Week 5

This week in class we moved on to the next step of the design thinking process which was the ideation phase. Our tutor Lillian guided us through this process through a range of different activities and encouraging us to think from different points of views.

Firstly in groups we had to present our ideas to the rest the class. These were the ideas which we had previously came up with within our last session. One person from each group pitched their groups ideas and then the rest of our class collectively voted which of the ideas was their favourite. This voting system allowed each of the groups to get instant feedback from their ideas, gaging which was most/least popular and would prove very beneficial when it came to choosing an idea to prototype.

Afterwards, we got back into our groups and we got the opportunity to read each other’s blogs. As our blogs are part of our assessment and learning process where we reflect on what we have worked on in class and summarise readings and post other things we come across relating to innovation it was interesting to see other peoples interpretations and views.

As this class is a very practical, hands on class, our tutor decided to recharge our energy levels with a whole class brain break. Our tutor encouraged us to link arms with a partner and go outside and walk around discussing with each other what we would bring with us if we were going to the moon. After initially being a bit skeptical of this activity I did thoroughly enjoy the activity. Although this was a brain break activity it also formed a good introduction to the next part of the lesson. During our brain break our tutor had encouraged us to think of the most craziest and unrealistic ideas of things we could bring to the moon and our partner had to respond with encouragement and suggest other ideas. This helped prepare us for the next stage where we had to come up with seemingly wild ideas for our innovative solutions and teach us about appreciating others opinions even if you don’t agree.

Thinking of ideas in our group



Working on our ideas

When we got back inside we then were encouraged to write down any ideas to creatively and innovatively solve our ‘how might we’ problem. This could be as simple or as crazy as we wanted but we were encouraged to write as many as we could on post it notes. After this, to encourage us to think creatively, our tutor called certain famous people’s names, brands or adjectives like Barack Obama, McDonalds, smaller than a peanut or a homeless person. We then responded to this stimulus by thinking how our problem could be solved if Barack Obama was in charge or McDonalds were in charge. This was a fun activity and my group got really involved and began to think outside the box. It was freeing to know that none of our ideas
would be looked upon with judgement as we were all encouraging each other to think creatively. Afterwards we were then encouraged to take another walk outside in silence and then come back and write some more ideas individually. It was good to have this opportunity has the change in environment and scenery allowed for a catalyst of more ideas.

Organising our ideas into a grid

After this brainstorm of ideas we certainly had a lot! However the next part was to sort through these ideas. We were given a large A3 page which we split into a grid easy and difficult to implement at one side and would help many and few at another side. As a group we read out all the ideas that were on post it notes and then sorted them within the grid. This was very useful as it helped us to visually see what ideas would be the most workable and beneficial for many.








 As a group we then decided on focusing in our problem which we wanted to solve. This was formed from deciding on a problem which everyone in the group felt passionate about, wanted to change and also from votes of the whole class during the previous activity. Therefore our 'How might we' problem was that 'How Might We create a project for the students in order for them to become responsible.' We thought that this could take the form of a project of keeping the school clean/hygienic as from our visit to the school we noticed that this was a big problem. Alongside that we thought it would be exciting if the older students made some kind of campaign/project and represented that/taught it to the younger students. 

Pitching my ideas to my group

Finally, the last thing we had to do was for each person in the group to make a drawing of our favourite idea of how we could innovatively and creatively solve our 'How Might we'. We then had the opportunity to share our drawings and explain them to the rest of our group and it was encouraging and interesting to see how far we have come with this process and I am excited to see what my group is going to come up with.