Hosting a design thinking workshop for the Engineering Society of McMaster
On 24th October 2018, we conducted a design thinking workshop at McMaster University, aimed towards engineering students where we were joined by our guests/clients organizations such as The Good Shepherd, McMaster accessibility services, and empowerment squared.
The aim of the workshop conducted was to impart basic design thinking skills to engineering students and giving them a glimpse of its potential in solving complex real-life challenges; from decreasing the drop out rates from schools to helping new immigrant parents integrate better in the society, some of whole have lived in refugee camps for years
The night started with an introduction to Human-centred design principles from www.ideo.org and explaining the different phases of design thinking
“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.”
— Tim Brown, CEO, IDEO
Our clients for the night were Empowerment squared, The Good Shepherd and McMaster’s accessibility services. Each of the clients brought a set of challenges they face in the community and the engineering students were expected to take notes, synthesize information and help deliver a possible solution in the form of the prototype at the end of the session. By no means was an end to end design solution expected. The students were divided into the three areas and a mini-hub was created where the client would outline his/ her organization faces and students getting constant feedback during their design process
An alarming stat shared by empowerment squared: “ 52% of high school students drop out in certain schools in Hamilton, Ontario. This further led to an increase in crimes in the neighbourhood and reported mental health addictions. Based on the information students had to sort the information out based on common themes, select a couple of challenges, generate HMW’s for each and brainstorm a large number of solutions in a very short period of time.
Prototyping Phase
Once a large number of HMW’s were generated, the students focused on a couple of best ones to quickly ideate a vast number of possible solutions and then voted on one “HMW” in which they would be able to prototype some sort of solution.
Ending the Night
The night ended with the short, but intense prototyping session. Prizes were handed out to participants in three main categories:
- The Best startup idea
- The most creative solution
- The overall winner of the night
Each participant in the group received cash prizes ranging from $25.00 to $100.00. Participants pitched in to give feedback about the workshop and looked forward to the next one.
This was my first design thinking workshop where I served as a facilitator! I saw first hand how ideas flew between participants after ice-breaking exercises. I witnessed how one single snide comment among friends could easily lead to suppression of ideas and it was ever more important that I, as a facilitator, do my part to ensure there are NO BAD IDEAS and everyone gets a fair chance to speak their mind. Great experience and overall a fun engaging evening.
