Enabling School Students To Solve Real-World Problems

Design thinking is still in a phase where it is transitioning from design firms to other organisations and is yet to reach the grassroots. In collaboration with Drstikona and Steelcase, we set out

to sensitize Standard 9 students studying in 5 government schools in New Delhi with the design thinking mindset and equip them with creative problem-solving skills and methodology.

In this project, named EBCD - EveryBody Can Design, we equipped students with the knowledge, tools and mindset around Design. We broke them that design is meant for aesthetics and decoration. Through a hands-on approach, we established and demonstrated that design is a very powerful & impactful Creative Problem-Solving methodology. Over a span of 2.5 months, working very closely with the students, we equipped and enabled them with deeper modules around design. The curriculum and workshops were designed to ensure the students not only learn the various tools and techniques, but also apply these insights to solve societal challenges in a curious and experiential manner in order to conceptualize innovative solutions.

In addition to designing the curriculum, the challenges and the workbooks, we also implemented the program and facilitated the workshops which enabled us to iterate and improvise our approach along the way.

By the end of the project, 370+ students worked on 4 societal, contextualized challenges, created and tested 70+ prototypes. Out of which, 24 innovations were shortlisted for final showcase. We felicitated the winners and participants with certificates and awards for their innovations.

Simplifying Design Thinking

To ensure our young participants are able to associate and grasp, we translated the concepts of design thinking into Hindi and simplified the process. The team visited each school to understand finer details about the students and their approach to education. Our understanding of the students through these visits helped us introduce relatable examples and craft challenges from within their surroundings:

Kya? Kyun? Kaise? We challenged the myth that design is meant for aesthetics by taking the students on a hands-on design thinking sprint where we tried to channelize their curiosity by enabling them to ask the right questions and think out of the box.

Dekho, Suno, Pooch ke aao We introduced the challenge to the teams and asked them to observe and interview people, to understand the underlying problems. We had designed workbooks to assist the students with their research, providing guidelines and sample questions for each challenge.

Khoj me Samaanta Dhoondo The facilitators helped the young minds to collate findings and derive actionable missions to solve. Idea lagao, Model banao. Stepping out of the mundane, we challenged the students to come up with crazy ways to solve the problems and then helped them develop these ideas into innovative solutions. Using basic prototyping materials, the students then quickly brought these ideas to life, to take them back to the users for feedback.

Durust Banao, Sabko Dikhao The teams returned with filled testing worksheets, ready to iterate upon their solutions. The facilitators helped them document their journey and coached them for the mega showcase.