Navigating from Designing alone to Designing with others
The final mindshift in being an Inventor is Navigating from Designing alone to Designing with others. You are designing with others when your processes intentionally invite and enroll others to collaborate, create, and iterate together. Characteristics: Inventors who design with others actively and intentionally invite others to collaborate together. They seek to build trusting relationships that afford honest conversations and feedback loops to ensure that design represents many different perspectives and ideas. Designing with others is iterative.
Examples:
Collaborative design groups representative of all stakeholders
Designing an ecosystem with community partners for powerful open-walled experiences
Iterative strategic planning processes
Designing for autonomy, mastery and purpose
Non Examples:
Design teams that represent only adults
Viewing schools and K-12 education as a silo with little to no interaction with community partners
Once and done strategic planning processes
Ignoring elements of autonomy, mastery and purpose in the design
Questions I might ask myself:
What does it look like, sound like, and feel like to design alone?
What does it look like, sound like, and feel like to design with others?
What structures currently exist that perpetuate your designing alone? What structures currently exist that enable you to create with others?
What are some of the advantages to designing alone? To create with others?
What are some of the struggles in designing alone? In creating with others?
We know that whenever we design with others it often makes the learning along the way even deeper and richer. This deep work develops the kinds of relationships we often long for and are denied when we focus on minutiae. Collaborative work asks us to consider perspectives that are different than our own and helps to clarify new thinking. Lastly, the work of inventing with others results in a more valid and representative end product that becomes a tapestry of thoughts, ideas, perspectives, and insights that allow stakeholders to see themselves fully a part of.
