The main tenet of design thinking is empathy for the people you're trying to design for. Leadership is exactly the same thing - building empathy for the people that you're entrusted to help. -- David Kelley

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Overview

During the 2013-2014 school year, I advised the student council, which is an unelected group, made up of students from grades 3-5. We met in my classroom every Wednesday, during lunch, as I attempted to facilitate an open conversation among any interested upper-grades students about problems they identify at our school. I tried to help students approach problems systematically through the design thinking process outlined in the Bootcamp Bootleg and Design Thinking for Educators. We cycled through a modified version of the framework (emphasize, define, ideate, prototype, and test), using Google Drive tools.

• Brainstorm problems
• Rank the problems in order of importance
• Select a problem on which to focus
• Observe and interview stakeholders
• Conduct a survey of stakeholders
• Analyze results from the interview and survey of stakeholders
• Define the problem
• Brainstorm solutions to the problem
• Prototype solutions to the problem
• Test solutions to the problem
• Adjust prototypes and test them again
• Present a solution to stakeholders