DESIGN WORKSHOPS FOR THE NON-PROFIT SECTOR
Skillshare, Brooklyn, NY
Skillshare.com is a great website based organization where you can “learn anything from anyone” as their tagline states - from starting a business to cooking dinner, and everything in between. TYTHEdesign was proud to teach our first class on skillshare, which focused on design-thinking tools, within just a few months of the website’s launch. Since our first class we have been fortunate to teach several sold out classes in the past few months. As designers, the way we approach problems and solutions is both unique and adaptable, which we feel makes for a great set of tools to teach to others. Design thinking can help a company or organization pinpoint their focus or target group, organize their internal structure, and draw creativity from the resources their team already has.
The workshops we lead teach participants three fundamental design-thinking skills that they can utilize in their own organizations. Empathetic research, which, like ethnographic research, will give a deeper comprehension of how people (in most cases clients or communities) live their lives and will train them in a few key methods to achieving this understanding. Team designing, which involves learning to bring a range of individuals together to co-create solutions that meet the goals of the group and the needs of the client. Idea-focusing, because knowing how to narrow down a multitude of ideas that a group generates is just as important as the ideas themselves, and can be done in a way that will prevent the leaders becoming overwhelmed, reduce costs, and avoid negativity. These three key concepts will allow our class attendees to plan and lead more successful ideation and brainstorming sessions that will lead to improved results from their team.
Our skillshare classes are taught by taking the “students” (primarily non-designers from the non-profit and entreprenurial sector) through our process by having them try it for themselves. We give them a sample problem, explain some of the common tools and techniques we use, (such as those included in our TYTHEtools write-ups,) some sticky notes, and let the groups find out for themselves what it is we do. We encourage attendees to think outside the box and see other ways of coming up with solutions, and even though the problems are hypothetical and actual answers are unimportant, the results are real. The idea of our classes is to answer questions, demonstrate what we offer as designers by way of example, and hopefully open up a new perspective for the educators, entrepreneurs, organizers, and anyone else who takes the class to see opportunities in their own field. We feel that anyone can make use of design thinking, regardless of their job title, and we aim to help others appreciate what it can do for them as well.
