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Kate McCallum
CEP 817
Spring 2017
Final Reflection Paper

This semester I have been spending a great deal of time thinking about the design process. I

didnt expect, in fact, to be spending so much time thinking about it. Everywhere I turn, I am

now finding myself criticizing or commending things which seem to ultimately stem from poor

or great design decisions.

It is from this that I reflect on the overall course and what I have learned in total about design.

Seemingly, my thoughts keep getting grouped into the two categories which we explored: good

design and bad design.

Before this course, I had a decent knowledge of the design process in a very literal sense. As a

journalism major, I took courses in layout design and video production, and this ultimately was

what I taught for a majority of my first 10 years in teaching. Late nights and many hours were

spent as a student, and then as an advisor on deadlines making infographics, page layouts, etc.

We used technology to help make things beautiful, but the most important objective was always

to make the reader more engaged with our work.

I found that as years passed and the more engaged I became with design, the more I began to

crave it. I could no longer whip up a test for my general English classes without designing it. I
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would create a layout to make it easier to navigate, or better suited to students. I constantly

toyed with contrast, alignment, proximity, repetition I wanted everything to be beautiful, but

also user friendly. Likewise, I wanted this experience for myself. I found myself craving to be

engaged both visually, and also be able to have the ease in navigation within my own learning

and living. When staff handouts and tutorials/trainings were given, I felt myself cringe as I

craved better design. I found it hard not notice time and space that was designed inefficiently, or

worse, not designed at all.

In all of this have come to the conclusion that designed thinking is ultimately shaped in human

experience. Therefore, good design means that the user experience is also good, or at least that

should be the goal of the designer.

One of the major documents we focused on was the Stanford d.schools Bootcamp Bootleg. I

loved this pdf. First, it was designed in such a user friendly way. Second, if read closely, it was

full of lots of real world insight and put into words what many designed thinkers do. It had a

nice way of summing up this idea of shared human experience.

In describing empathy it says,

The stories that people tell and the things that people say they do--even if they are
different than the things that they actually do--are strong indicators of their deeply held
beliefs of the way the world is. Good designs are built on a solid understanding of these
kinds of beliefs and values.
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I believe this to be so true. Each learner brings a whole world of conceptions along with him/her

and we often forget these. As difficult as it is to adopt a new piece of knowledge, many dont

realize that in fact we as teachers are instead often redesigning knowledge--taking what

students come with, adding to it, keeping the good stuff, and restructuring the broken or missing

pieces so to speak. In order to be successful designers though, we must first understand this

complicated, overall process.

This reminds me of some research I had studied in the past1. In one of my previous classes we

read Why Students Dont Like School by Daniel T. Willingham (2009). In the book, Willingham

describes educational phenomenons like - students remembering all the unimportant stuff and

forgetting the big things like actual due dates. It describes the brain and how we get

information/knowledge from short term or working memory into the long term memory. Much

of what Willingham argued was that teachers dont often realize what the Bootcamp Bootleg

points out--that an educator must first possess this process of knowledge transfer and the fact that

the transfer will include a transfer or redesign of these steadfast beliefs and values. It does not

suggest that this is easy, it just reiterates that the learner is also a human and that

memory/learning to the brain is a system of experiences---good and bad.

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See Fig. 1.
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Fig. 1. This video illustrates a visual summary of CH. 3 in Daniel T. Willinghams Why students
Dont Like School. It reiterates the brain -based approach that learning only occurs
in conjunction with previous thoughts, and not separately. I made it in collaboration
with other MAET classmates.

Understanding how humans interact and learn is vital to being a good designer. In the course we

described at as being empathetic and spent one module on it. However, I feel overall that it is

maybe the most influential in my own work and teaching.

In the beginning module of this course, in the lecture, it stated:

One of the reasons that discussion is so important in CEP 817 stems from an idea
discussed by the noted design thinker, philosopher, and author Donald Schon. Schon
talks about design as being "a conversation". Of course it is both a product and a process
too. But it's also a conversation -- a conversation between a designer and his or her
materials, between users and artifacts, between science and art, between affordances and
constraints. As we hope you will see, design is an iterative and conversational process.
So, we hope to spark conversation on the topic in which you can fully participate.
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Having been now at both ends of the designing process (as a designer and as a learner) I really

am beginning to understand the idea that true learning is this ongoing iterative conversation

formed in our own reality and in our own lives. Although often compartmentalized in our brains,

they are not separate. Knowing such, I have come to change my own ways of approaching

design. I now understand why people use the phrase designed thinking-- design, to me, is

more a way of life than one act. As such, I now firmly believe that anything can be designed.

IN PRACTICE

I have now been able to appreciate good design as a learner and use this design thinking

approach for my own teaching. For example, the modules set up in this course were designed.

There were 7 of them, each with about 2 weeks to work and with assignments due at midnight on

Sundays. I have had other courses set up much differently. I can assume that the due dates were

based on the empathetic notion that we need weekends, and often late nights to work ( I have an

infant at home, I teach full time, I coach, etc.). Ive taken what I appreciate from these designs

and incorporated them into my own teaching. For example, I utilize a Google Classroom account

that allows me to provide some of this same flexibility for my students ( I usually make turn-ins

due at 9 p.m.). Already, students and parents have welcomed this approach. Kids are actually

turning more in and are feeling that there is not only a fairness, but that I get it. This has

increased motivation and increased my relationship with them. I find that every assignment I

make, now has a more designed approach.

Other ways I have used design are in my total process of lesson planning. I can attribute much of

this to what I have experienced as a learner in the MAET courses. The designed approach in my

own online classes have allowed me to experience things from a student perspective and I have

been able to appreciate even very small design decisions. For example, I really liked when one of

my classes used a learn, play, reflect approach and set up to each module or unit. This course

had a lecture, lab, POP. Although different for each class, we had distinct, labeled parts and these

parts were repeated throughout the course. What this design allowed was a reduced anxiety

environment. Instead of wasting energy on trying to figure out what needed to be done or turned

in each time, I felt I had a clear expectation and could focus on the new idea being presented. I

have now used this empathetic design approach in my own planning. I too, try and use distinct

approaches in my classes and units--that I can repeat all year long. I have had very similar

feedback - that it is easier because students know what to expect and what is expected of them

in each portion.

These are just a few examples, but the main point is that I am now comfortable moving fluidly

between the two dimensions: learner and teacher. Or, user and designer. This is professional

progress, to me.

I believe this is what one of our course readings authors Kouprie & Visser (2009) were trying

to convey. They stated:

When observing the user in the users environment, the designer stays beside the user.
One reason is that the designer is aware of his intervention in the users context and has
a researchers role to play. By, e.g. role-playing, the designer can become the user for a
moment.
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I feel like I have role-played so much now that I can truly empathize and make productive

progress in my lessons. I have also taught for 10 years now, so this has put me in a very literal

sense, next to the users. Furthermore the authors state:

The designer detaches from his emotional connection in order to become in the helpful
mode with increased understanding. The designer steps back into the role of designer
and makes sense of the users world. By stepping back out to reflect, he can deploy the
new insights for ideation (Kouprie & Visser, 2009)

This course overall has aided in my connection with students and allowed me to realize what

good design can do for the overall experience of a learner. It should feel good to learn and

design can really help with that, I believe. From this, so much else grows in the classroom. If

students are comfortable and open to rather than anxious about their experience, then real

learning can stem. I saw this especially in my problem of practice. Kids began to converse with

me, write me e-mails and more. It showed that many had an interest again in the process of their

learning, which was my ultimate goal.

Lastly, I feel this same connection with design in my life. The more I can use it to open up my

own creativity and experience then the wiser I also become. Likewise the experience of those

who interact with me also gain. I am more open to things as a process, and more open to trying

things knowing that they might just be a prototype, or a test. Each has shown great promise and I

hope to continue working on the overall designed thinking approach.

My only negative feedback was that this whole approach and process took SO MUCH TIME.

Part of this problem was due to the fact that my students hadnt really used this approach either
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and therefore they took longer to transition and to concede to my seemingly crazy demands. In

future tries, I seek to find ways to streamline the process. Also, if I was able to start this process

style earlier or at the beginning of the year that may help too.
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Bootcamp Bootleg [PDF]. (2015). D.school: Institute of Design at Stanford University.

Kouprie, M., & Visser, F. S. (2009). A framework for empathy in design: stepping into and out
of the user's life.
Journal of Engineering Design,20(5), 437-448. doi:10.1080/09544820902875033

Willingham, D. T. (2010) Why Don't Students Like School?, in Why Don't Students Like
School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and
What It Means for the Classroom, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, USA. doi:
10.1002/9781118269527