Design Thinking Workshop Facilitation

Great to be here as a design thinking workshop facilitator! To begin, let's start with a round of introductions. Each participant will introduce themselves and share one thing that makes them feel mentally well. After the introductions, we can move on to the first activity: Empathy Mapping. This activity will help participants develop a deeper understanding of the people they are designing for, in this case, high school students struggling with mental wellness. Here are the steps for this activity: Divide the participants into small groups of 3-4 people. Provide each group with a blank empathy map template and a pack of sticky notes. Ask the participants to think about high school students who struggle with mental wellness and to jot down their thoughts and feelings on the sticky notes, and place them in the appropriate section of the empathy map. Encourage participants to share their sticky notes with the group and discuss their observations. Example questions for Empathy Mapping could be: What are the main challenges that high school students face when it comes to mental wellness? What kind of emotions might they experience? How might their mental wellness impact their daily life and academic performance? Next, we can move on to Ideation. This activity will help participants generate a range of ideas to address the problem of mental wellness in schools. Here are the steps for this activity: Ask each group to pick one of the challenges they identified in the Empathy Mapping activity and to come up with as many ideas as possible to address that challenge. Encourage participants to think outside the box and generate wild and creative ideas. Provide each group with a whiteboard or large sheet of paper and some markers to capture their ideas visually. Example questions for Ideation could be: How might we encourage high school students to talk more openly about their mental wellness struggles? What kind of tools or resources might be helpful for high school students to manage their mental wellness? Finally, we can move on to Prototyping. This activity will help participants turn their ideas into tangible solutions that can be tested and refined. Here are the steps for this activity: Ask each group to pick one idea from their Ideation session and to create a quick prototype of their solution using materials provided. Encourage participants to create low-fidelity prototypes using materials like paper, cardboard, and tape. Provide each group with a few minutes to create their prototype. Ask participants to share their prototypes with the group and receive feedback. Example questions for Prototyping could be: What kind of feedback would you like to receive on your prototype? How might you improve your prototype to better address the challenge of mental wellness in schools? Materials and stationery required for this workshop: Empathy Map templates Sticky notes Whiteboards or large sheets of paper Markers Materials for prototyping such as paper, cardboard, tape, scissors, etc. I hope this helps you run a successful 30-minute design thinking workshop on mental wellness in schools for high schoolers!