Helping kids to think like a Designer

“Creativity is seeing what others see and thinking what no one else ever thought.”

Helping kids create a better world around them and think beyond the ordinary!

Brief

I was always involved with various organisations as a volunteer while growing up, be it school or college. I always wished to give back a share of everything that I was blessed with. While heading the CSR cell of my college I got to know Miss. Adhishree Parasnis. She was a ‘Teach for India’ fellow and wanted to start a School Of Little Designers in Pune which included her 2nd graders. These kids came from humble backgrounds and were surrounded with the hard realities of life. They could never afford education in design schools like ours. Her idea was to bring Design Thinking into the classrooms and help children solve difficult problems with quick and smart thinking. Being designers ourselves we started a group who would educate these kids with Design thinking tools and methods and help them bring their ideas to life. Since I always loved working with kids and had previous experience working with them, I was super excited to bring the ‘School of Little Designers’ to life with her.

Process

We were a group of 8 to 10 people, all from design schools and the plan was to come up with a lesson plan and start the Design thinking classes with the students. But, we definitely did not want to make them mundane and boring to keep the children constantly engaged. This was possible by letting the children be and let all their creative juices flow in each classroom activity we planned. As Design mentors, our challenge was to help them :

1. Develop their thought process.

2. Conduct workshops and classroom activities

3. Build the morale through competitions, presentations, design sprints.

4. Also, develop a love for attending school among children and helping the teachers keep them in classrooms, enabling them to lower the drop out rates.

Methodology

The children were living in difficult situations so being empathetic about that and hearing what they said was very important. We were briefed by Ms. Adhishree that they had already discussed with the children regarding the various daily hassles in their neighbourhood and the pain-points that came out were Water shortage, waste disposal issues, scarcity of basic amenities such as books, tables, chairs in the classrooms. We wanted to plan Design Thinking Challenges around these activities itself, so we got our thinking caps on and came up with the following ideas

Challenge 1 : Helping the children in spreading awareness about saving water (Project Pitter Patter)

The children had never visited a Design school.(well of course, they were just seven!) We wanted to show them where we work, our studios, workshops where we created things, what is our process when we design something, etc. So, we thought the best way to conduct the first activity would be our Design studio. We invited the students over and we spent a day with them showing them around and starting our first class. The class was about Idea generation, thinking out of the box. We focused on the pain-point of water scarcity and shortage and used it as a Problem statement. We then asked them to visualise how can they solve this problem and generate ideas on paper. We got some exciting ideas such as : using small containers to big containers to collect water when it rains (we then shared that this is also known as Rain Water harvesting). Some kids really went all in and said they would use umbrellas upside down and collect water! Since the kids were barely 7, it was difficult for them to think of very realistic ideas. But the challenge was to get them thinking! The children then presented their ideas through posters and charts to their classmates. These posters were then multiplied and used around their neighbourhood to spread awareness in the community.

Challenge 2 : Helping the community with waste disposal and importance of segregation/recycling (Project Talking Rubbish)

The children lived in densely populated areas. There were overflowing dustbins, waterborne diseases were at its peak. The mosquitos bred in the areas where waste was dumped and the cases for Malaria and Dengue were at its peak every time the monsoons arrived. The little designers really wanted to do something about this. We decided to help them by starting with a tour by the river and clean the riverbank as a Sunday activity post the Ganesh Chaturthi Visarjan (The Lord Ganesh idols are immersed in rivers post the 10 days celebration). Once they realised how important it was to spread awareness around waste segregation and using eco-friendly materials, we decided to teach them how as designers they could think about recycling and living sustainably. We conducted a workshop where we taught them how various materials such as waste bottles, cloths, cardboard could be used to create usable products. They decided they wanted to make products that other kids could use. The products they designed were then branded by them. We planned an exhibition and sale of the products designed by them at a highly popular restaurant in Pune. The children managed to make a huge sale, enough to get them new books for the entire year!

Challenge 3: Helping build a library for the school

This was more of a challenge for us more than the children! We instigated the importance of reading and showed them our library when they visited our design school and now we had to build one for them. This was not an easy feat! We were aware that there was no extra room that we could use. We visited the school multiple times to understand which space could be utilised as a library and on our visit, we once happened to reach one of the stairs that took us to the terrace (which was always locked for student’s safety). We realised that these stairs could be used to build a library and be a good starting point for the children to come read, borrow and return books and help in starting a library system for them. We were excited but also aware that resources were scarce and every extra rupee spent could be utilised towards sourcing books. Hence we kept it minimal, inviting and something that could be utilised.

Other Activities with S.O.L.D

We had multiple other competitions and design thinking exercises in the classroom that helped us teach them important skills such as team building, patience, evolving, all of which designers need. The idea was to push them as dreamers that can imagine a better way of living. But most importantly, be the doers. Doers are those who believe in change, can imagine a better way of living and are ready to take on the daunting task of “doing something about it.” We really wanted them to take something back from school each day for the life ahead of them.