Washington Program Praised for Design Thinking
The Washington Program and director Jeremy Goldstein were recently highlighted for his use of design thinking to enhance the program's educational effectiveness
A blog from CampusTap, a company specializing in digital community spaces for educational institutions, recently highlighted the work of Washington Program Director Jeremy Goldstein and his use of design thinking to enhance and expand Episcopal's signature one-of-a-kind academic program.
An excerpt from the interview:
I basically did journey mapping for every constituency within my program. Looking at faculty, I asked, “What does their day look like when they do a field trip?” What does the day of the student look like when they have a Washington Program experience? I really wanted to get inside of where people were struggling and what people enjoyed.
I think the hardest part of design thinking is that you have to abandon the traditional way that you make decisions. You step back, gain as much empathy as possible for your stakeholders, and you have to sit back and allow them to let loose on what they feel is wrong and what they feel is great — and you have to take it all in. You make a lot of decisions as an administrator that affect a lot of people’s lives, yet you have to be empathetic to the fact that a lot of those decisions may not be the best decisions.
Design thinking allows you to flip that and say: “Before I make a decision and before I adjust something, let me figure out what the likes and dislikes are, and what the enjoyable pieces of this program are.” Through a couple of different design thinking tools, like journey mapping, you can get a good perspective on how people are experiencing what you’re administering.
To read the complete interview, click here.
To learn more about the Washington Program, click here.
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An excerpt from the interview:
If you have a large organization with multiple constituencies, with multiple schedules, with multiple individuals, and multiple perspectives on the schedule, one of the best things you can do using the design thinking principles is to go ahead and really get the perception of people. One of the things that helped the most in this process was a journey map.
I basically did journey mapping for every constituency within my program. Looking at faculty, I asked, “What does their day look like when they do a field trip?” What does the day of the student look like when they have a Washington Program experience? I really wanted to get inside of where people were struggling and what people enjoyed.
I think the hardest part of design thinking is that you have to abandon the traditional way that you make decisions. You step back, gain as much empathy as possible for your stakeholders, and you have to sit back and allow them to let loose on what they feel is wrong and what they feel is great — and you have to take it all in. You make a lot of decisions as an administrator that affect a lot of people’s lives, yet you have to be empathetic to the fact that a lot of those decisions may not be the best decisions.
Design thinking allows you to flip that and say: “Before I make a decision and before I adjust something, let me figure out what the likes and dislikes are, and what the enjoyable pieces of this program are.” Through a couple of different design thinking tools, like journey mapping, you can get a good perspective on how people are experiencing what you’re administering.
To read the complete interview, click here.
To learn more about the Washington Program, click here.
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