The Physical Design Lab

With the start of school, there were many questions regarding the progress with our physical design lab space. As you may recall from reading about our mini-conference, the decision was made to first cultivate a philosophy and vision for design thinking at Parker before investing heavily in materials and machinery for the design lab. We did, however, need to take some preliminary actions so that the space would be ready for that point in time when we would invest in equipment.

The Parker library at the Linda Vista (Middle and Upper School) Campus is a two-story building. Over the summer, the physical books and other library materials were all relocated upstairs, and a major updating on titles and culling took place. In the now vacant downstairs area, a new "collaborative space" was created. The main feature of the collaborative space is a new, beautiful, wired group table that features stone detailing and which matches other concrete work on the campus:

As you can also see from the photos, some new whiteboard topped round tables finished off the downstairs space. The result is that we have seating for 50-70 students between stools and chairs, and kids can group up to complete work, brainstorm, and create together. The first week of school featured some re-training of students. A new schedule that would allow for students to collaborate and study during the academic day was being rolled out, and as part of that rollout, we needed to orient students to the proper places for the activities they wished to do during their free periods. The upstairs of the library is now designated as a quiet individual study zone, while the downstairs is for group study and collaboration. A separate area in another building was designated as a "hangout zone" of sorts, where students could be more social if they chose to do so. We are still in the early stages of helping students end up in the spot that best suits their activity, but so far, so good.

As for the design lab itself, the room was being worked on right up until the opening day of school. Again, while there was no machinery put in place, the room was fitted out with glass walls facing out to the collaborative zone in our library, and shiny new whiteboard tables and roll-bottom chairs were put in place. Teachers who used the space during the first week reported back that they liked the space, and we have some suggestions on things to adjust as we move forward. Here's what the design lab looks like in its infancy:

We will continue to monitor and adjust for this space, and we hope that some of the new design thinking courses going on in our middle school will inform the space greatly.








As for our Lower School campus, several classrooms are set up to be used as design thinking spaces from the get-go. We will be paying close attention to the teachers using those spaces to determine what our next steps will be in terms of outfitting the Lower School in its work with design thinking.

The New School Year

During the first week of school, design thinking began to be visible about both of our campuses. Several faculty members included the graphic on their syllabi and/or on their Haiku (student LMS) pages, or they printed off a color version and had it displayed in their room. As one wandered the campus and visited classrooms, it was easy to spot the logo here and there.

However, our Linda Vista library staff and faculty went above and beyond - the library building is centrally located, and the front windows are visible from many areas on campus. It gets a lot of visual attention day in and day out. Here was their start-of-school display:

Furthermore, in a handful of classrooms, some of our attendees from the mini conference were already breathing life into the design thinking steps with their students in all three divisions. In a few classrooms, students were engaged in a design thinking activity on the very first day of school! Very exciting. As it's the start of the year, faculty are in overdrive, however, we hope to feature a faculty member's reflections on using design thinking during Week One shared here very soon.

After the Mini Conference, Before the Start of School...

One of the "beta version 1.0" decisions that we made during the mini-conference was in regards to the general plan of how we might roll out the information about design thinking to our peers across all three school divisions (and beyond). We all felt very strongly that the forward movement with design thinking should be invitational - in other words, we would not be putting any firm requirements on faculty for the coming school year about how and when to implement design thinking in their practice. Instead, the teachers who attended the mini-conference committed to trying out the design thinking process and serving as a resource for their peers. The efforts around design thinking would loosely fall under the purview of the Assistant Head of School, and as folks indicated interest in participating, resources and support would be provided. As momentum built on its own, additional support and more formalized structures for making future decisions would then be put into place as needed.

In essence, the plan was that we were going to try very hard to honor the design thinking process as we implemented design thinking at Parker. At its inception, the plan looked like this:

Given design thinking was new, and the pre-work had been a bit scattered and leaderless, the group felt that the new Assistant Head of School (aka me, myself and I) would take on the formal introduction of design thinking to all faculty groups at Parker. This would be done during the teacher pre-service week as part of my introduction to all faculty groups. During this presentation, three things would be shared with faculty: the what, the why, and the how behind design thinking. The "what" comprised the back history of design thinking and explaining its development and how it became conceptualized for schools. The rationale or the "why" for design thinking would also be communicated, sharing research from what employers and leading schools are saying and doing. Finally, the "how" would be shared. This would be information about our "Version 1.0 model," our graphic representation, and the next steps for the 2014-2015 academic year. The intent was to bring all faculty to a baseline of understanding regarding the what, the why, and the how so that the invitation could then be extended to join the journey this coming school year.

As a result, the week of August 25th found the me making two presentations to two different groups of faculty.

I generally do not like giving a "stand and deliver" style presentation, but I also knew that faculty would prefer that we keep the time as short and as informative as possible, so I strove to respect their time and focus. Each presentation was approximately an hour, with about 15 minutes devoted to introductions and 45 minutes spent informing everyone about the what, why and how of design thinking.  If you would like a copy of the slide deck that I used to drive the talk, I am happy to share. Feel free to email me!

At the conclusion of the presentation, the faculty groups did a "clear and unclear windows" protocol with everyone who was in the room. This was so that we could collect real-time feedback that would help us understand the mindset of the faculty following the presentation as well as to inform our next steps in moving forward with design thinking.  I asked the faculty to fold a sheet of paper so that four squares resulted. Each square was titled: 1. Unclear, 2. Clear, 3. Wonder, 4. Wow. In each box, faculty shared information about what they had just heard and/or their general thoughts on design thinking.

Many faculty took a moment to talk with me personally after the presentations, and happily, the overwhelming majority of comments were very positive and there were several excellent questions. In the following days, follow-up emails from many faculty indicated a strong interest to dig into implementing parts of design thinking in their upcoming classes.

Faculty Feedback From the Initial Presentation

As mentioned in the previous post wherein the plan to roll out design thinking and the Parker Version 1.0 Design Thinking Process was discussed, I collected a great deal of faculty feedback. Judging from the numbers of responses received, I believe that most, if not all, faculty (along with several staff) handed in their written comments about the presentation as I received 151 forms.

To recap, I had asked faculty to provide feedback on four things following my presentation regarding design thinking:

1. Unclear - what they still did not understand about design thinking and/or the way it would happen at Parker
2. Clear - what they learned from the presentation and could carry forward
3. Wonder - what did they hear that made them pause or have a possible concern?
4. Wow - what did they hear that made them excited?

The feedback came back looking like this:

I then took the massive pile of responses and began entering them line by line into a spreadsheet. Here's the work in progress:

Over the space of the next several days, all of the feedback was typed into one spreadsheet, which then allowed me to review all of the responses in one focused place. Next, the responses were aggregated into prevailing themes. This was done by reading through all of the individual responses and making lists of comments that appeared frequently or that appeared to group together due to discovered points of commonality. While there were many "outlier" or "singleton" responses, there were a surprisingly large number of responses that grouped together. This led to the creation of a "Top 11 Themes." You can view the "Top 11 Themes" document that has the synopsis of aggregated responses HERE if you are interested in seeing what emerged from the faculty feedback.

If you would like additional information about the process that was used to collect feedback, aggregate the responses, and/or create the emerging themes, you are welcome to contact us.

The Mini Conference

A representative group of faculty and leadership from all divisions met for two very busy days in mid-August. As mentioned previously, we had initiated consulting services with Parker Thomas, and he joined this group to help us identify our aspirations and definitions around design thinking and our design lab spaces at Parker. Attendees were all division principals plus faculty who were either piloting a specific course that would integrate design thinking and/or who were deeply enmeshed in the implementation of design thinking moving forward. In all, we had 12 participants for the entirety of the mini conference. We also had two students join us for some of the sessions so as to help our thinking along.

We decided that prior to delving into the crux of the work, we needed for our team to have a first-hand experience with the steps involved in design thinking. Oftentimes, the first step of the process is defined as "empathy" - building a connection with your user and understanding the problem(s) they are facing. To help us get a feel for how to gain empathy, we partnered off with the goal of creating a name tag for our partner that would tell something about them that the group didn't already know. This was a great exercise that modeled good process and in the end, we all had some rather unique and unusual name tags for our time at the mini-conference:

As such, Parker Thomas presented the group with a special challenge and divided us into two groups. We immediately jumped into the empathy phase, focusing on using the strategies known as "5 why's" and "defining extreme users". Post-it notes began proliferating on the windows as we worked.

Once we had an adequate understanding of the issue and we had defined our problem, we began actively prototyping our ideas. Nicholas Commons became a flurry of activity as we rushed to beat the stringent timeline imposed by Parker, who kept reminding us that "perfect is the enemy of done."

At the end of our time, we tested our prototypes by giving short presentations of our work to the other team.

The team agreed: this was time well spent. It was a very valuable  start to our mini conference as those who might be teaching this process to others got a chance to truly experience it themselves.

We moved on from the design thinking exercise into a series of very deep (and very important) discussions, which dominated the remainder of our conference. Among other things, we spent time on these questions:
What is a skill?
What is knowledge?
What is the difference between skill and knowledge specifically?
What is important for our students to have mastered by the time they depart Parker?
In the spectrum of "maker space" to "design lab," where do we want to fall in terms of our philosophy/approach and for our physical spaces?
What skills and knowledge do we believe design thinking (or a design lab) would impart to our students that they are not currently receiving via our established academic program?

We used post-it notes to capture each idea or thought presented throughout our discussions. Soon, most windows of Nicholas Commons were full with ideas, thoughts, and strategies.

We also invited in some high school students to talk with us about their experience at Parker, their thoughts about design lab and design thinking, and what they wished they would experience during their time at our School.

Our second day was devoted to fleshing out our thinking from the questions above to craft our "Version 1.0" of our design thinking process. We examined some other models that were in use by some other schools, as well as thinking long and hard about our discussions from the prior day. By the close of the day, we had drafted out the steps for the Parker Design Thinking Process, and had even come up with a graphical representation of this process. Please read the blog entry entitled "Parker Design Thinking Process" to learn more.

We closed out our time together discussing how we would move forwards for the 2014-2015 school year and gained consensus on an invitational "growing together" approach for the year. We also agreed that we believed our vision and work should define our physical spaces, and as such, the placement of hardware, machinery, and "toys" would be iterative and based upon the needs of classes and students as they delved into design thinking.

In all, it was a very busy, tiring, and yet exhilarating two days. The participants left feeling like they had achieved a great amount of important work, including the important task of setting the stage for the year ahead. Not only had a preliminary version of our design thinking process been created, a plan for integration and implementation had been thoughtfully designed (using design thinking, no less!) that had buy-in from all present.

The next step of our process will take place when faculty return for their pre-service professional learning week on August 25. Stay tuned to find out what happens next!

Contact information for Parker Thomas, the consultant with whom we are working: me@parkerthomas.com

Begin at the Beginning

The wheels of the cart clattered along as I made my way over to Nicholas Commons, which is a meeting space located in our Upper School. However, this was no ordinary cart of supplies. Typically when I set up for meetings I have chart paper, computer dongles, pens, markers and notecards... but today the cart included several extra items, including glue sticks, discarded wood remnants, some cardboard, pipe cleaners, and modeling clay. The cart ingredients sent a clear signal: the upcoming "mini conference" was going to be just a bit different than any other educational seminar that I'd coordinated.

The sun cast its rays through the windows of the meeting space and a gentle breeze came through the louvered doors while I began setting up for our mini conference on design thinking. Division principals and pre-identified faculty "pioneers" had been identified and invited to participate in this mini-conference. During the two day session, we would take on defining "design thinking" for Parker, as well as identifying our process for both design thinking and the implementation of design thinking at the School. The faculty pioneers attending the sessions were secondary level teachers who were teaching design thinking specific classes and elementary school representatives who would be tasked with facilitating implementation across grade levels and curricular areas.

Ironically enough, the Francis Parker School was introduced to a person by the name of Parker in the spring of 2014. Parker Thomas had been referred to us as a potential partner and collaborator as we embarked on our design thinking journey.  He is a self-identified "maker" with a deep belief in and a deep passion for design thinking. Furthermore, had recently helped open an elementary school that is based on design thinking principles, as well as having undertaken some extensive design thinking related work in the "real world" with Maker Media and Intuit. He was moving into more and more consulting with schools like ours to incorporate design thinking into their teaching and learning practice and received strong recommendations. As a result, we invited him to help us begin our work with design thinking.

During previous phone calls with division principals and our Head of School, Parker had done quite a bit of listening to those with whom he spoke. The week prior to his visit, he and I had a long conversation wherein we came to the realization that we needed to approach design thinking in a largely unprecedented way, but it was also a way that felt "right" given what he had heard and what we had both observed from visiting several other schools that had been on the design thinking journey. Unlike every other school we'd collectively seen, Parker was going to truly begin at the beginning.

What does that mean? Well, the process of other schools, as we had seen, appeared to be that the schools approached design thinking from the perspective of having the space determine their process. They first set aside a space, then they spent a lot of money buying equipment and supplies, and THEN they presented the space to their school to figure out what to do with it. In most, if not all, scenarios, the schools then undertook a struggle that lasted anywhere from one to several years trying to figure out what precisely to do with the space, and how to incorporate design thinking for their school via the space. The lab spaces were not used to their maximum potential, and design thinking was not pervading the school environment. In essence, it felt like that process was backwards.

Our School was in a unique position to do things differently. While a room had been identified for each of school's campuses (note: Parker's Lower School is on one site, while our Middle and Upper Schools are combined on another site), no specific equipment had been ordered or placed in the areas. The determination had been made to furnish the MS/US "design lab" with whiteboard tables and swivel chairs that would afford adaptability and flexibility, and to make some more collaborative work spaces in the area surrounding the room. At the Lower School, there would be no forging ahead with a specific area at this point in time, and the "design lab" would take shape across some classrooms and spaces where faculty were already experimenting with design thinking.

In essence, we could "turn the process on its head" - rather than creating a space and trying to force everything else to conform to it, we could begin by determining our vision and goals, and then let the space reflect student needs and outcomes based on our vision. In other words, we'd let our vision create the space rather than having the space determine our vision for us. It was, and still is, an exciting and innovative approach to the work. Our two day mini-conference would be when we would come up with our "version 1.0" vision and design thinking process, with the hopes that as we moved more deeply into the process, we might apply design thinking principles into our very work with instructional practice and our design lab spaces.

During a planning conversation the week prior, Parker had helped me determine the best setup for our meeting space, Nicholas Commons, as well as how to set out supplies to foster collegiality and collaboration. I carefully put out the various materials around the room and added some prompting thinking cards to the tables and easels. After an hour's work, the room looked ready.

In the end, the two day mini conference was determined to be a success by all involved. Read the next post entitled "The Mini Conference"to learn what we did during our two days together, and read the post "The Parker Process" to view the outcomes of our sessions.

Are you interested in setting your vision version 1.0 before you furnish out your lab space? Are you thinking that having a mini-conference with a core team or pilot team of faculty might be a good path for you in your process? Feel free to contact us with questions!