Abstract
As design thinking expands into educational contexts, teams engaged in the process increasingly encounter situations that involve facilitating collaborative problem-solving. In design-focused workshops and other collaborative design activities, facilitators play a key role in supporting small group interactions in order to generate ideas, structure discussions, and guide the process. Yet despite this increased focus on collaborative design thinking, there is little research to inform either facilitator roles or facilitator practices in this process. We address this gap by presenting a qualitative study that thematically examines our experiences as university-based facilitators who supported a community-wide educational design event. Specifically, we served as facilitators in a collaborative, multi-stakeholder, educational design thinking workshop that sought innovations for a local high school improvement initiative. This research is a qualitative study of our own facilitation processes based on data generated through open-ended self-reflection questionnaires and facilitator planning and debriefing discussions. Our results demonstrate that design facilitation resonates with Thomas Kuhn’s (1977) notion of “essential tension.” Essential tension exists within multiple aspects of design thinking roles and practices—including processes, products, discussion flow, and group dynamics. We reflect on these findings and propose implications for design thinking facilitation in future research and practice.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge and thank the community members, the local education nonprofit, and the school district administration and leadership for their support. This event would not have been possible without the support of the dean of the college, as well as the members of the development, marketing, and event-planning teams for helping to organize the design day event.
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Appendices
Appendix 1. Design day facilitators pre-survey
(Note: This survey was administered via a web-form and consisted of four open-ended prompts to gather facilitator expectations before the workshop.)
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Thinking about the process defined for us by the lead facilitator, of the knowledge, skills, and/or behaviors you possess (your talents), what do you see will be your single biggest strength during the interactions with your small group?
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What aspect of your role as a facilitator are you most excited about?
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What aspect of your role as a facilitator are you most anxious about?
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Do you have strategies to help you with this concern? If so, what are they?
Appendix 2. Design day facilitators post-survey
(Note: This survey was administered via a web-form and consisted of five open-ended prompts to gather facilitator perceptions directly after the workshop.)
Today’s design challenge was an effort on your part to follow a prescribed facilitation process within a small group. The lead facilitator and others directed the process. You had a team made up of a variety of stakeholders. Reflect about your role in the facilitation process, and specifically your influence on their contributions.
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Success: Within your small group and as related to your role as facilitator, what was the most successful process, event, or interaction of the day? What do you think made it successful? (Think in terms of your behaviors as well as any environmental elements)
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Struggle: What aspect of your role of facilitator did you struggle most with? Why do you think that was the case?
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Adjustment: How did you attempt address this struggle (if you did)? How successful were you at making this adjustment?
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Lack: In reflecting about the experience, were there any knowledge, skills, or behaviors that you lacked? If so, what were they?
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Professional development: Assuming this process will take place again in the future, possibly with another school or district, what professional development activities might help you be a more effective facilitator?
Appendix 3. Reflections on the design day event
(Note: This survey was administered via a web-form and consisted of three open-ended prompts to gather facilitators’ delayed reflection about remembered elements and processes.)
Please take some quiet time to reflect about these three questions.
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Write a descriptive/interpretative narrative on the multiple phases of the design processes at your table, as influenced by your memory of the experience and by reflecting on group artifacts (1st person account reflection).
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Write a descriptive/interpretative narrative on the individual people/personalities/roles at your table, in terms of anything that impacted the process.
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Write a descriptive/interpretative narrative on the group dynamic/collective at your table, as influenced by the people present and the context of the event.
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Henriksen, D., Jordan, M., Foulger, T. et al. Essential Tensions in Facilitating Design Thinking: Collective Reflections. J Form Des Learn 4, 5–16 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41686-020-00045-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41686-020-00045-3