KPMG (2018) define Design Thinking as: "... a structured process to find solutions to complex human problems."
The session started with a great energiser, Tiger🐯, Grandma👵, Ninja💥 - a version of rock, paper, scissors that required you to act each character. (In case you want to add this into your classrooms, ninja beats tiger, tiger eats grandma, and grandma is ninja's mother so we all know who wins that fight! 😏)
Then we sat down and went over what design thinking is, what it's purpose is and what it looks like in practise. In this section we had the chance to access prior knowledge, make connections and build on our understanding.... Then we had the opportunity to work through the model for ourselves...
Our task: Think about a coffee shop experience, do some research about what a coffee shop offers people, find a persona and explore their experience.
First step of design thinking: EMPATHY!Explore: What the needs of the person are, what their point of view of the experience was, who this person is, and what is important to them. From this we then needed to come up with a GAME CHANGER, something to focus on that would make a huge difference to improve the experience for the persona.
We had to Draw this persona and create a profile. In our group we chose to focus on David, luckily we had Madeline and her awesome drawing skills!
For our profile the problem identified was that there were no clear healthy (GF, V, K, D) options that were fun or exciting on the menu. The game changer for David would be to have a quick and easy way to chose healthy options that are exciting and fun!
Our next step in the process was to ideate some possible options that would support the game changer. We were tasked to come up with 20 ideas individually and come back to the group and share. From this we then sorted our solutions and individually selected two that were desired, two that were ambitious and two that were wild cards. Our ideas fell into four categories personalised, clarify & inform, randomised and pre-ordering. In the end the idea that had the most support for further development was a "Magic 8 Ball" for randomised menu.
From this we then had to create a story board of how the solution to the game changer would work in the situation. This was the chance to step through each part of the process for how our Magic 8 Ball would function from the moment David or any customer would step into the shop to the moment they leave. This allowed us to think about other things that we needed to add or think about in the situation. From this we created a prototype of the product/solution. We made ours from a range of paper, cups, and play dough.
In the end our solution was a Magic 8 Ball that you could pre enter your requirements (either Vegan, Gluten Free, Dairy Free, and Keto) by pressing on the buttons on the ball. Each ball would be loaded with a menu that catered for these requirements and would change weekly. The customer would select the Magic 8 Ball over the normal menu ("Test your fate, try the eight") and then have to shake the ball for their choice - if they didn't like the first selection they could shake again. Once they had done this the ball sent the order to the kitchen to be made and the eight ball would buzz when the order was ready. We decided it would make the most sense to have one ball for food and one for drink - if we had the technology to do both then this would be a great solution... but a bit futuristic for our first mock up! After eating the customer would place their ball into which ever tube (which ends up at the front desk) they felt accurate to provide feedback to the kitchen on the menu.
After we summarised our ideas we had to go through a role play - similar to the story board we had at the start with our client/customer/persona. This provided us with feedback to go back and improve our product before another prototype could be made.
All in all this was a fantastic experience to explore our creativity, work collaboratively and connect with the design thinking model. I am ideating how I can use this learning next term... perhaps a leaders meeting looking into whānau blog comments... in any case, I am excited at doing this again.
