Big Final Group project - Chatty Susan
In our leading with others class, we spent an approximate time of 2 months to plan and carry out a project that solves a need in our school.
Our very first steps were done as a class: identifying the needs for change in UWC ISAK Japan. After listing a number of issues that need to be solved, we voted upon the best ones: language barrier, non-judgement and embrace relationship between grade levels.
Our group has 3 members: An (me), Shota and Itoshi because we all want to work on the need of embracing relationship between grade levels.
Before we did anything, we carried out a survey and face-to-face interviews with a lot of people to verify if our belief was true and how people feel about this issue.
The third step that we carried out was creating a HOW MIGHT WE STATEMENT
(HMW). “How might we” (HMW) questions are short questions that launch brainstorms. HMWs fall out of your point-of-view statement or design principles as seeds for your ideation. Create a seed that is broad enough that there are a wide range of solutions but narrow enough that the team has some helpful boundaries. -Stanford Crowd Research Collective.
After a few hours of discussion as shown in this document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L90knxXnEA_zl5NTE3tfic6ttYO0hDQj48yREwL_HK8/edit , we decided upon our final HMW statement:
"How might we help ISAK students who feel inadequately connected with other grade levels to bond with each other through engaging and non-time-consuming activities and improve their social assumptions ?"
With the solid HMW statement established, we started on ideating. We aimed for a number of ideas in a limited amount of time to let our imagination run wild.
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We build a lot of models to see if some of our chosen ideas work out. First, we have Shota's model with a toothpick and a piece of cardboard for a wheel that spins, but it was very unstable. We also have another model of a dartboard where people can shoot toothpick onto it.
However, our last prototype was the most successful:
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We tested it out the next week we finished the prototype for some feedback. We received some valuable comments for the prototype:
- It is very easy to understand and it helps a lot in fostering communications. Whenever the table feels awkward, you just spin the wheel again and find a new topic.
- Maybe you can print the instructions on the side so we are not confused at first.
- You can make it more visually attractive as it is more fun to play.
VIDEO OF HOW IT WORKS.