24-HOUR THINK CHALLENGE
When One Stone, a student-led organization, wanted to bring 150 high-schoolers into a colosseum for 24 hours and challenge them to solve Idaho’s problems with design thinking, I said, “Of course.”
I acted as the senior design thinking advisor, helped the team plan the event, created learning materials, provided training for facilitators before the event, gave talks at each stage of the design thinking and presentation processes to the 30 teams and provided mentorship for the facilitators and kids during the event.
Finally, and most importantly, I worked to ensure that the kids’ ideas had somewhere to go: we rented 3 ballrooms in the CenturyLink Arena, where each team presented its ideas to real stakeholders in Idaho’s education and health sectors.
Students learned to
- create design questions
- conduct semi-formal interviews and ethnographic research
- use design thinking methods to analyze and synthesize qualitative information
- brainstorm user journeys and prototype products and services
- test prototypes
- iterate design solutions
- build and present a sales pitch
Not only did the kids leave happy, but their parents, teachers, and local stakeholders openly expressed a shared surprise in the quality of the kids’ work.
FINAL COUNTDOWN:
