This is how I used

Lean & Design Thinking in Education

Every human is constantly delivering experiences. Everyone you interact with is a recipient (experiencer) of your actions. Whether they are conscious of it or not, their lives will be impacted.

Last semester I taught Interactive Production at Humber College. It was my first experience as a college educator. I felt a great responsibility for the type of impact I was going to make on the students’ lives. I’ve been designing user-centered products for over 13 years, so I thought it was a good idea to see the students as my users. I wanted them not only to learn the best practices to solve design challenges, but also to have the best experience throughout the course.

To accomplish this, I realized I would have to utilize the same design process I follow when designing user-centered products: research, learn, prototype, experiment, collect feedback, iterate. Repeat.

The best products are the ones designed in collaboration with the end user, so I decided the students would help redesign the class experience. I ran several experiments in class, and I have to confess, I enjoyed experimenting with them — I mean, it’s not that I’m a crazy scientist; instead, I see myself as a passionate researcher with a Noble Purpose.

I’ve learned as a designer that you can always find new ways to solve problems by using basic research and testing principles. Below are the five most relevant experiments the class encountered:

EXPERIMENT #1

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Establish a Relationship

Sharing own experiences. The best relationships start with trust and honest emotion. In the last couple of years I’ve been inspired by powerful speakers, design thinkers and storytellers like Nando Costa. I wanted my students to feel the same type of inspiration and passion for design throughout the course, so I started the first class by presenting some milestones of my work in conference style for one hour.

I could see their smiles and shining eyes. There was emotion in the room, they wanted to know more. They were inspired. I felt the impact was so successful that since then I decided to use one project of my portfolio as the inspiration piece for each lecture.

I also learned something more. After asking for feedback, one of the students told me:

“I really enjoy your success stories, but I would also like to hear your stories of failure.” — Andrew.

I thought that was fantastic feedback. So later I introduced a section with some of failure stories and called it: “My Confessions” I shared stories of how I fell, but also of how I got back up.

At the end of the semester the same student sent me an email saying:

“I want to say thank you for all your stories of success and failure that you’ve shared with us. This really helps me to stay motivated and be positive about what I’m doing.”

Asking for feedback. The first in-class exercise was to write on sticky notes what they liked and what they didn’t like from previous years’ classes. That simple exercise gave my research a great start as I collected valuable data that helped me identify the main aspects I should focus on. I had a better understanding of what was important to them. I started to understand their point of view.

Next we categorized the feedback into five groups. The category with the most negative feedback was exactly what we were trying to redesign — the class. The biggest pains were clearly identified.

Self persona exercise. As UX designers we create personas to understand users’ goals and expectations. I asked the students to create their own persona profiles, including five educational goals and three expectations for this class. I also asked them to add a selfie to their profile card. (I’m terrible with names, so this helped me identify students as well.) After collecting this data I was better prepared to start redesigning the class for students with special interests.

Those activities happened in the first and second class. They didn’t know this, but each of those activities contained principles we were going to use later in the course. The most important outcome of this experiment was that we knew more about each other. We started a relationship of trust.

EXPERIMENT #2

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Build Teams with Multifunctional Roles

Introductions and recruiting. Before building the teams, I asked the students to introduce themselves by using their persona profiles. I encouraged those who were not presenting to have a “hunting talent attitude” as they may want someone with that profile on their start-up — yes, I wanted them to think like a start up, and not just as a team.

Identifying roles and building teams. Something useful to me as a UX designer is that from the beginning of my career I had the opportunity to learn Design, Technology and Business simultaneously. I wanted the students to have the same advantage that I had.

Learning how to consider these three key verticals when making design decisions is critical for strategic road-mapping. Those decisions will have a bigger impact on the business and will provide learning opportunities for the team and better portfolio building for each team member.

I noticed from the students’ profiles that most had the potential and the expectations to learn more about these three verticals. To build the teams, I made a simple grid on the board, a row for each team and a column for each vertical: Design, Technology and Business. Each vertical represented a role or main responsibility in the group. I asked the students to put their names under the vertical for which they wanted to represent their teams and at the same time to pick a team they wanted to be part of.

Every team became a start-up and I encouraged them to think, work and behave as one throughout the course. Each team was responsible for the participation and class attendance of the team members. If there was ever an issue, they would try to solve it as a team first, and only then would I provide follow-up and help.

EXPERIMENT #3

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In UX you always need to combine and balance business goals with customer expectations. It wasn’t much different when redesigning this course outline. I received a list of topics from the program, but I felt that learning shouldn't be about knowing how to produce artifacts. Instead, learning should be more about how the students could experience the entire product design process with a discovery and iterative approach, making mistakes and learning from them.

I used @simonsinek’s Golden Circle approach to structure the product design process from the WHY to the WHAT

The course structure. @TheFluxible conference was one of the best conferences I attended in 2014. I learned tons about UX Strategy and CX Research not only from the speakers, but also from the people I met there. In one of the sessions, I sat beside Dana Marr, a fantastic person and designer working for D2L. During the talk, he put a sticky note on my laptop, reading: “People don’t buy what you do, but why you do it.” That note led me to Simon Sinek’s TED talk “Start with Why”

Simon’s talk changed the way I looked at leadership, lean start-up and even UX design. I decided to use his philosophy to redesign the class outline and the entire class content. This is how I used Simon Sinek’s golden circle to frame the product design process from the WHY to the WHAT:

WHY

• Problem / Opportunity Discovery. Develop solution-based thinking.
• Business Research and Analysis. SWOT analysis vs. Synthesis.
• Primary Research. Customer and user research.

HOW

• UX Strategy. Divergent and Convergent Thinking. Ideation sessions. Product and road mapping. Strategy principles and prioritization of features.
• Assumptions Definition. Sashimi Design, UX white-boarding, site-mapping, task flows, UI Kits and Interaction Design.

WHAT

• Prototyping. Use of InVision for quick prototyping. (InVision has invited me to write an article about InVision in education, I’ll be posting it soon.)
• Testing. Guerrilla testing. Feedback analysis. Patterns mapping and Quick prototype iteration.
• Case Study. Portfolio building and storytelling.

Class methodology. The students created presentations and deliverables for every topic. I also noticed they were used to having a single shot when presenting their work in class and to being marked accordingly. However, my focus wasn’t on marks or testing quality of work. My real focus was on providing opportunities from which the students could obtain experience and learn.

I designed a methodology to apply to every topic of the course outline. Every topic became a cycle and every cycle was connected to previous learnings allowing the students to “fall forward.” It became a guideline that gave more space to fail and learn, removing the fear to make mistakes and developing a mentality of sharing and collaboration. That’s how they could focus more on discovery, experimentation, creative thinking and self-teaching, rather than focus on marks and reputation.

A student commented on this approach:

“I really like that you don’t focus on marks, but instead on finding new ways for us to learn”

It was an opportunity-based approach that allowed the students to run their assumptions through several revision loops. This also facilitated the development of soft skills.

• Inspiration and learning. Listen to a powerful, real product story associated with the class lecture.
• Team work and research. Distribute responsibilities according to individual roles defined by the team.
• Discovery and ideation. Research and explore ideas for quick assumption validation.
• Prototype. Practice principles of quick prototyping and iteration of any type of artifacts that will be presented in class.
• Iteration. Design review sessions to receive feedback from the teacher before the artifacts are presented to the rest of the class.
• Presentation. Share results with the class. (At this point they have better chances to give their best shot.)

The redesign of the outline helped the students understand the process of lean product design. “Overall these 15 weeks helped open my eyes to the correct process of taking a concept to a final product that can be pitched to a real client” — Yaw. The process facilitated the work for the students to produce something that added value for both business and customers.

EXPERIMENT #4

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Final Exam

Last year I interviewed a Senior Information Architect with more than 18 years in the design consultancy and UX field. She had impressive communication skills and presented her best case study in a very professional fashion. I noticed from her design decisions some things that could have taken a different direction, so I asked her, “What would you do better if you had the chance to work on this project again?”

She looked straight into my eyes with a tight smile. After three seconds she replied, “That’s a good question.” Then she went on to talk about other aspects of the project but couldn’t give a specific answer to my question.

I wanted to prepare my students for a similar situation in the future. So the final exam question was the same: What would you do better if you had the chance to work on the project again?

My wife couldn’t believe me when I told her I was going to ask the students to write a final exam. “Do you think this is elementary school?” she asked.

I also asked one of my students how many final exams he’d had in the semester. He responded, “we don’t have final exams.”

Well, I did it anyway. This wasn’t a traditional final exam. It was an exercise that will allow them to learn from their own retrospective. These were the main objectives of the exercise:

1. Develop humility and the ability to be self-critical. Students would evaluate the areas that mattered most to them and what they could have done better in those areas.
2. Identify the most interesting topics for the students and why they were important for them individually.
3. Give the students the opportunity to reflect on their course journey and “remember” what they learned.
4. Include better stories into their final presentations the following class. (The exam was given one class before the final case studies were presented.)

The result of this experiment was that 25 out of 32 students chose as the most interesting topics UX Strategy and CX Research — which is the WHY — rather than producing UX-UI artifacts— which is the WHAT.

Here are some comments from the students exams:

“UX Strategy is the subject we know the least about at this point in our program. Aside from this class, we only had one other course last year that touched a bit on it, so this is definitely an area that I think I can improve on.” — Hazel

“I think in school we focus too much on the ‘WHAT’ and not so much on the ‘WHY’” — Shawn

“Overall, it was fun! Thanks for giving us the opportunity to do the whole UX processes” — Dean

“This semester has been incredibly useful and informative for me. Dabbling in freelance work I can take everything that I’ve learned and apply it to working with clients big or small. Definitely my favorite class and most impactful topic this entire two year course.” — Casy

“I consider the UX Strategy to be one of the most important in the listing because the strategy is the core problem that you want to solve and make better to make the most profit and be as user friendly as possible.” — Andrew

EXPERIMENT #5

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Case Studies

The final challenge. Tell their 15-week design process story in a 20-minute presentation.

Besides obtaining experience and learning, taking a problem throughout the whole initial product design process achieved another milestone: They had a strong story to tell. Now students could got to visit a potential client or employer and talk about the process they followed, the lessons they learned and the milestones achieved and most importantly, how they make an impact as a member of a team.

When looking at their presentations, I have to confess that my eyes were watery a couple times. I knew what they had to go through to get to this point. Designing something when you don’t know what you are building is not easy, and it requires courage and toughness.

They were all brave and worked hard, they were engaged. Some of them sometimes even asked me for more work to do because they were excited about what they were doing. In that final milestone, I saw better soft skills developed, team effort, passion and even a different mindset, I could see success in their faces and I felt proud of them.

This is the final quote I shared with my students:

“You are the most important product you are building. Use these principles to iterate yourself”.

Of course I made mistakes in the process and those are probably my biggest lessons learned, I know I’ll do things better next time. I feel that I developed a more clear understanding of the design thinking principles that allow me to design not only tangible but also intangible products like a class or service.

I would highly value your any feedback, comments, ideas or questions. You can connect with me on Twitter. I want to learn and share more.

I want to thank Bobby Nemati and Yousuf Afridi for their feedback and proof reading the article. Also, special thanks to Michèle Stone Hynynen for her professional copy editing services.