Headcoach - Design thinking @ Project Fearless
I volunteered as a Human-Centered Design teacher for young girls in Amsterdam through the NGO Project Fearless. Over the course of an 8-week workshop, I taught the fundamentals of Human-Centered Design, guiding the girls to address a local issue. This hands-on project resulted in a simple yet impactful solution, demonstrating the power of design thinking in creating meaningful change.
Facing fears
I was very excited to join this volunteering project since I know very well how the fear of feeling "not good enough". Showing these young girls how they can overcome this way of thinking, and create practical, impactful solutions for something they're passionate about. That's why we started the first class with writing down any fear or insecurities we are all facing. After, we focused on solutions for these fears, to show that there is nothing to be afraid of. This way, we ensured the girls were bonding and supporting eachother. It was great to see every girl had different characters, but were vulnarable and helping eachother without judgement.
Design thinking
Afterwards we focused on Design thinking. Human-centered design thinking is a problem-solving approach focused on users. I like how applicable and agile this approach is, with the user always at it's center. With Human-centered design there are 5 steps which I taught the girls:
1. Discovery of issues
2. Defining their needs
3. Ideating solutions
4. Prototyping by crafting
5. Testing with real feedback.
1. Discovery
In the Discovery phase we let the girls think about any problems they could think of, whether they made sense or not. After, we filtered these problems into "realistic", "solvable", "time" etc. The girls noticed that there was a problem with refugee children having difficulty connecting with Dutch children. So through this exercise we decided on "How we can the refugee children make friends with the Dutch children?"
2. Defining
We were fortunate to have connections with refugee parents and children whom the girls were able to interview for the second part of the process. The girls really learned how to empathize with the user by asking the right questions through our guidance and truly define the problem.
3. Ideate
Afterwards we started with the ideate phase, the brainstorm for solutions. We started by encouraging the girls to come up with the craziest and unrealistic ideas, before narrowing it down to something small, easy to apply, within time limit and budget but with big impact: a sharing game!
4. Prototyping
The fun part! The girls came up with several easy games for children to play with each other. The prototype design contained a small bag of sweets, an inviting text for children to invite each other to play and a game they can play on a piece of paper. Each of the designs also incorporated some Dutch language elements, such as the packaging or the actual game by learning Dutch words.
5. Testing
The final designs were created and several prints were made. The girls handed out their prototypes to the children of the test group to test and see if they understood the purpose, the design, the games etc. The girls learned to ask open and objective questions and were able to adopt their prototype for the final design.
Final presentation
At the end of the 8 week workshops the girls invited their family, friends and the school children for their final presentation. They were so nervous but fearless! They showed the audience the different steps of Human Design and how they implemented all the different steps of the framework to create the smallest product for the maximum impact.
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