Seventh through ninth grades completed their first design-thinking challenge thanks to the “Crash Course” from the Institute of Design at Stanford University. Students redesigned the backpack, something that is integral to every student’s daily experience. After being asked to come up with ideas outside of the box and to go for “volume and variety” when generating ideas (ideation), several backpacks with jetpacks, magnetic levitation, and/or drones were on the table before coming back to reality with ideas that could realistically serve the needs of their user. Our students did a fantastic job on this, their first design challenge.
Thank you the d.School at Stanford, to the Disruption Department in St. Louis, and to the Breaker organization in New York, all of whom provided training and/or resources for our work with design thinking.
If you would like more information about the design thinking crash course and what our students experienced, please go to http://dschool.stanford.edu/dgift/.