Design Thinking for the Greater Good

by Jeanne Liedtka

  In the next two chapters, we will follow the educators at GCCA as they tackle their very first design thinking challenge: how to reduce the dropout rate. The GCCA team utilized the four-question process in its entirety and captured each step in a set of templates provided in The Designing for Growth Field Book—and generously offered to share them with you. Their work is an excellent example of the design thinking process in motion.

  Armed with nothing more than an online course to teach them how and a commitment to improving the experience of their students, they successfully introduced design thinking to GCCA. In chapters 13 and 14, they share not only the process and the works in progress they created along the way but also their emotional journey.

  So let’s meet Joan and her team.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Four-Question Methodology in Action: Laying the Foundation

  In our four-question, fifteen-step design thinking methodology, almost half of the process is spent laying the foundation for innovation, before we even get to idea generation. For those with an Innovation I mindset, where brainstorming ideas (step 8 in our approach) comes first, this gradual on-ramp can be tough to accept. But the groundwork we lay in steps 1 through 7 is the reason why creative ideas show up when we are ready for them in step 8. To better understand how this works in practice, let’s look at the process in action.

  Gateway College and Career Academy in Riverside, California, is an early-college charter high school for students who have dropped out or fallen significantly behind in their credits toward high school graduation. A Gates Foundation–sponsored initiative, the Gateway program addresses a serious problem: every year, an estimated 1.3 million students in the United States drop out of high school. Lacking a high school diploma, these youth face well-documented prospects of low wages and limited opportunities. Gateway’s mission is to offer a second chance to these students, to help them succeed academically, and to prepare them for a more promising future. The Gateway program, begun in 2004, is nationally known.

  At GCCA, students attend school on a college campus and enter as a cohort to complete an intensive foundation term together, after which they enroll in high school and college classes, which are double-counted toward high school and community college degrees. In this story, an interdisciplinary team of educators at GCCA, led by Joan Wells, uses the design thinking process to identify a problem scope with creative potential; to engage a diverse set of students, faculty, and staff in the conversation; to curate critical insights; and to align the team behind an array of solutions, all with the goal of keeping at-risk students in school. In this chapter, we follow the GCCA team as they work through steps 1 to 7 of our fifteen-step process. These early steps lay the foundation for their idea generation and testing process (steps 8 to 15), which we examine in depth in chapter 14.

  We first met Joan in a Coursera MOOC (massive online open course) that provides a high-level overview of design thinking that we have taught to almost two hundred thousand students, beginning in fall 2013. Intrigued by the potential of design thinking in the education sector, Joan joined us for the inaugural run of a more detailed, step-based course that Darden began offering in June 2014. She has worked closely with us ever since, becoming a skilled facilitator in the four-question methodology and acting as a senior mentor to students in our online offerings.

  Back in 2013, design thinking was new to Joan and her colleagues at GCCA, but she was already committed to learner-centered strategies at Riverside College and had been part of the initial GCCA planning team. Joan joined GCCA’s board in October 2013 and was asked to focus on output measures. As she learned more about the method, she realized that using design thinking to look for ways to address one of education’s thorniest issues—reconnecting disengaged youth to high school diplomas—would be a natural fit.

  Gateway programs throughout the country serve an extremely diverse student population, and the one in Riverside is no exception. Students there range in age from sixteen to twenty-one, with an average age at entry of seventeen. Reflecting the school’s Southern California location, nearly two-thirds of students self-identify as Hispanic/Latino, 20 percent as white, and 9 percent as African American. Most enter GCCA significantly behind in high school credits and are well on their way to leaving school. Reasons for their disengagement vary, ranging from challenges associated with transitioning to high school and navigating adolescence (like bullying, gender identity, and pregnancy) to personal and family crises. Many disengage from their high school experience when they sense that others, including their teachers, don’t believe in them. As described on the Gateway to College National Network website:

  Every Gateway to College student has a unique story about how they came to the program. Some students found themselves out of school and in need of another opportunity to complete their degree and pursue a postsecondary credential. Others found that their traditional high school setting did not provide the holistic support they needed to be successful. All of our graduates share stories that are a testament to the power of hard work, perseverance, and support from caring adults.

  In 2014, the GCCA program in Riverside celebrated its tenth anniversary while facing new challenges: a leadership transition from its founders; enrollment issues; changes in the California Education Code, which mandated greater on-campus seat times for students; and an expanded mission. In 2013, the school sought and received authorization as a charter school from the Riverside County Office of Education, which enabled the school to expand to multiple sites within the Riverside Community College District.

  Lower-than-desired retention rates led to continuous pressure to find new students. This raised several questions for GCCA leadership. Had recruitment efforts inadvertently positioned the early-college high school as a less rigorous experience than it was designed to be? Was GCCA increasingly attracting the students who were furthest behind, and were some not ready to engage academically? Were they finding the students for whom the program had been designed, and were these students succeeding? All of these issues had implications for GCCA’s mission, its program design, and its commitment to the community.

  In March 2014, the new GCCA leadership team—interim director Miguel Contreras and dean of instruction Kathleen Bywater—joined forces with Joan Wells and Shelagh Camak, vice president of workforce and resource development. Each brought a passionate commitment to enhancing their learner-centered focus. Shelagh, with extensive experience in program and service design for nontraditional students, was the primary designer of Riverside’s Gateway model. Together, the team focused first on the school’s recruitment pipeline. As Joan explained:

  For this learner population, we can be very successful at bringing students in, but keeping them in is always a challenge. So the problem I was invited to help the team work with is one of recruitment: using our recruitment process to enable their success. We don’t screen to select the best students or those facing the fewest challenges. We don’t want to achieve success that way. Our model is to bring students in and then build a holistic counseling structure around them …These are great, smart students, but they’re dealing with a lot of stuff in life. We don’t do students a favor if we bring them in and not support them. They have to do the work.

  Initially, the project was expected to be primarily analytic, using the wealth of data already available to the team to illuminate the academy’s “funnel” numbers: How were students coming in? Where and why were they falling out? What were the issues?

  Design Thinking Enters the Picture

  The GCCA team struggled as they worked to make sense of the sea of data on the subject. Initial measures didn’t always make sense to the team. Data were collected and entered into systems by three external entities: California’s community college system, the state’s K–12 system, and the Gateway to College National Network. By design, each of these systems reflected different assumptions about structure, regulatory environment, and policy arena. As the team reviewed standard repor
ts generated by these systems, they realized that they were dealing not only with multiple measures but also with different field, cohort, and outcome definitions. None of the systems truly captured the outreach and applicant experiences, nor did they meaningfully capture students’ reasons for leaving or not engaging. It was difficult to decipher what was actually happening with students as they were recruited, enrolled, and progressed, or as they left the program. Even when reasons were coded, they weren’t at a level that provided insights. And because of the changes in the California Education Code, it was not even clear that past program data would be a good predictor of the future.

  As Joan learned more about Darden’s four-question structured approach to design thinking, she found that its four questions and fifteen steps helped her to look through a new lens at the challenges that GCCA faced. She encouraged the GCCA team to consider using the new approach:

  As we worked, it became clear that we really needed to go back to the learners and look at who we are reaching, what’s the message that they’re getting out there, what’s our message to the community college and to the various counselors at the high schools, so that we’re actually bringing in students that not only have the skill set to begin the foundation term but also really understand the day-to-day commitments of attending and turning in work. We needed to do some creative thinking and we knew that. While we definitely had a rich understanding of what the issues were that students faced, we needed to look for additional insights that we might not see because we’re in the trenches. And we knew that we needed to experiment a lot, because the answers just are not there. It’s not like we can go to a best practice and pull it off the shelf.

  To Joan and the GCCA team, the issues seemed made for a design thinking approach. The team ordered The Designing for Growth Field Book, which laid out the fifteen steps and offered a series of templates to walk the learner through the process. Serendipitously, Joan received an e-mail announcing Darden’s new in-depth online course. After consulting with Shelagh, Joan enrolled in the course. The team adopted a modified train-the-trainer model, using The Designing for Growth Field Book and Joan’s course experience to supplement the team’s project work. They decided to give the systematic process a try on their funnel challenge.

  At the Beginning: Before the Four Questions

  As many of our stories in part 2 demonstrated, one of the biggest contributions of design thinking is to hold us in the problem space long enough to develop the kind of deeper insights into the problem that foster more creative ideas later on. Joan knew this to be true, and before even beginning to address the first question of the What is stage, she and her team committed to a series of discussions aimed at ensuring that they had the right kind of problem for design thinking, a scope that would give them an actionable result, a clear, shared sense of what the project entailed and who should be involved, and a research plan to get them there.

  Step 1: Identify an Opportunity

  Not all problems lend themselves to design thinking. If you are sure that you understand the problem and have good data to solve it with, then use it! Save design thinking for Innovation II–type problems—those where you don’t have good data, where you worry that you may be solving the wrong problem, or where multiple stakeholders can’t seem to agree even on what the problem actually is, much less on solutions to it. Save design thinking for areas of high uncertainty—areas where real human beings aren’t making the choices we’d like them to make and existing approaches and solutions aren’t working. Remember that design thinking is not a one-size-fits-all solution; it is best for certain types of problems.

  What we call “tame” problems lend themselves to traditional Innovation I approaches, in which we can agree on a definition of the issue, identify alternative existing solutions, and compare the proposed solutions for cause and effect to arrive at a best answer. Messy, wicked problems, however, often have a lot of data, but it’s debatable whether the data are actually relevant and cause-and-effect relationships are difficult to predict. Usually, when you find yourself questioning your own definition of the issue, you’re looking at a good choice for a design thinking approach.

  Joan and her team worked through a list of questions in The Designing for Growth Field Book to help them assess whether the challenge was suited to a design thinking approach. The answers confirmed their initial thoughts. Their issue was clearly human centered—that is, a deep understanding of the learners and other key stakeholders, such as faculty and counselors, was essential to success. Though they had hunches about the nature of the problem, the team faced many unknowns and many interdependent aspects, and they felt the need to explore the problem itself more, another indicator of design thinking’s relevance. The team also had substantial data—almost too much—but only a limited frame-work to guide their analysis and interpretation. Finally, a new leadership team was supportive of trying a different approach.

  To begin the project and build understanding, Joan got permission from Darden to share a set of readings and a video of design thinking in practice at a Danish meals-on-wheels program, available for free on the Design@Darden website, which she thought would resonate with the team. By May, the data project had officially transitioned into a design thinking project using the four-question, fifteen-step methodology. GCCA’s dean of students, Robin Acosta, joined Joan, Shelagh, Miguel, and Kathleen on the team.

  Kathleen found the start-up of the process exhilarating: “I was very high when we very first started. I was excited. I was learning so much!” Joan, as team facilitator of the design process, felt similar excitement, but also anxiety:

  As the project started, I thought we were on a path to something, but there was a question—is this the right path? Can we do it? We’re exploring terrain that nobody else has figured out either, as we try to find the better solution for these learners. The school was already staffed with very competent professionals, so it wasn’t that anyone was doing anything wrong. The question was “What else are we missing?”

  Question

  Design thinking is appropriate if:

  Linear analytic methods may be better if:

  Is the problem human-centered? Deep understanding of the learners and other humans (HS counselors, parents, GCCA personnel, etc.) is necessary and possible.

  How clearly do we understand the problem itself? We have some knowledge, instincts and hunches. We need to explore and reach agreement on appropriate action.

  What’s the level of uncertainty? There are many unknowns as well as significant program model changes. We need to bring in data on past pipeline experience but due to model change these may not predict the future.

  What’s the degree of complexity? There are many connecting and interdependent facets to pipeline. It is hard to know where to start, so we’ve selected a focus on the beginning of the pipeline (to completion). Quantitative analytic methods, though necessary, have not been sufficient in solving similar problems.

  What data is already available to you? There is a wealth of unanalyzed data but a limited framework to guide analysis and interpretation. We have data, but still need to validate it and adopt a framework(s) for analysis.

  What’s your level of curiosity and influence? Leadership is highly interested in exploring and willing to assist. Leadership includes director, academic and support services deans, and CC VP overseeing Gateway day to day. We will have to follow some routine and mandated processes. However, as a Charter School, we might be able to adopt significant variations to improve outcomes.

  Step 1: Questions to identify an opportunity.

  This kind of anxiety is not unusual at the start of a design thinking project. We are stepping into the unknown, and all but the most intrepid Geoffreys among us tend to experience a mix of excitement and concern. Years ago, as we started to teach the design thinking approach, we felt the same way. Time, however, has taught us to trust the process (as Dr. Don Campbell at Monash Medical Centre reminded us earlier).

  Shel
agh and Joan were mindful of the new leadership and the potential that the design thinking process might hold:

  One of our goals was to break the team out of the trenches—help them get to that thirty-thousand-foot view—to move a bit away from the accountability culture that you have in K–12, to more of an inquiry and assessment culture.

  Convinced that design thinking was right for them, the GCCA team moved to step 2, scoping their project.

  Step 2: Scope Your Project

  The next challenge the team faced was how to frame the specific opportunity they wanted to pursue. They were looking for something that seemed actionable and that would generate interest among the stakeholders they needed to engage to tackle the issue.

  This step is critical, even for teams that believe they already have the perfect scope identified. In step 2, the conversation gets the diversity of team members’ views out into the open and begins the essential work of aligning them around a shared view of their stakeholders’ reality, which we have seen as critical to success in many of the stories in part 2. Communication problems get in the way of innovation when everyone assumes that others experience the situation in the same way. Even if we all speak the same formal language, every noun and verb has a different connotation, forming a different image in each human’s brain. The more perspectives are spelled out, and the more visualizations a team produces, the more the team members can be confident that they are talking about the same thing.