On July 17, 2015, I attended a special lecture "Practicing Innovation: Experiences and Experiments at the Stanford d.school" by lecturers from d.school of Stanford University at Tokyo Institute of Technology. It was organized by the Team-Oriented Cross Border Entrepreneur Cultivating (CBEC) program and the Academy for Global Leadership (AGL) of Tokyo Tech
This is my summary of what I learned from this lecture.
This is my summary of what I learned from this lecture.
Before the lecture, there was an introduction of CBEC program by Prof. Junichi Iijima (Head of Tokyo Institute of Technology EDGE Program). Then, the lecture started with three lecturers of d.school: Dr. David Janka, Scott Witthoft, and Thomas Both.
d.school
d.school, or its full name as Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Standford, is a startup-like organization providing the elective courses for students at Standford University. No matter which programs you belong, you can join courses at d.school.
d.school believes that by design thinking, they can train people then later those people can be flexible to contribute what they learned or trained in any other context.
Thus, students in d.school are not only students of Stanford University, but also working people from companies or organizations.
Experiential learning
Instead of only receiving knowledge from professional persons, at d.school, students can learn by doing things = experience. Therefore, it's usual to view the environment of d.school's classes as lecturer and students staying at the same level. Moreover, the teaching way is giving the area for students and let them explore by themselves, instead of giving questions and answers to them directly. For example, letting them redesign radio programming.
In addition, they can learn to work in team. Within the team made of students from different areas, through Design Thinking, they can learn other perspectives.
Pop-up classes
Pop-up classes = d.fundamentals + d.skills + d.advanced. d.school made the Pop-up classes. These are opportunities for people from outside to come to teach students. Until now, there were 39 pop-up classes and 105 teaching team members,
even thought there was no credit and no teaching paid. Some examples of pop-up classes were Sticky stories, civic dreams + human spaces, etc.
d.bootcamp
d.school has also made a 4-day workshop at Standford. This bootcamp brought people from different industry sectors to make a team. They had to engage the users in order to understand the actual problems before designing a prototype.
Then, we went back to those people (users) to test their idea and got feedbacks. d.school operated these kinds of practices following the "Prework -> bootcamp -> StartUp" steps. After the bootcamp for weeks or months, the participants then later can create something by Design Thinking they have learned.
Alum action
From a week till months, there was follow-up to look at how they used what they learned and what they made from what they learned.
Location as prototype
In the beginning period of d.school establishment, d.School had no permanent location. So, they had to move every period of months. Nonetheless, it's good in terms of making a variety of prototypes. They later realized as opportunity to keep trying new things and checked if it worked or not...Till they got their current place.
Studio Space
They took a video to see the hours of things' movement in their studio. We could see that the studio was changed through many shapes for different purposes of different users.
Radical collaboration
They made a program called fellows. At the beginning, fellows were the graduates of Stanford, but later fellows could be experienced persons from a variety of working environments. They were persons who had never came to d.school, but had lots of knowledge and experience. They came to learn at d.school. Then, they applied design thinking when they went back to their industry.
Sprint planning
In each project, the team members worked with sprint planning. They could see the schedule of who, what, how, etc. in the specific period of time. One example as the practical outcome was Low cost ( partnered with miraclefeet. This product helped the children in Brazil who have the problem of clubfoot.
Purpose learning
The purpose learning is one of the ideas to change the way of studying. By changing from the major-oriented learning, which students were assigned to learn following the fixed curriculum, to the mission-oriented learning. They learn how to reach their goals.
Creative self-efficacy<...>Creative Impact
Many people focused on the external part (creative impact). But we also should pay attention to the individual level for internal part (creative self-efficacy).
Panel discussion
During the panel discussion, the moderator was Assoc.Prof. Céline Mougenot from Tokyo Tech.
During the panel discussion, the moderator was Assoc.Prof. Céline Mougenot from Tokyo Tech.
- Collaboration with people from different background can make the different point of view.
- Space: a variety of created behaviour from team members; not the fancy ones but the one that can be used for all purposes.
Setting up and cleaning up space is not the assigned responsibility of students, but they know it as norm. Then, the next one can use. They did not use the word "clean the space", but "reset the space".
- Key to be creative: Dr. David always makes observation notebook. He observes the world and describes what he has learned through sketching in his notebook. Thomas considered practicing with your interest or with your assigned things. The more you practice with it, the more you became familiar and became confident. Scott always tries to make the tangible things, not just only making some ideas.
