Using Design Thinking method to develop collaboration skills among adolescents

Using Design Thinking method to develop collaboration skills among adolescents A story told by Jakub Słowik youth worker from Krakow, participating in the Skill IT for Youth International Training (Poland, 2019)

I am Kuba, psychologist and youth worker.

I work with young people at age 16-24 who experience different kind of difficulties.

They are in their process of self-reliance and want to improve their skills to be able to deal with life on their own.

My goal is to support young people and guide them towards adulthood. I want them to become self-reliant, fulfilled and happy in their future.

How did I work with young people?

In June 2019 I ran a workshop on the collaboration and team working skills. There were 17 young people participated. I used a scenario from Skill IT for Youth Training Toolkit but I added also my ideas.

We started with making different draws of apple. This exercise was supposed to help young people to warm up their thinking because the next step was a theory of the Design Thinking method.

It went pretty well. I explained the steps of designing a project as a team.

Young people decided to work on problems from the well-known Disney’s characters.

They were split into small groups.

Firstly, they started with collecting all information regarding each character, including possible emotions, intentions, thoughts and behaviours.

As the next step young people were searching for the key needs of the character and insights, write them down and choose the most relevant one.

The final step was to prepare a piece of advice for the character to help them solving characters’ problem. That was the fun part!

What did I learn from the teenagers?

Young people could experience the effectiveness and impact of their work!

They found the Design Thinking method as helpful and inspirational.

Learn more about SKILL IT project!

SKILL IT

Created By

Jakub Słowik

Appreciate

Credits:

Created with images by Efe Kurnaz - "untitled image" • Priscilla Du Preez - "untitled image"