Dysfunctional Products Come from Dysfunctional Organizations
Producing great products isn’t just about creativity and execution. It’s also about organizational alignment. Let me tell you a quick story. One of my alumni, Eli, recently finished a contract with a government transportation agency. She had been tasked with spending time with the agency’s customers – regular citizens – to identify usability issues in their mobile app. She had quickly discovered that the app was basically a trainwreck.
Making the most of your CPD day for professional learning
Many schools and colleges are still wedded to the model of a day each term where classes are cancelled and teachers are involved in staff development activities. From my twenty-five years of experience as a teacher, trainer and consultant, I see the many negative and ineffective aspects of relying on that window as a key focus for CPD. Some of the common problems are:
League of Super Geniuses HQ : Escape Room Madness
Can you escape the grasp of 207's escape room? Who knows? Usually we would've done a haunted house or a halloween poem presentation, but since Tiiu had done a haunted house for 10 years straight, we decided to do an escape room instead. Now this really all started with Shauna Pollock, a former teacher of Churchill.
Scaling Design Thinking — Design Diary
The Challenge : There are as yet, very few robust examples of how to scale the culture and mindset of design thinking within a company retrospectively. The examples that exist — Proctor & Gamble under A.G. Lafley, Apple under Steve Jobs, Intuit under Scott Cook are based on the CEO being believers in design and driving it into the deepest levels of their organisations. The nature of changes cover the entire spectrum — structural changes to make designers influential in the organisation (Apple) , designed office spaces to allow for interdisciplinary interactions (Pixar) , designed internal processes to make design an integral part of it ( Intuit ), policy changes and budgetary decisions to ensure design and innovation became accountable within their organisation ( P&G), transformational initiatives that make thinking non-incrementally imperative (P&G) and much more.
CPD – Now it’s personal…
Last year, I was fortunate enough to work with science teacher Bex Owen – helping her to reflect on and plan her own CPD. Bex discussed this at 15 minute forum earlier in the year – you can read about it here. This confirmed to me that CPD is a very personal thing – different people want different things, depending on the very specific area of their practice they are looking to develop. It’s for this reason that we should try to provide a wide range of optional and different CPD opportunities for teachers (read more about this here) – and wherever possible, ensure that these are within the context of their own subject. These activities should also be easily accessible for teachers. This post describes two ways in which we are planning to address this.
Solutions-focused Thinking - HatRabbits
A traditional approach towards problem solving, is analysing the problem thoroughly before generating solutions. Although this route can produce some useful insights and ideas, it will often lead to a negative and unconstructive outcome. Fortunately there is a positive and powerful alternative; focussing on finding the solution, rather than unravelling the problem. Concentrating on the solution sounds logical. Yet it is rarely done in practice.
The Art of the Escape Room
David Spira's team is ready. No need for inspirational speeches—the adrenaline (aided by plenty of caffeine) is flowing. They cross the threshold, and the door locks behind them.
design studies forum › Rethinking Design Thinking: Part I
This article originally appeared in Design and Culture, Volume 3, Number 3, November 2011 Abstract The term design thinking has gained considerable attention over the past decade in a wide range of organizations and contexts beyond the traditional preoccupations of designers. The main idea is that the ways professional designers problem solve is of value to firms trying to innovate and to societies trying to make change happen. This paper reviews the origins of the term design thinking in research on designers and its adoption by management educators and consultancies within a dynamic, global mediatized economy. Three main accounts are identified: design thinking as a cognitive style, as a general theory of design, and as a resource for organizations.
Putting the ‘Professional’ in Professional Development
This guest post written by Jon Tait @TeamTait. Professional Development has been a hot topic of late….and not before time. My personal opinion of what teachers have been ‘subject’ to over far too many years has been far from professional. The Trade Description Act would have a field day if they had walked into most schools on a PD day over the last decade.
User-centered design
The chief difference from other product design philosophies is that user-centered design tries to optimize the product around how users can, want, or need to use the product, rather than forcing the users to change their behavior to accommodate the product. UCD models and approaches[edit] For example, the user-centered design process can help software designers to fulfill the goal of a product engineered for their users.
This is My Teacher Costume: #eduescape - Escape Rooms in Education
My brother, Charlie (this post is dedicated to him, the day after his birthday! Happy Birthday, Charlie!) and his partner, Ashton introduced me to Escape Rooms nearly a year ago. We were in New York City for New Year's 2015 and they insisted that I come play an immersive game with them.
