Innovators Compass - Design Thinking

This week we had Ela Ben-Ur from Innovators' Compass  check them out on twitter  #innovatorscompass visit our school to kick off our Phase II of our Design Thinking Project, "Collaborative Learning Spaces" with a group of 9th grade english students from Ms Foley-Procko's class and Ms. Grigas Business Class.  The Innovators' Compass is a 
powerful tool that helps people move forward in any challenge, big or small—in one usable, shareable picture.

Thi is the passion work of Ela Ben-Ur, MIT alumna, former IDEO coach, Olin College Adjunct Assistant professor teaching courses from product design to life design, and parent - Here is an article on the process. I met Ela at MassCUE last year when she visited us in the Poster Section of the conference when we showcased our Design Thinking Project - Classroom Redesign.  I then had the privilege of connecting with hear at the SXSWedu conference in Austin last March, where she presented The Innovators Compass to a large group of educators.  I reached out to Ela to join us and we kick off the project and to introduce to the  the high school leadership team.  Prior to Ela joining the class we showed two videos. Innovators Compass About and Examples (5 minutes) along with the INNOVATORS’ COMPASS 2: GETTING UNSTUCK This 2-1/2 minute video walks how we find breakthroughs for our challenges in each Innovators’ Compass question—and will answer your questions about compass design, too!

Students came up with a few challenges to work on during our time together.  One group focus on being hungry, another tired during long block as they do not eat until fourth lunch which can be a very long stretch for them! They came up with several "experiment ideas" to pitch to the teacher.  One was to allow for a break during the long block to allow for a snack, walk or just some downtime before lunch. It was great to see the teacher allow for the experiment and reflect on the results.  It was amazing to see, if given a short amount of down time, the students were more focused during the rest of the class.


We invited administration and teacher to visit and observe us while working on the compass. As you can see from the Jamboard setup we had student and staff ideas to work on .  The important piece was to let the participants pick a topic they cared about.















We the introduced the model to the leadership team that afternoon and they had the opportunity to experience the Innovators Compass as well.




 Next month we will be designating two days for leadership to learn more about Design Think.ing and apply to leadership topics in order to move forward.

Both faculty and students left the session with using and exit ticket about what they liked about the session and ideas to improve. Imagine if we did this with students and made them reflect on their learning and provided them with a opportunity to suggest new ideas.

Each time I see Design Thinking from a variety of consults and websites I am humbled to see how much more there is to learn about the Design Thinking process/ steps (The five stages of Design Thinking, according to d.school, are as follows: Empathise, Define (the problem), Ideate, Prototype, and Test. 

We are discussing with staff and students how design thinking is a skill set to be used by all!  It's been a great way to kick off the project and I am so grateful that Ella brought her passion to our school and shared her expertise!