(part of) Our First Class

During the first week of graduate school in September 2009, Carmen Dukes and I saw a lecture by esteemed interaction designer Kim Goodwin. Kim issued a call to action: Each one teach one, asking interaction designers to extend their knowledge in some way so we may train more designers who can tackle tough problems. Carmen and I walked away with the same question in our minds: “Why isn’t anybody teaching interaction design to kids?”

Research & Development

We began answering our question by learning about the state of high school design awareness. I started visiting high schools, talking with administrators, teachers and students, and found that none of them understood what design is.

Reward Buttons: Habits of Good Designers

As we progressed through our research we began to have a clearer understanding of the value of design to high school students, and we started to craft the message that would lead us throughout the project. We knew that design teaches important skills to students:

• Flexibility and adaptability; comfortable with change
• Storytelling
• Communication
• Creative thinking and problem solving

In K-12 education, 21st Century Skills refer to a list of characteristics today’s young people should possess to be successful in the post-educational world. As defined by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, these include:

• Learning and Innovation Skills: Creativity and Innovation, Critical Thinking and Problem Solving, Communication and Collaboration
• Information, Media and Technology Skills: Information Literacy, Media Literacy, ICT Literacy
• Life and Career Skills

Our Message

We came up with Project: Interaction with the following description:

Project: Interaction is a 10-week after school program that teaches high schoolers to use design to change their communities.

Project: Interaction Experience Cycle

Designing a Curriculum

Although we wanted to focus on interaction design, we felt it was most important to teach design as a process and method for thinking, rather than teaching a specific tool or technology. Keeping these themes in mind we set out to design our curriculum. Using New York City as a catalyst for exploration, we developed a narrative of ten classes that would teach a variety of skills to empower students to use design to change their communities.

With our curriculum plan in hand, we interviewed and selected our first school. During the Fall of 2010 we taught a group of fifteen girls at the Urban Assembly Institute for Math & Science for Young Women. (All of our teaching experiences are documented on the Project: Interaction blog.)

Funding

After purchasing supplies for our first class we discovered that teaching high schoolers from our own budget can get pretty expensive! In September we launched a Kickstarter campaign to help raise funds for our first class and for future Project: Interaction endeavors. During the 30 days our project was active on Kickstarter we raised over $8,200 with the support of 125 backers. We produced a steady flow of great content for our blog and increased our readership sevenfold, with exponential growth in social media following as well.

Some of my favorite blog posts from this period:

• How did you first learn about design?
• “Get things out of your head and into someone else’s.”
• New Friends & Post-Its

Post-its!

Lessons from our First Class

At the end of our ten week session we were delighted to have realized that many of our hypotheses were true. The high schoolers we taught were enthusiastic and captivated by our weekly meetings together, and they grasped more complex ideas than we originally expected.

Most importantly we learned to be extremely flexible in our thinking about the class. We kept our core idea alive throughout the semester, and made changes along the way based on what the students were interested in, and how we felt they were progressing through the material we presented.

D'Leslie's Sketchbook

Some extremely successful aspects of our program were:

• Sketching – The girls had a sketchbook to keep for the semester and we asked them to draw or write anything in it. At the beginning of each class we had them share their work. They came to expect the activity and it provided good continuity between lessons.
• Field Trips / Real-world exposure – To really understand design it’s absolutely essential to see designers working in the real-world.
• Brainstorming on Post-It notes – The girls got the concept of “one thought per sticky note” and loved making little sketches and ideas in the medium.
• Hands-on, standing up activities – After school is a tough time to pay attention, and anything we did that involved kinesthetic motion was a huge hit.
• Critique – One of the most valuable parts of our reflection each week was the critique. We provided the girls with a guide for critique, giving them suggested questions and conversation starters. They were very receptive to the experience of having an open dialogue about their work.

After analyzing our performance and the success of the class, we have a few changes we’ll be making.

• Worksheets & communication methods – We’re looking for a more creative way to deliver precise directions and receive written feedback from students
• Classroom space – The room we taught in had awkwardly positioned desks and very little space to move around. In the future we’d like to have a more open space that can be repurposed for the variety of activities in our class.
• More time – We only had 1.5 hours each week with the girls and it wasn’t nearly enough time!

Carmen and I are looking forward to teaching our next classes soon! Check out the Project: Interaction blog for the latest updates.