Design Thinking ing with a number of really passionate and talented school design / architecture teams , working with a wide array of schools with a variety of project needs and aspirations , I have seen a profound shift in how many are approaching the design process . While many of their questions still focus on easily measured / easily-priced ‘ objects ’ – square footage , materials , furniture , 3D printers , etc . – more and more of our clients are starting the design process by asking a different set of questions entirely :
• How will this process prepare our kids , teachers , and community for the ways they will teach , learn and collaborate in the future ?
• Beyond spaces , what else must we re-imagine and re-design ?
• Can the design process itself be the way our school creates and collaborates over time ?
In other words , as important as the physical spaces are , there is a rising sense that ‘ how ’ we come together to design new learning environments may be the most valuable asset of all . And perhaps even more , the spirit of wonder and curiosity – more so than theory and certainty — must be front and center at every design step along the way . While I am extremely proud of the ‘ end products ’ my WONDER team creates with our partners , I am most inspired by the ‘ messy process ’ of discovery that has become central to everything . At our founding three years ago , our WONDER studio intentionally shifted away from the traditional A & E business process of focusing on the ‘ building ’ as the end product . In its place , we invested in a human-centered , multi-disciplinary design methodology committed to uncovering what people and communities ultimately ‘ need ’ so they can thrive as learners , collaborators and human systems .
It has become less about efficiently guaranteeing predictable ‘ projects ’ that are spreadsheet-driven and more about ‘ expeditions ’ that uncover the unpredictable .
Like professional design studios IDEO and NoTosh , university programs like Stanford University ’ s d . school or MIT ’ s NuVu , or a rising number of K-12 schools like the Nueva School and Mt . Vernon , we have embraced a ‘ Design Thinking ’ process . Everything we do is anchored in ‘ empathy ’ via purposeful ethnographic methodologies and ‘ prototypes ’ via rapid development techniques to re-think and challenge all of our assumptions within every project .
In other words , we want to occupy a mindset of wonder and curiosity as long as possible . This means teaming up with film-makers , scientists , technology-entrepreneurs , policy makers , and others
“ As educators , distributors , manufacturers , school and community leaders , and designers of future learning environments , this means we are being challenged to adapt and shift on multiple fronts in order to serve our students and communities in ways we cannot possibly predict .”
that do not normally ‘ design ’ schools so that we can challenge every assumption we have .
This means not asking kids and teachers to be ‘ school designers for a day ’ via traditional workshops but instead teaming up with kids , teachers , and community partners to take on real-world design challenges beyond the project itself in order to make real community impact ( and simultaneously observing ‘ how ’ teams instinctively use spaces , tools and each other in real time ).
And it means getting involved in projects far beyond architecture to broaden our insights , whether it be organizing multi-school leadership retreats to explore the future of education , working with national foundations to create multi-year films , or leading longterm teacher professional development processes . Perhaps the process leads to a better building . Perhaps it leads to a decision not to build a building at all . Or perhaps it leads to re-imagining ‘ school ’ in ways never before imagined .
Of all of these efforts that have had the biggest impact on how our clients engage the school design process — and on us as a design firm — the most striking are the year-long / multi-yearlong teacher professional development design expeditions we regularly are asked to lead . Generally , there are three reasons why a school team makes such an investment :
• They will renovate or build in the future , so they want to amplify their educators ’ ability to solidify the non-negotiable cultural / behavioral characteristics that must underpin all future design choices .
• They have already begun the architectural process and realize that educators must now collaboratively experiment and test new behaviors in order to fully leverage emerging spaces .
• They realize that if they only design new spaces without re-thinking everything as a unified ecology — spaces , culture , brand , time , schedule , curriculum , technology , partnerships , professional practice , etc .— they will never fully realize the value of the architecture itself .
Structurally , this process focuses on the following elements :
Learning Design , Not School Architecture
As much as we want to eventually focus on the design of spaces , the focus of the teacher experience can ’ t be about solving that problem . Ideally , we can use it as a spring board , but it ’ s never the explicit focus of the overall experience . Instead we want to find the underlying questions worth exploring , whether it is agility , collaboration , professional identity , a maker culture , etc .
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