Student Led Innovation Through Human Centered Design

A while ago I wrote about our school district's new method of strategic planning--we have a crowdsourced idea hunt. To do this, we use a software program called Spigit to post ideas to our colleagues, who in turn can comment, question, and vote on each idea. Ideas are fleshed out, further developed and tested and range from small ideas that are easy to implement to big ideas that require extensive work and funding. Big ideas have included our Vantage program, TonkaOnline, Minnetonka Science Research Center and Tonka Codes program. Numerous smaller ideas have started from this process as well such as moving school picture day to be the same day as open house before school begins and another to flip parent curriculum night with teacher presentations as videos online. 

Over the past six years of this innovation work, we have incorporated Human Centered Design in the process. We begin with empathy, working to imagine the needs and feelings of those whom the idea and/or change will help. Then we brainstorm ideas and mock ups or prototypes, talking through the possibilities and solving for potential problems. Finally, the idea is tested and revised in the implementation phase. 

Students' ideation around problems and
opportunities to solve at school.

As part of her quarter long STEM Class, teacher Sara Hunt taught her students this human centered design process. Students learned to identify a problem and use empathy to identify possible problems and opportunities. They then worked on brainstorming possible solutions. As you can see in the video, the students looked at an issue affecting all of their classmates: the impact of homework. They used empathy and ideation, and then used the same software that our staff use for our innovation idea hunt to vote on ideas. This helped them find the main themes and areas of interest as they worked on possible solutions to lessen the impact of homework. 

You can read more about this innovation process, some of the past ideas that have been developed, and some related reflections below: 

• Minnetonka Schools: Innovation is Now Our Strategic Plan
• Minnetonka Schools Innovation
• Systematic Innovation: The Top 4 of 40 Inventive Principles to Solve Problems
• The Mindset of Innovation: 5 Behaviors for Accelerating Breakthroughs
• Accelerating Changes Needed in Education
• Minnetonka Research: An In Depth, Highly Advanced High School Research Program
• Tonka Online High School Starting Year Five with 40+ Courses & 1200+ Students
• Why Teach Coding? Same Reasons to Teach Writing Even When Not All Students Will Be Writers
• Minnetonka Top 100+ Ideas for 1:1 Integration in 5th grade, English, Math, Science, Social Studies, and World Language