Students Focus on Human Centered Design in Specialized Workshop

Twenty-five ICS High School students embarked on a special project on Tuesday, generating ideas for social enterprises that address challenges in our local community.

ICS faculty designed a human-centered design workshop, where students collaborated to identify the challenges with transitions in high school. Through structured conversations and entrepreneurial exercises, they developed concepts for start-up businesses that would create sustainable solutions.

The main idea is to develop empathy for people around us and better understand the problems they face and then use knowledge, skills, and resources to make a lasting positive impact.

Last Tuesday’s full day workshop was led by Grade 4 Teacher Chantelle Love, who is a human-centered design expert, as well as ICS Business Teacher Rob Love and Inception Innovator Ellie Clark. The next steps are that students are employing the techniques they learned on their own identified problems.

“I’m excited for students to begin projects from a place of empathy,” Ellie said. ‘One of my favorite activities of the workshop was the empathy interviews where students listened to each other and asked open questions with genuine curiosity. If we can keep starting projects from this place of empathy, we’ll create deeper connections and even more amazing outcomes."

“It was such a delight to see students so open to creative thinking and understanding the experiences of others,” Chantelle said. “I can’t wait to see the problems and solutions they identify in their chosen context.”