Jiang China Design: leading a design boot camp internationally
My Role
I mentored students for the inaugural program in Hangzhou, China and taught the fundamentals of human centered design.
About
Jiang China Design is an international design bootcamp educating college students in China on design thinking through community projects.
Skills
Start-up | Education | Mentoring | Human Centered Design | Facilitation
Context
Inaugural year of Jiang China Design
Image description: Bird’s-eye view of a room filled with teams of students talking with prototyping materials on their tables.
Jiang China Human Centered Design Challenge is a two-week bootcamp and competition for Chinese college students across disciplines. Students leave empowered with the toolkit and mindset of human centered design, so they can apply what they learned to create innovative solutions to social challenges within their communities. The program’s ultimate goal is to initiate the human centered design thinking movement among college students in China, who have the potential to serve as a new generation of Chinese social architects.
Students spent two weeks learning design thinking by tackling real-life challenges in China. By the end of the bootcamp, each team presented their tested design concept to industry professionals, and were encouraged to continue their project afterwards.
I mentored students during the inaugural year of the program.
Image description: Picture of a woman speaking with a microphone to a room of people at tables. Whiteboard with post-its behind her and woman standing near her.
project scoping + Lesson planning
Remote project scoping from 7000 miles away
I was one of the five mentors from the United States sent to China to teach 36 Chinese college students. We used local social challenges as opportunities to teach human centered design. The leadership of Jiang China Design decided to define 6 projects for students around West Lake, a site similar to a state park. Scoping the project involved a combination of online research and impromptu work in China to give the best experience to students.
Image description: Walkway near water with trees; Hangzhou, China
Image description: Street view in Shanghai filled with people and buildings in the background.
Image description: Scenic view of greenery, bridge, and mountains in the background
the program
Design process to solve complex problems
Facilitating design thinking with 36 college students demanded not only leadership, but also initiative, creativity, and the ability to communicate a passion about using engineering design to solve complex problems.
Image description: Graphic of the design process for this program: researching, immersing, brainstorming, prototyping, pivoting, and pitching
Developing new mindsets
Students worked through each step of the design process throughout the 2-week boot camp. My role was to help students think without constraints and test ideas without the risk of failure. My challenge was to strengthen, develop and stretch the students’ abilities and arm them with a problem-solving tool set that they could apply to other problems.
How do you make tea? Adapted “Draw Toast” activity from Gamestorming. Image description: Drawings of the steps to make tea in pen
We used this activity to show how in a process different team members look at processes and challenges differently. Image description: Drawings of the steps to make tea in blue sharpie
How do you make tea? Image description: Drawings of the steps to make tea in green sharpie
Preparing for user research and adapting on-site
I was working closely with two teams working on mobility and child safety around West Lake. After conducting secondary research, we had the students begin user research at the project location.
We helped students find their gaps in knowledge, so they could gain insights by talking with people around the lake. Prepared with questions and best practices for interviewing in hand, the students set off to begin their qualitative research.
Image description: Bird’s-eye view of groups talking around whiteboards
Image description: Teams of students working with a projected screen behind them
Image description: Group of 4 people standing and talking outside with a tree behind them
Half way through the day I discussed with my teams their progress and frustrations. They were having difficulty getting people to talk to them and give critical comments. I had mistakenly made the assumption that visitors to West Lake would be openly critical and give feedback about their concerns. However, it is uncommon in Chinese culture to be critical or negative if you are a visitor. Therefore I had to work with the students to restructure their questions to be more direct rather than open ended. Also, I gave the students directions on how to observe and what to look for. Were people struggling with their children? How? Where? Why?
Establishing rules of brainstorming and prototyping
There are common rules of brainstorming as a group — quantity over quality, no ideas are bad ideas, be visual, and think outside the box. As a mentor, I worked to get the students thinking beyond the possible.
When brainstorming and prototyping solutions, the teams would discuss and immediately begin listing reasons why the proposed solution wouldn't work. As a mentor I worked with teams to shift their traditional thinking to a “what if?” mentality.
Image description: People working on the floor to build cardboard prototypes with students behind them working at tables.
Image description: Drawing of an umbrella, chair and child carrier.
As part of the mentor team, one of our responsibilities was to create and facilitate morning activities. During one warm-up activity, I got a quick and frustrated response that redesigning the umbrella is an impossible task! I reassured the student that the possibilities are endless, and we began to identify problems we find when using an umbrella such as walking with another person while holding an umbrella or trying to push a stroller while holding an umbrella. Problem identification, and support to think creatively, was the little nudge she needed to dive into prototyping a “two person umbrella.”
Creating a design process guide
Students often frantically took notes during instructors and mentor lessons. In collaboration with another mentor, we developed a process guide filled with resources for each step of the design process as a takeaway for the students’ future projects.
Image description: Group of 14 people standing and smiling together. Front row of people holding Jiang China Design paper awards