Teaching & Learning Studio
Coaching Tips
TEAM DYNAMICS A little bit about your teams: • Consider yourself as an “embedded” coach, that is, essentially another member of your teams! Take time to introduce yourself and your role as their coach. • We formed teams to represent a diversity of disciplines, schools, and genders. • The teams will have dinner together on Day 1, answering a series of progressive prompts that will get them (hopefully) to open up and share meaningful things about themselves, with the goal of creating a sense of psychological safety.
Success looks like: • The teams productively work together, and perhaps even enjoy it! :)
Coaching Tips
Things I noticed:
DESIRED BEHAVIOR FROM PARTICIPANTS Everyone is respectful and inclusive of other teammates.
HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT AS A COACH • Note that we will have participants from all over the world. In some cases, they will have different expectations and norms, especially around directness and personal space • Notice who is getting a lot of “air time” and find ways to elevate quieter voices • Check in with team members individually
The team overcomes any hurdles and/or moments of stuck-ness.
• Ask questions to the team about their process and thoughts on how to proceed • Remind them of the goal they’re working towards • Reassure/encourage them that this is a time to practice and build their skills • Encourage them to take note of questions they have and how they’re feeling to share and reflect upon later
There aren’t major clashes among team members.
• Remind participants to temporarily “try on” a specific style/behavior for the activity. Team members might have different default cognitive styles; for example, some might be comfortable ideating while others might default to evaluating ideas immediately. • Be observant and try to de-escalate potential conflict: Not everyone on the team may be attuned to how they are perceived by others, and how others are feeling in a given situation
EMPATHIZE Teams have 60 minutes to conduct interviews in the field, after having seen a 15-minute demo interview (bad and better) conducted by a teaching team member and you! Success looks like: • Each team gets at least 4 interviews (they should split up into 2 pairs to interview, so each pair should do at least 2 interviews).
To-dos: ☐☐ Give teams a time-check and make sure that they return to the d.school at the agreed time, ______________. Tell them there will be fresh coffee upon return! :) ☐☐ As they walk back to the d.school or when they arrive, give each person the rubric sticker so they can reflect on how it went.
Coaching Tips
☐☐ (Optional) Feel free to eavesdrop on one of the interviews if you can. This will give you elements to provide feedback to that team, as well as other teams.
Things I noticed:
DESIRED BEHAVIOR FROM PARTICIPANTS Talking to strangers (!)
HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT AS A COACH • Do a super-quick huddle with your teams right after the demo to rally them to go out and find interviewees • Answer any pressing questions but avoid staying to talk and answer questions for too long (you can say, “let’s talk about that after you’ve done an interview or two”)
Persevering after being rejected for interviews
• Suggest that they check in with you after the first interview they do for a mini-debrief, and then continue with all other interviews
Asking open-ended questions to elicit specific stories
• Send them off by highlighting the two key behaviors they should focus on: ask open-ended questions and follow up
Interviewing in pairs (with one notetaker - these notes will be the data for the rest of the challenge!) and getting quality data to work with
• Remind coachees of good interview mechanics • If pairs say they’re “done” when there is ample time left, encourage them to get a few more interviews in -- each interview is practice for an even better interview (and, who knows what they’ll uncover)
DEFINE Teams will have 30 minutes to unpack two interviews, 30 minutes to leap to inferences for both, and 25 minutes to craft a point-of-view (POV) statement for one interviewee. Success looks like: • Each team successfully unpacks two interviews, leaps to inferences, and creates a POV statement that narrows the problem scope in a unique, insight-driven way
To-dos: ☐☐ Give teams time checks to ensure they’ll complete each part ☐☐ Ensure teams are using the right materials and handouts ☐☐ Lead your teams through a 20-minute joint POV share-out/mini-critique • 1 minute: Team reads out POV statement • 1 minute: Each participant (not coach!) holds up fingers to vote (0 to 5) on POV statement • 6 minutes: Discussion/feedback
Coaching Tips
• Switch to the other team!
Things I noticed:
DESIRED BEHAVIOR FROM PARTICIPANTS
HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT AS A COACH
Saturate their studio space to make data visible and easy to reference
• Make sure everyone is capturing on post-its, especially inferencemaking
Rigorously unpack interviews and get everyone “on the same page”
• Ask team members to unpack specific quotes and other data, saving interpretation for later
Make bold leaps of inference from individual pieces of data
• Encourage “parallel” leaps, that is, multiple inferences from the same data
• Encourage team members who were not at the interview to ask clarifying questions about what was said in the interview
• Utilize the “eyebrows of insight” criteria (is it an insight that makes you go “hmm” or “a-ha!”? If not, it might be too literal) • Challenge team members to make bigger leaps: “What else could this mean?”
Craft a POV statement that articulates a need based on their data
• Encourage teams to use their unpacking and inference-making work • Coach teams away from embedding solutions into their POV (the need should be stated as a verb!)
IDEATE Teams will be guided through a 70-minute brainstorming session. The session will include: • short examples to make the case for the need to generate lots of ideas • stokes to get everyone in a generative mindset (yes, and!) • individual ideation (to not bias against internal processors • constraints to help them generate a diversity of ideas
Success looks like: • Teams generate ~100 ideas!
To-dos: ☐☐ Make sure your teams have written down their HMW question and have a clean board to capture ideas ☐☐ Move the table in the team space away from the board, and remove the stools ☐☐ Make sure everyone is standing in front of a whiteboard, armed with a post it block (3x3) and a sharpie. One at a time, participants headline an idea out loud, write it on the post it.
Coaching Tips
☐☐ Encourage teams to use their “lifeline” cards throughout (not save them for the end!)
Things I noticed:
DESIRED BEHAVIOR FROM PARTICIPANTS
HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT AS A COACH
Everyone on the team contributes ideas
• Encourage those participants who are more introverted/internal processors to contribute ideas
They relax their minds and get in a mode of acceptance and generation
• Suggest ideas to get the team unstuck (ideally crazy ideas) • Don’t shame any “yes, but” people and acknowledge that suspending judgement is hard. • Remind everyone that there will be an opportunity to evaluate and test ideas later
Follow brainstorming rules
• Remind the team to share one idea at a time, headlining it verbally and capturing it on a post-it. • Keep the energy up and the vibe casual (have fun and it will be contagious!)
They “yes, and” the ideas of others (capturing them by the same mechanism as below)
• Be a “yes, and” enforcer!
IDEA SELECTION Teams will be guided in a 40-minute session to select one idea to move forward with from the ones they generated. Success looks like: • Each team has one (!) idea to move forward with, summarized in the provided worksheet
To-dos: ☐☐ Keep the team on time. This is a stage where there will be the tendency to discuss and there may not be agreement. This is what the individual voting is for: to visually capture where the energy of the team is ☐☐ Make sure everyone is standing in front of a whiteboard, equipped with their voting dots and they vote in parallel
Coaching Tips
☐☐ If at the end of voting they are split between 2-3 ideas, nudge them to decide. You can propose a rapid-fire second round of voting, or prompt them to go with one of the ideas to be able to move on
Things I noticed:
DESIRED BEHAVIOR FROM PARTICIPANTS
HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT AS A COACH
Cordial discussion about the ideas that seem to have the most potential
• Remind teams they are picking for potential, NOT feasibility
Everyone on the team is engaged, even if the idea someone wants isn’t chosen
• You can remind them of the mindset conveyed by the rock/ paper/scissors tournament we did on day 1 (“what can you contribute to this idea even if it’s not the one you wanted?”)
Participants ultimately choose one idea to prototype
• Push team members to avoid “feature-creep” (they shouldn’t be incorporating 10 post-its into their one idea!)
PROTOTYPE Teams will be guided in an 80-minute session to build a prototype. Success looks like: • By the time they need to go out in the field to test, they will have a prototype (even if they think it’s not ready for showtime!)
To-dos: ☐☐ Keep the team on time. This is another stage where there will be the tendency to discuss (mostly as a strategy to avoid jumping into building, which may feel uncomfortable.) ☐☐ Encourage team members to jump in, whether acting out or building!
Coaching Tips
Things I noticed:
DESIRED BEHAVIOR FROM PARTICIPANTS
HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT AS A COACH
Everyone is engaged in the acting out and building (not discussing!)
• One strategy is to bring a few materials to their table and encourage them to “build to think and figure out the details that way”
Team members are comfortable (enough) to go out and test unfinished work
• Tell them it’s okay if they don’t feel “ready” –- having an unfinished prototype is actually an advantage because they will get more honest feedback
TEST Teams have a total of 55 minutes to go out in the field and test their prototype. Success looks like: • Teams conduct at least 3 to 4 tests and capture feedback, with the goal to learn more about both the solution and the opportunity
To-dos: ☐☐ Get them to stop building and go out! (and go with them) ☐☐ You can suggest they go to the same area where they did the interviews the previous day
Coaching Tips
Things I noticed:
DESIRED BEHAVIOR FROM PARTICIPANTS
HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT AS A COACH
They allow the tester to step into the experience (and avoid selling/pitching their idea)
• Remind team members that their goal is to get and learn from feedback (Testing = Empathy + Stuff!)
They overcome their hesitation to show their “crappy” prototype and seek out people to test it with, persevering after being rejected by potential testers
• Suggest that they check in with you after the first test they do for a mini-debrief, and then continue with other tests
They are willing to test with anyone, not just the person they crafted their POV around
• Tell them that they will get different kinds of feedback from different people: it’s actually a good thing to test with people who may appear to not be the right people to test with (We will discuss this during the final challenge debrief)
They involve everyone in testing (with one notetaker to capture feedback)
• Remind coachees of good testing mechanics (including a follow-up interview) • If team members say they’re “done” when there is ample time left, encourage them to get a few more tests in, as each test is practice for an even better test! (and, who knows what they’ll uncover)