NWAIS Tech Conference: Framing Your Design Challenge (Collab'd with Don Buckley)

This past Saturday, I was given the opportunity to co-present at the Northwest Association of Independent Schools Technology Summit with Don Buckley. Our session was titled, Framing Your Own Design Challenge. It was a quick, yet as always a very full session as all design thinking experiences are (no matter the time frame). The NWAIS Technology Summit was set at Bastyr University (a longtime ago Catholic seminary- side note before learning this tidbit I told Don if this place use to be some type of hospital like a mental institution. Then I saw the Saints statues and knew there was something with Catholicism in the history of these buildings). The people of NWAIS could not have been kinder and the participants were awesome in their willingness and ability to handle all that was thrown at them in such a rapid pace. I sure hope to return to the area again one day soon.

Framing Your Own Design Challenge “How do you know you are solving the right problem? How do you come up with good ideas? How do you execute those ideas into possible solutions? In this session learn how to frame a "just right" design challenge and use this method to solve technology problems in education through a design lens.”

The key moments with this sessions were many as a facilitator, learner, and design thinker. As I told the participants for me I intentionally treat everything I do as a prototype so I can learn for the next time. Working with Don in designing this very quick design sprint was a great learning experience in brainstorming, forecasting, pivoting, trimming, expanding, and also mostly learning how another person approaches this work we do. I think it was great moment in the session where participants embraced visual sketchnoting (they were so good) yet shared that visualizing their work let alone problems were not something they did on a regular basis. I hope that is something they consider doing ore often in their space as it is such a valuable way to communicate, prototype, and reduce the brain chatter. Another moment that stood out was being able to demonstrate and illustrate the moments of convergence and divergence throughout the session. The focus and flare of design thinking is one of those things that really help push it along and provide moments of release, tension, and clarity (imho). Other key moments were…

• problem visualization (sketchnoting)

• framing problem statements

• collaborative action

• convergent and divergent flow

• utilization of the Parking Lot

• How Might We… The 4th Word

• ideation (self & group)

• Feedback I Like, I Wish, I Wonder

Here are some snaps to capture the action and moments of the session. Thank you again NWAIS for the opportunity to work with your educators and Don for an awesome and fun collaboration. Let’s do it again!