The study of design thinking process has taken me through the initial phases of empathy and synthesis with the purpose of challenge my assumptions about an issue and define an exact problem to solve. In my Indian educational context, I have confronted with many disturbing issues regarding the school life of children.  Sometimes the problems might be small and have quick solutions.  But in the following case, the principal, teachers and PTA (Parent Teacher Association) worked together to develop the students’ extracurricular activities for equipping them to lead a better life in the society.

Brief description of the issue.

In my rural school, the students are from a low socio-economic status even though the parents were wished to provide the best education to their children. The children were focused only for studies and even they had never get exposure or involvement in any extracurricular activities. Moreover, there was a lack of promoting skills rather than academic was evident in school. The teacher staff meeting noticed the pathetic situation of our students. The empathy stage has been started from there. The five executive teachers addressed the issues in front of school management and PTA. Before that, I have developed an empathy map (Knox, 2014) to better understand my students’ perspectives, behaviours and needs in the school environment which helped me to visualise the issues of my students with an open heart and creative thinking.

Further, I have reached a specific problem statement through the process of five whys (Dam & Siang, 2017). It is a commonly used method to analyse the problem immensely. The following 5 whys helped me to uncover the issue and define the problem of practice.

Why all the class hours assigned only for academic subjects (maths, science, English)?

 Why there are not enough extracurricular activities for students?

 Why our students are jobless after finish schooling?

Why our students exhibiting less social commitments and involvement in contemporary community issues?

Why our students’ talent is not acknowledged in the public?

Those questions and empathy mapping tool lead me a clear problem of practice in my school.

Students find learning process in school is boring without any extracurricular activities and they feel less skilled and talented compare to other school students

Why all the class hours assigned only for academic subjects (maths, science, English)?

 Why there are not enough extracurricular activities for students?

 Why our students are jobless after finish schooling?

Why our students exhibiting less social commitments and involvement in contemporary community issues?

Why our students’ talent is not acknowledged in the public?

Those questions and empathy mapping tool lead me a clear problem of practice in my school.

Ideation

Ideation is a phase in the design thinking process where ones concentrating to generate multiple ideas.

Ideation provides both the fuel and also the source material for building prototypes and getting novel solutions into the hands of your users (Stanford D.school, 2017).

.The iterative development of solutions is considered as the key aspect of the design thinking process. Hence at the third phase of exploration of new ideas, one should use creative thinking to generate and develop suitable solutions for a particular problem. Whilst developing ideas for my scenarios and problems at school I had kept in mind the following core principles of design thinking.

Empathise foremost – Never neglect the human-centred approach in my problems, solutions and goals.

Focus on solutions – problems may change depending upon how I approach them. Hence always attempt multiple approaches to multiple resolutions.

Collaborative approach – It is significant to uses others perspectivesand ideas which help to generate novel ideas

In the ideation phase, I approached the problem with divergent thinking in the beginning as follows. The following crazy eight (Webb-Young, 2003) technique helped me to quickly generate ideas to solve my problem and I repeated the process for 2 more times.

How might we promote students involvement in extracurricular activities inside the school environment by understanding their interest and community needs?

Create various clubs in the school and divert students into those clubs based on their interest	By appointing extra teachers to provide training to develop skills in handicraft preparation, soccer play, farming and agriculture.	Allocating more  human resources and funds by the help of school management and PTA.	Adjust the curriculum and timetable to implement new extracurricular activities in the school
Find appropriate places to start some activities such as vegetable garden, yoga place, art and craft classroom, sewing room.	Utilise the objects such as plastics or things which is easily available (coconut shell) to make handicraft products.	Work with students strength so prepare a questionnaire to understand their interest and needs in appropriate field	Invite some entrepreneur or small scale industries to the school to inculcate the value, respect and demand for each job.

Later, I worked to develop my ideas again by divergent thinking. Since it is an entire school programme, a group of executive teachers and selected PTA members had done a meeting in the school on a weekend with the main agenda to brainstorm ideas to promote extracurricular activities in school. Brainstorming is a method to generate ideas by engaging with each other, listening and constructing on other ideas (Dam & Siang, 2017). Fortunately, the brainstorm session could able to facilitate fruitful ideation. The teachers, parents and school management participated with free, open and non-judgemental ideas. Also, the proper guidance and activities led the meeting in a meaningful way. Many are suggested to start a vegetable garden in the school, but there was a lack of space (land) in the school. One of the parents sponsored the land close to schools to start a vegetable garden. The collaborative approach helped to create various ideas such as appointing a new sports teacher and craft teacher, allocating extra times for karate practise and yoga practice, competition for handicraft products and recommended small scale production of baby dresses which is made by the students. Thus, brainstorming helped to produce many potential solutions as possible. Once the ideation phase had completed, the ideas categorised, refined and narrowed down to select the best solutions from a shortlist.

The following NUF Test (Kudrowitz & Wallace, 2013) helped to complete a reality check that identified 5 top ideas and rated against how new, useful and feasible the ideas to implement. It also helped to shortlist the best ideas to put into practice.

Ideas	New	Useful	Feasible	Total
Find appropriate places to start some activities such as vegetable garden, yoga place, art and craft classroom, sewing room.	6	10	9	25
Utilise the objects such as plastics or things which is easily available (coconut shell) to make handicraft products.	9	10	9	28
Allocating more  human resources and funds by the help of school management and PTA.	6	9	8	23
By appointing extra teachers to provide training to develop skills in handicrafts preparation, soccer play, farming and agriculture.	6	10	8	24
Invite some entrepreneur or small scale industries to the school to inculcate the value, respect and demand for each job.	9	7	9	25
Working with students strength so prepare a questionnaire to understand their interest and needs in appropriate field	9	9	9	27
Adjust the curriculum and timetable to implement new extracurricular activities in the school	6	8	6	20
Create various clubs in the school and divert students into those clubs based on their interest	9	7	9	25

Prototyping

Prototypes are a representation of a design in the form of sketches, mock-ups and models which aimed to communicate the suggested solution regarding the issue (IDEO, 2017). Generally, the prototyping phase is considered as quite complex due to the increased involvement of the real stakeholders.

In my real case, based upon the shortlisted ideas, the teachers developed prototypes for example; prepared 40 minutes activities per day to visit the field to make up ( sowing seeds, clear the lands, add fertilizers) a vegetable garden. Initially, teachers organised high school students during the class period to go nearby the field and sow the vegetable seeds such as brinjal, lady’s finger, spinach and banana. The students’ feedback was highly positive and they showed high interest in nurturing and watering the plant every day. Moreover, it was a success because most of the parents complimented that their children started to plant some vegetables at home. The students have expressed their challenges such as lack of getting a good quality of seeds for a vegetable garden and limited time to look after the plants. It was hard for teachers to allocate time for all classes. However, we had divided spot for each class and it worked out well.

The teachers also arranged a parent meeting along with students to demonstrate a workshop for handicraft making and its significance. Every week 1 period had given for handicraft preparation or any craft making that had a practical usage. Students made flower vases, different ornaments, decoration items with the support of the class. Those things were new and innovative programmes in school history. Still, students are exhibiting a high amount of interest and passion in their skill development fields.

Finally, it was a great journey to launch new ideas and testing it into my school environment. I had experienced and learned that a prototyping mindset should be always willing to fix, break, trial and add up new things. Also while undergoing each phase of design thinking it reminded me how to respect and value others ideas and solutions. Most of the times the collaborative approach helped me to reshape and refining the ideas.

References

Dam, R. & Siang, T. (2017). Define and Frame Your Design Challenge by Creating Your Point Of View and Ask “How Might We” retrieved from https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/define-and-frame-your-design-challenge-by-creating-your-point-of-view-and-ask-how-might-we

Dam, R. & Siang, T. (2017). Stage 3 in the Design Thinking Process: Ideate. Interaction Design Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/stage-3-in-the-design-thinking-process-ideate

IDEO, (2017). Design Thinking for Educators: Toolkit (2nd Ed). Retrieved from https://education.uky.edu/nxgla/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2016/11/Design-Thinking-for-Educators.pdf 

Knox, N. (27 Jun. 2014.). How to Use Persona Empathy Mapping | UX Magazine. Uxmag.com. Retrieved from http://uxmag.com/articles/how-to-use-persona-empathy-mapping

Kudrowitz, B. M., & Wallace, D. (2013). Assessing the quality of ideas from prolific, early-stage product ideation. Journal of Engineering Design, 24(2), 120-139.

Standford D.school, (2017). An Introduction to Design Thinking: Process Guide. Retrieved from https://dschoolold.stanford.edu/sandbox/groups/dresources/wiki/welcome/attachments/8e447/d.school%27s%20Design%20Thinking%20Process%20Mode%20Guide.pdf?sessionID=707ec07aef3c9563e6349c6b5f8daa4c161c328a

Webb-Young, J. (2003). A Technique for Producing Ideas (Thinking Classics). McGraw-Hill Education ISBN0071410945 (ISBN13: 0639785381914)

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