I love the design thinking process. David and Tom Kelley developed it for the Stanford Joint Program in Design, IDEO, and the Hass Planter Institute for Design (d.school). The d.school has a generous online library of information, highly recommended.  The Stanford d.school process has given me tools for expanding empathy and creativity. It has given me methods for clarifying, analyzing, expressing, and moving forward with both gathered information and creative outpourings. The rhythm of expansion and clarification has become part of how my mind works. I want my community of kids to have these tools. I want them to move forward in their lives with empathy, creativity, and power. 

Has it worked? One of my students this summer turned to me wide eyed and said "We had SO many ideas now! We started with nothing, and now we have SO many GOOD ideas, it is amazing." Yes! We did think up a whole raft of ideas, and the students had placed almost all of them into the upper right quadrant - the place for ideas that were both "sparkly" and "actionable." While they learned how to expand their creativity I learned some truths about their lives that I think are pretty universal.

In the summer of 2017 I taught a design thinking workshop for CoachArt. The CoachArt students were children with terminal illnesses and their siblings. Our assignment was to do the preliminary design for the CoachArt "Kids' Corner." Instead of entertaining games or diversions, the students wanted their kids' corner to connect the community. They wanted to share their hobbies and interests with each other and be noticed, valued, and belong. From this finding, they brainstormed over 20 ways that the site could do this, as well as new services CoachArt could offer that would meet these particular needs. 

Also during the summer of 2017 I got to help two organizations with their design thinking events. I learned at the Design Farm's one day Designing for World Piece held at the Tech Museum, and at the two day Stanford Mental Health Innovation Challenge, that our community of teenagers are deep thinking, hard working, sophisticated, team oriented, and altruistic. I was impressed with the breadth of thought, and strong communication styles at the dFarm event, where I served as a "Design Ninja" dipping in help all teams as needed. At the Stanford event I was inspired by the quality of teamwork and the honesty of thought I saw in the team I coached. I think that if we adults can find a way to support and encourage our teens to envision and execute their own social good projects the world will benefit. If you have a teen who's heart and mind is up to the task I recommend Doing Good Well, by Nina Vasan. It is a great resource guide for young people wanting to make a difference. 

At the Palo Alto Art Center in the Spring 2017 my students and I partnered with the Sierra Club to design teen-resonant climate change messaging. After empathetic interviews the class concluded that:  teens learn best by teaching, social setting and social acceptance are powerful, and online social sites have a strong pull for the girls and a lesser, but still significant, pull for boys.  Turning these ideas into a deftly insightful design, many of the student teams suggested that the Sierra Club encourage climate change themed teen-made memes (captioned photos). I had not appreciated memes until this moment, but now I value them because their simplicity and uniformity lowers the barrier to authorship, reduces the risk of community criticism for the author, and increases their suitability for online transfer. Memes fit the needs of their users perfectly and may be a good tool for the Sierra Club to use for messaging, as long as those messages are made by the teens themselves.