Design Thinking and Identifying a Problem Have you ever looked around your bedroom and imagined ways to make the space more functional or stylish Or maybe you have a great idea for solving an organizational problem in your classroom that your teacher has been having If so you might be an inventor Inventors are people with ideas and a plan for making those ideas a reality One way to transform a great idea into an invention that solves real problems is to apply a process called design thinking Design thinking is a series of steps that inventors take to identify a problem learn about it and create and test solutions until they get it right In this book we will apply the design thinking process to build a better locker Why spend time on designing a better locker Because school lockers are an important part of your learning environment the one space in school that you can call your own Since lockers in your school are all the same and students are all different odds are that the lockers in your school could be doing more to make your and your classmates days run smoothly How you ask Well that is up to you Every student has different needs preferences and abilities Perhaps your locker is too small for 4 CHAPTER ONE
Stacked lockers with less storage space will require different solutions from those that are full-height 5
All your school supplies must be able to fit in your locker plus your coat and any after-school equipment everything you need to keep in it This might be especially true if you share your locker Or maybe your life is very busy and you need to have quick access to certain things and digging around your locker wastes precious time Or perhaps you know a classmate with limited mobility and you’d like to help make their locker more accessible Maybe you think the way lockers are designed is altogether wrong and you want to try designing one from scratch Identifying the problem or problems you want to solve is step one in the design thinking process 6
Try This In the next chapter you will do research make observations and conduct interviews Try coming up with a question or two that you hope to answer with your research For example What one thing would most students change about their lockers or How do students keep their lockers orga nized or How might we make a locker more accessible to students in wheelchairs The question you choose to focus on will be your working hypothesis as you begin the design thinking process Also right at the beginning is a good time to put together your design team Inventing is a collaborative process and you will be thankful for your partners insights and skills 7
