Context

Launching the inaugural year of Jiang China Design

Jiang China Human Centered Design Challenge is a two-week bootcamp and competition in Hangzhou, China for college students across disciplines. Students leave empowered with the toolkit and mindset of human centered design, so they can apply what they learned to create innovative solutions to social challenges within their communities. The program’s ultimate goal is to initiate the human centered design thinking among college students from China, who have the potential to serve as a new generation of human-centered social architects.

Students spent two weeks learning design thinking by tackling real-life challenges in the area. By the end of the bootcamp, each team presented their tested design concept to industry professionals, and were encouraged to continue their project afterwards.

I mentored students during the inaugural year of the program.

Project scoping + Lesson planning

Remote project scoping from 7000 miles away

I was one of the five mentors from the United States who traveled to China to teach 36 college students. We used local social challenges as opportunities to teach human centered design. The leadership of Jiang China Design decided to define 6 projects for students around West Lake, a site similar to a state park. Scoping the project involved a combination of online research and impromptu work in the area to give the best experience to students. 

The program

Design process to solve complex problems

Facilitating design thinking with 36 college students demanded not only leadership, but also initiative, creativity, and the ability to communicate a passion about using engineering design to solve complex problems. 

Developing new mindsets

Students worked through each step of the design process throughout the 2-week boot camp. My role was to help students think without constraints and test ideas without the risk of failure. My challenge was to strengthen, develop and stretch the students’ abilities and arm them with a problem-solving tool set that they could apply to other problems.

Preparing for user research and adapting on-site

I was working closely with two teams working on mobility and child safety around West Lake. After conducting secondary research, we had the students begin user research at the project location.

We helped students find their gaps in knowledge, so they could gain insights by talking with people around the lake. Prepared with questions and best practices for interviewing in hand, the students set off to begin their qualitative research.

Half way through the day I discussed with my teams their progress and frustrations. They were having difficulty getting people to talk to them and give critical comments. I had mistakenly made the assumption that visitors to West Lake would be openly critical and give feedback about their concerns. However, it is uncommon in the culture to be critical or negative if you are a visitor. Therefore I had to work with the students to restructure their questions to be more direct rather than open ended. Also, I gave the students directions on how to observe and what to look for. Were people struggling with their children? How? Where? Why? 

Establishing rules of brainstorming and prototyping

There are common rules of brainstorming as a group — quantity over quality, no ideas are bad ideas, be visual, and think outside the box. As a mentor, I worked to get the students thinking beyond the possible. When brainstorming and prototyping solutions, the teams would discuss and immediately begin listing reasons why the proposed solution wouldn't work. As a mentor I worked with teams to shift their traditional thinking to a “what if?” mentality.

As part of the mentor team, one of our responsibilities was to create and facilitate morning activities. During one warm-up activity, I got a quick and frustrated response that redesigning the umbrella is an impossible task! I reassured the student that the possibilities are endless, and we began to identify problems we find when using an umbrella such as walking with another person while holding an umbrella or trying to push a stroller while holding an umbrella. Problem identification, and support to think creatively, was the little nudge she needed to dive into prototyping a “two person umbrella.”

Creating a design process guide

Students often frantically took notes during instructors and mentor lessons. In collaboration with another mentor, we developed a process guide filled with resources for each step of the design process as a takeaway for the students’ future projects.