4. Discovery to Refine a Vision

What do you need to KNOW to design a good program?

As much as possible.

Logistics

It would be important to know the basics: who are the participants? how many participants will there be? where are the program activities happening? if it is a training, at how many different sites? What is available at the training site--power? internet? white boards? movable chairs?

History

Is this the first activity or part of a series of events? What happened before with these participants or are they totally new?

Strategy

Why is this program happening? Is there a strategy document written somewhere? A brainstorm? Did the idea come from a particular meeting or piece of feedback? What are the priorities? Is there a donor agreement or any other relevant requirements? What is the budget? Is it pre-approved or do you need to make a proposal?

KNOW YOUR PARTICIPANTS!!

What should you know about your participants?

  • Educational background
  • Language / Fluency level
  • Age
  • Key roles and responsibilities
  • What are they held accountable to?
  • Interests

Call up a few!! Have some "moles" or participants you are constantly in contact with to stay up-to-date on the issues and concerns of your participants.

Talk to the field team who works most closely with them.

Look up past BMLs, monitoring reports, and any other feedback forms.

Research them online.

If it is a government employee, look up their job description or relevant policies.

You must ask GREAT Questions


"Knowing the answers will help you in school. Knowing how to question will help you in life." – Warren Berger

"For true success, ask yourself these four questions: why? Why not? Why not me? Why not now?" – James Allen

"There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of man." – John Locke

Design thinking is 99% easier once you have identified a clear enough question to actually make an answer. So here are some additional resources on how to ask great questions within the discovery step of the design process:

Here are some great pointers for managers on how to ask the people you are leading good questions

This is a great questioning resource for teaching and facilitating in the classroom.

Great video on asking questions related to product development and experimentation!

Bad Discovery:

1. You have a couple conversations with the field team. The field team tells you that the teachers do not understand the importance of portfolios so you must "train them on it". The teachers they are referring to have been in the E! program for 2 years and were previously trained on portfolios. But...you didn't ask anymore questions and go to Angelica with a 'great idea' to train the teachers on the importance of portfolios. She tells you she is disappointed in your strategy and tells you to go back to the drawing board.


Good Discovery:

1. After 2 years of training, the field team tells you that the teachers do not "understand the importance of portfolios". You inquire as to whether the teachers were previously trained in portfolios. They were! So, you inquire further, why, if teachers have been trained on portfolios, does the field team thinks the problem is that teachers do not "understand the importance of portfolios". The field team responds "because teachers do not make time to grade portfolios". You ask "Why not?". "Because they have 40 students and 5 classes to grade so it is a lot of work".

Voila!! Now you have the real "good" problem: "Teachers do not have a way to grade 40 student portfolios every day given they teach 5 classes." You then go create a design solution to solve that! For example, you might give them a way to grade portfolios quickly. That is very different, and deeper, and more effective of a solution than you would have had if you only focused on "awareness of portfolio's importance". Angelica is so impressed with your design skills!

What is a "Refined" Vision?

A lot of designers would look at the objective below and say "great" that is clear:

"Teachers will support learners in creating business model canvasses for their club projects"

But, at Educate!, we would ask A LOT of follow up questions to this to make the objective more "refined", for example:

  • Which learners exactly is the teacher supporting--the whole club or the club leaders or...?
  • When will this "support" of learners happen--in class? in a separate mentoring session?
  • How will this "support" look--a coaching conversation or giving a tool or guiding them through the activity or reviewing the canvass after they make it?
  • Why are learners creating biz model canvasses--do we think it will help them improve their projects, is it how they will present at competitions?

Only after the above four questions are answered at the start, do we get closer to a Refined Vision of impact.

Assessment #4: Question-Storming:

Write 25 questions for each of the three problems/challenges below (75 questions total):

  1. E! wants classroom teachers to support students to start back home businesses and projects. At the first training on how to give this support, the teachers gave feedback that encouraging students to start businesses and projects back home is not part of their official responsibilities so they do not think it is part of their job. You are responsible for doing the discovery to design the next steps after this training.
  2. E! wants to train a new group of people we have never trained before because we want to introduce practical questions into end of year exams. All we know now is that there are a small group of people appointed by the district to form a "district assessment committees" who are responsible for setting the exam questions for many schools in the district at least once a year. You are responsible for doing the discovery to design the training strategy.
  3. Out of school youth are a new target group for E!. Initial reports from the field show that 40% of the youth are interested in E! training focused on "tech skills", 30% are interested in "agriculture skills", 20% are interested in "skilled labour" and 10% wrote in an "other" answer. You are responsible for doing the discovery to design the training content.

Submit your discovery questions to designacademy@experienceeducate.org

Question-storming Example: