, I’ll need to learn a bit more about what we will be doing. There is also the question of what our roles will be, whether the facilitators for what the kids will ideate and to what degree will the kids have to take over the workflow.

There are some parts that are quite interesting and I do not quite exactly know about, such as the virtual learning space as I comprehended it. Is it a virtual space in which we will be interacting with the children? That would be kinda cool but I didn’t know the technology was here yet, to be in an interactive world and actively create prototypes within such world (except for people going crazy in building computers in minecraft etc.)

There is also the question of how does the Design Thinking pitch into this project, how strict it will be and how structured it might become, I’m referring more in relation to the time spent on each component of the UCD Process, all the way from research to prototyping. Despite it is an iterative process, how much time should be spent on researching the topic? And then once the ideation takes place, how will that impact the prototyping so that all the stakeholders are happy with the MVP?

2. What did you learn about Design Thinking?  – Julie

I recall design thinking as a process, researching another person’s feelings in multiple steps by the use of an interview about a specific subject, extracting the more distinct: obvious, tacit and latent knowledge, in order to rapidly come up with potential solutions via sketching and storyboarding, eventually leading to the prototyping phase with the use of provided set of tools and materials.

What in a way was new for me, was the speed with which all these steps were executed and despite the very tight timeframe, an appropriate solution was generated that suited not only my interviewee but also at least one other person in the class, who knew exactly what I have created based on my description and demonstration of a very low-fidelity prototype/mockup of the actual solution.

Regardless, I know Design Thinking as a powerful tool to create solutions that are just simply going to be useful for the end user, whether it’s just the designer who’s driving the process or if it takes places in some configuration ie. by co-design etc.