Workshop Debrief

Suggestions for next iteration of the design thinking workshop:

• brainstorm experience - this is so crucial to the process and it takes some time and practice for teams to do this well. Are there opportunities to build this in to in class activities leading up to the design workshop?
• consensus building - how might this be built in to some mid point team assessment? Some scaffolding may be necessary around how to build consensus within the constraints of time?
• ideating: after brainstorming - students need to build consensus around an idea. May be helpful if they have some guidelines for what counts as a good idea in this context (or better yet, create their own).
• need more fleshed out examples in in pre-amble for each phase - they need to see what this looks like in practice.
• use only one activity (eliminate choice) - this seems reasonable since the goal is about the process of working together and framing the design problem - rather than the activity itself.
• more focus on the importance of approaching the design challenge from the users' perspective - throughout - emphasize early on - the role of the user in design and that successful design solutions focus on the users of the space and their needs (choosing a particular user group as a focus may be a useful approach) - perhaps students could be encouraged to start thinking about this at the time they do their field observations.

Thank you for encapsulating the key points from our debrief. I look forward to revisiting the design thinking workshop strategies for the next run of PLAN 211!

In the meantime, I have further documented the Ideathon Challenge pedagogical experimentation here: https://blogs.ubc.ca/citymaking/

Highlights from the design thinking workshop can be found here: https://blogs.ubc.ca/citymaking/distilling-the-problem/