Design Thinking ClassPrototyping

Problem/Insight High school students need a way to

realize that they are acquiring the soft skills they will need in the world of work because they don’t realize they’re getting those skills in school.

Prototype AStudents create a soft-skills acquisition map that they fill out as they progress through high school, so they see they are in fact getting the skills they need to be successful in the work force

• School• Extra-curricular

• Home• Work

Worked as youth group

leader in synagogue

Babysat little sister on

weekly basis

Led group project on

cell reproduction

in Biology class

Was stage manager for school play

Quarter 4: Freshman Year

Sample prototype:

SELF

TEACHE

R

PARENT

EMPLOYER

FEEDBACK LOOP

Relevant parties help stakeholders refine their ideas about the soft skills they’ve acquired in this Feedback Loop

Response to Prototype A Two rising

sophomore girls said they’d find the format doable only if they were given school time to complete the chart. It would be too burdensome to complete otherwise.

Add surveys to the Feedback Loop

They liked the format of both the Map and the Feedback Loop

They like that the system brings what goes on outside of school into school

IdeaStudents create an art project of their own choosing that they add to each marking period in order to show how they’ve progressed in the acquisition of soft skills they and the school have decided are important. Students can choose from a list of art projects and do a different one each marking period, or they can complete the same kind of art project each marking period. They can even keep adding to the same medium all year.

My sample prototype

Poems by MeHow I Grew in Leadership, Confidence,

Organization, and

Collaboration

The ME Channel

YouTube videos showing how I grew in my soft

skills

A Mural by MeHow I Grew in my Soft Skills,

An artistic representation

My MaskHow I Can’t Hide the Soft Skills

I’ve Acquired

Stakeholders helped me to refine the prototype, so students had choices in how they presented their ideas and weren’t locked into one medium per year or marking period.

Response to Prototype B Students liked this

prototype unequivocally better than the previous one, though they had liked Prototype A well enough before they saw Prototype B

Students responded more emotionally and enthusiastically to Prototype B (confirming for me that students love art because it resonates with them emotionally and helps them form a bond with what they’re learning)

Response to Prototype B, cont. Interviewees confidently

said students would want to do the art project more than the acquisition map

Quote from one student: “You have to put in more effort and think about it more.”

This again confirms my thinking that arts integration forces students to think more divergently about their work.

Students agreed there might need to be a reflection piece with an art project, if it wasn’t clear from the medium how students had shown they had acquired the soft skills they were claiming to have obtained