Throughout our seven years of history, we’ve invested in activities to connect the community to Bloco. Going back a “little” further in 2015, we organised our first event the Android Talks, which later inspired us to organize The Zain Talks in 2017. One year later Intern.Camp was born and it was our first experience working closely with students and schools. All these events and projects ended mostly by a lack of time, resources and motivation.

This time, we’ve been working closely with students again, through the “Design Club”.

“Design Club is a social enterprise that offers free tools and resources to help people deliver design thinking workshops to children.” “We believe that children from all backgrounds should have the opportunity to learn design thinking as a life skill. We want to nurture empathetic, collaborative, and resilient young people, able to identify and respond to challenges in the world around them. We're a social enterprise and not-for-profit.”

The Design Club sessions bridge the gap between schools and the industry, apart from developing digital literacy. Not only do they offer a glimpse of the design industry, but they also encourage youngsters to learn more about this realm.

This is only possible with a partnership with Companhia Estudo, an educational program held by Critical Software. And Grama, with Joana Boavida as the other facilitator. We have already hosted three design clubs. The first one was with twenty-four students of vocational education from Escola Secundária Jaime Cortesão, and the second with twelve students from Escola Profissional da Beira Aguieira. The third one with twelve students from Agrupamento de Escolas de Soure. And we already have one more booked.

We, as designers, strive to make a positive impact on the future of these students, mainly because they get to learn a process that is also a life skill. Most importantly, these workshops are meant to make genuine connections with students, spark curiosity and have fun.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

We have three hours of pure fun and hands-on experience. We mostly use paper, coloured pens, post-its, and worksheets. In this case, we’ve pre-selected two projects: the first one is the “Intro to Design” and the second part is “Design a helpful mobile app - mini-project”.

Intro to design is composed by:

• Quick Introduction
• Warm-up game: Tell us about you
• Agree our design club pledge
• Explore the mobile app user
• Put the design process in order

App design mini project is composed by:

• Introduce the project
• Define: frame your design challenge
• Empathise: Create a profile of your user
• Ideate: Brainstorm ideas
• Prototype: Sketch & prototype your app
• Test: Conduct a test

We've been learning through this entire experience. Specially we've been practising these precious tips. Tips about mentoring via the Design Club. Things to keep in mind when mentoring:

• Show an interest – Show a genuine interest in the work being produced.
• Provide positive feedback – Linked to above, offer lots of positive feedback.
• Be patient – Some children will need more support than others.
• Prompt with questions – Rather than telling what to do, try to guide with a question.
• Encourage reflection – Ask a child to explain what they understood about an activity.
• Give children space to create – Don’t feel the need to sit with them the whole time.
• Go away and come back – Go away, letting them know you’ll be back to check-in.
• Tune in to the level of guidance needed – This depends on age and experience.

On balance, our main goal is to foster teamwork and collaboration between students by putting into practice the underlying principles of the design thinking methodology. And we couldn't be happier with the results we've already achieved. If you’re interested in having a Design Club workshop with one of your classes, please contact Patrícia.