About Us
We are the Four-T-Knights from Southern Middle School in Reading, PA. The four members of the team are in 7th grade and have Mr Reinhard for math class. Our team likes playing video games and eating Takiis.
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Four-T-knights
Our Progress
| Due | Assignment | Max Points | Our Points |
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| Sep 21 |
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 Congratulations on solving the mystery! Yes, that clue with the copper tube was a bit tricky...kudos to you for figuring it out. The teamwork, creativity, and persistence you showed in solving this mystery are things that will serve you well in your DT Philly project and in life. Thanks for sharing these great photos! |
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| Sep 21 |
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| Sep 21 |
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10Welcome to DT Philly! We're delighted to have you join us this year and hope that you have fun learning about design thinking and how you can use it to solve a problem or make something better. Video games are a great example of lots of different kinds of design. You'll learn more about different kinds of design in your upcoming DT Philly activities. | |
| Sep 21 |
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| Sep 24 |
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| Sep 28 |
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10Way to go...that's exactly what we wanted you to see! There is usually more than one way to achieve the same goal, but your situation (including the location in which your design must work and the needs/preferences of the people who will use your design) will help you make important decisions about what to include in your design. Remember this as you work on your DT Philly project. | |
| Oct 19 |
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20Thanks for having us out to do this activity--we had fun learning new things and working with you. Keep up your creative thinking as you work on your own project! | |
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| Oct 5 |
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| Oct 5 |
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Thanks for taking a walk in Jamal's shoes to understand how life is more complicated for people with dyslexia. Your observations about the experience are great--can you imagine feeling like that on a regular basis? Understanding how a problem impacts people--the frustrations they have and the things they have to do to deal with the problem--is an important part of design research. Remember this, and think about how you could empathize with the people you're designing for in DT Philly. |
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| Oct 5 |
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15This sounds like an important problem to address, and we like the way you wrote your challenge question to describe the problem and identify a goal without jumping ahead to a solution. "In and outside of school" is a lot of territory to cover when you're working on a problem that's as broad and challenging as fighting. It might be helpful to focus your project in one specific place for now. This will make it easier to do research and easier to evaluate how effective your solution is when you're prototyping and testing. Is there a place where fights are more likely to occur, or a time of day? It's great that you already have some data to help you get started and to measure against once you develop and implement your solution. Nice job! | |
| Oct 12 |
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10You put a lot of thought into your rich picture--nice job. The effects of fighting clearly have an impact that ripples through your school community. We'll be curious to see if your research shows that there are particular places or times of day when fighting is more likely to happen,what types of students are involved and in what ways, and what the school/students/parents currently do about the problem. These kinds of insights will be very helpful as you move into the next phases of your project. | |
| Nov 2 |
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| Oct 19 |
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| Oct 19 |
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| Oct 19 |
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10You're off to a good start on your research. You shared an interesting report at the start of your project...can you tell if fighting decreased after the school started doing mediation and mentoring? It's unforutnate that some students think fighting is o.k. Are there certain times or places where fights are most likely to occur...or certain students who are more likely to be involved? | |
| Nov 2 |
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10Good job! It sounds like you reached out to a lot of people and learned some new things during your research that helped you better define and understand your problem...including specific behaviors or groups of people you might want to focus on. You mentioned that the problem persists despite current efforts...that might be an area where you could dig a little deeper. What are the current efforts, and why don't they have the desired impact? | |
| Nov 9 |
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10Congratulations on finding all of the resources in the scavenger hunt. Our feedback, the notices, the playbook, and the videos are all designed to help you in your project work, so don't forget to check them throughout DT Philly! | |
| Dec 7 |
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| Nov 16 |
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| Nov 16 |
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Thank you for getting creative with this activity! It is indeed interesting that you can come up with some ideas that are very similar and other ideas that are unique from each other. It just goes to show both how powerful our shared experiences are, and how creative each of you is. Your ability to see so many possibilites in what is presented to you is a great skill to have...one that will help you find creative new ways to approach the problem you're working on for your DT Philly project. |
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| Nov 16 |
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10You have so many interesting insights to brainstorm around! Changing people's behavior is very difficult, but understanding their motivations and needs is a great place to start. We imagine you'll be able to do lots of creative brainstorming around ways to reduce students' frustrations, to help students become more drama-proof or to protect them from peer pressure, and to give students the tools to make better decisions. | |
| Nov 30 |
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10You have come up with some interesting ideas that will involve different types of design (remember the Wonderful World of Design video?)! As you start prototyping, remember to use what you learned during research to help develop your prototypes. For example, did your research teach you anything about when and where fights are most likely happen? How might that information help you make your prototoypes more effective? | |
| Dec 21 |
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12We always love to hear your reactions and experiences with these activities and you make some great points. Can you apply this type of thinking to your own project and come up with some "terrible ideas" for how you could make your problem worse instead of better? Sometimes thinking in creative or different ways can open your eyes to new possibilities! Complete the second half of this activity to earn 8 more points. | |
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| Dec 7 |
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| Dec 7 |
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Congratulations! Your tower looks great and it sounds like you learned that building is a great way to experiment with different ideas to see what works best--remember this when you start prototyping for your DT Philly project. We're glad you had fun with this and developed new ideas as you worked through the challenge. |
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| Dec 14 |
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10You’re off to a great start fleshing out your prototypes! With a system design, like the “safe teacher” program, you’ll want to keep running through the steps and trying to anticipate what could happen at each step so you can plan accordingly (for example, what if a student contacts the coordinator about a friend without the friend knowing. How will you approach the student? What if they don't want help or deny anything happened?) And you’ll want to think of what things you need to make in order for your system to work (Reporting forms? Signage? Rules or procedures? Advertising so people know what to do? Training for the teachers?) The de-escalation room will be a fun prototype to create because it involves a few types of design—the space, the system to operate the room, the experience people will have in the room, and maybe even some of the objects in the room! The level of detail you put into your sketches is great. Keep thinking through scenarios and needs (remember that vocabulary word from one of your videos…“iteration”?)—and maybe even role play some things you think could happen—to help you advance your planning for this prototype! | |
| Dec 21 |
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10Your team discovered a great new tool for mocking up built environments! Now that you've digitally prototyped this space, is there anywhere in your school you could use to set it up in real life? It does not have to be as beautiful as your digital version, but being able to move through the space and experience it in the context of your school will be very helpful when it comes to testing. You can use furniture you already have, and you can create visuals for other elements you want to include. For example, you could make your fish tank out of cardboard...or display one on a computer screen, make plants out of paper, make paper stencils of different sayings, etc. to test different ideas and see what works best. You'll want people outside of your team to be able to interact with your solution so you can see the impact it has, and know how to improve your solution! | |
| Jan 11 |
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20Thanks for your feedback on these delightful designs! Taking the time to put a little extra care and thought into your designs can make the experience of using those designs so much better. Paying attention to details like the color, organization, and accessibility of your room is a great way to elevate the quality of your work. How will you use the room to prevent fights before they start? And what are some design decisions you could make that will help diffuse arguments? | |
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| Jan 4 |
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| Jan 4 |
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We hope you had fun testing out this product! Sometimes a design can seem like a great idea in your head, but when you actually use it, unexpected problems can come up. When your team goes to test out your ideas, what are some things you'll look out for? Can you think of any problems that might come up? Unlike this design, you want YOUR solutions to be easy to understand and use, and you want it to solve a problem without introducing new problems. |
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| Jan 4 |
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10It sounds like you've thought through many of the details of your testing procedure. For the Safe Teacher concept, what are the tools you will use to communicate the design solution to people? Will you have visuals? Will you act out a possible scenario in which the plan would be used? It's a great idea to get feedback from students, teachers, and staff since they are all part of the audience for your project. It might also be important to see if your random selection of students ends up including many different types of students...those who are involved in fighting, onlookers, those who try to help, those who try to ignore the problem, etc. We can't wait to see how testing goes for your team! | |
| Jan 11 |
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10This is a great first step in getting feedback from students, and your presentation looks very professional. Did you also solicit feedback from teachers or school staff, and did your student group include students who fight as well as those who don't? And did you talk about the system for operating the de-escalation room (how and when is it staffed, under what circumstances do students go there, what happens after students get there, how long do they stay there, etc.), or just what it would look like and the things you would like to put in it? We're not sure what you shared that led to the observation that the room would help resolve things more quickly than the safe teacher concept. Did any of the feedback challenge your ideas about the de-escalation room? Your next step is to use what you're learning to make your prototype better and, if you can, test it again. In the case of the de-escalation room, we would recommend mocking up a space with borrowed material so you can actually work out and try out how this concept would work. | |
| Jan 18 |
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10You're asking good questions and exploring good avenues to improve your design. Mocking up a space for the de-escalation room is a good next step. It doesn't have to have every special feature you'd like to include in your final design, but being able to move through the space and visualize or experience how it would work will be helpful. (You'll also want to think about the system you'll need to go along with this space...who will staff the room? Are there any rules for using it? Or any protocols for what happens when a student arrives?) Making your prototypes as real as possible helps you get more useful feedback. We also like that you're thinking about improving the Safe Teachers concept and what might make it more appealing and understandable for students. Did any of your research reveal how comfortable students would feel self-reporting a problem between themselves and another student? Keep up the good work! | |
| Jan 25 |
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20Thank you for taking the time to give some other teams encouragement and feedback. You've done a good job giving specific feedback about the aspects of the Monstars' design you liked. You also provided some important questions that may prompt the team to think more deeply about how they'll address details they may have overlooked. You can learn a lot from seeing how other people approach problems and work through them, just as you can learn a lot from seeing how people outside your team understand your work. Keep sharing your own work and supporting your fellow design thinkers! | |
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| Jan 25 |
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| Jan 28 |
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10Thank you for sharing your essay, implementation plan and budget with us. Your next steps are to create a visual presentation to share your design story with the judges and your fellow design thinkers. You've put so much hard work into this project in the past couple of months -- keep it up! We can't wait to see the final piece of your project! | |
| Feb 4 |
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10Thanks for submitting your presentation visuals! | |
| Feb 4 |
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20Thanks for taking the time to practice your presentation! | |
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Badges
Start-Up: Nike Grind Badge
Congratulations on your creative problem solving—an essential skill for every designer! Innovations and break-through moments come when you think outside the box, like Nike did when they began recycling worn-out shoes to reduce the company's environmental impact. The recycled shoes were ground up and used to create springy surfaces for athletic facilities. For example, Sacramento Kings fans donated their sneakers to be used in constructing the team's new practice court. Not content to stop there, Nike keeps developing new applications for this innovative product, and recycled material from Nike Grind is now used in 71% of the company's footwear and apparel!
Empathize: Hub of Hope Badge
Thanks for taking a walk in someone else's shoes. Designers empathize to understand the needs of the people they want to help, just as SEPTA did when they agreed to collaborate with other agencies to serve homeless people where they already congregate...at Suburban Station. Instead of kicking the homeless out, the agencies worked together to open the Hub of Hope, a site that functions as a daytime living room for homeless individuals, where they can socialize, get a meal, shower, do laundry, and access a variety of health and social services in a safe and welcoming setting.
Define: Embrace Badge
Nice work using your powers of perception! Good designers keep their eyes and minds open so they don't miss key insights...just as four Stanford students did while creating a low-cost baby incubator for developing countries. To learn more about the problem, team member Linus Liang traveled to Nepal. His "aha" moment came when he discovered that hospital incubators often went unused because mothers couldn’t get to, or stay at the hospital. The team realized they had to create something that could be used easily and affordably in homes, as well as in hospitals. The team kept researching and learning throughout their design process to make sure their product met the needs of the people they wanted to help. Since 2011 their solution—the Embrace Incubator—has helped over 200,000 babies in 20 countries.
Ideate: 40/4 Chair Badge
Way to get creative! It's not always easy to see things with new eyes, and sometimes ingenious design is hidden right in front of you. When was the last time you gave any thought to the humble stacking chair? Designer David Rowland spent 8 years of his own time designing a chair that could be compactly stacked to fit the greatest number of chairs in the smallest amount of space. He made 32 full-scale models in a quest to achieve the best form and greatest comfort, and he was rejected many times when he tried to license his final design for a chair that could be stacked 40 high at a height of just 4 feet. But he persisted, and today his 40/4 chair is the winner of numerous awards, is showcased in museums around the world, and is a commercial success. 8 million and counting have been sold since 1964!
Prototype: Kenji Ekuan Badge
Well done! Prototyping takes patience and persistence, as Kenji Ekuan demonstrated when he and his team spent three years creating the iconic design of the elegant, tear-drop shaped Kikkoman soy sauce bottle. Mr. Ekuan, an award-winning designer who also worked on the Yamaha YA-1 and the Komachi Bullet Train, is said to have tested over 100 prototypes before finalizing the design of the innovative and dripless two-sided spout—a design which works so well it hasn't been altered since it was introduced in 1961!
Test: MWOBS Badge
Now you know...testing's not just for school! Designers know it's important to put their prototypes through rigorous real-world tests, which is why people who design products to function in extreme outdoor environments go to the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire, where the conditions are equivalent to what you’d encounter in Antarctica and the polar regions! Clothing, experimental robots, and tents are just a few of the products to test their mettle against the mountain!
DT Philly Showcase: Es Devlin Badge
Hooray—you've made it to the final stage of DT Philly, and it’s time to think about how you’ll share the story of your design project. Take a page from the playbook of renowned set designer Es Devlin and consider your presentation from the perspective of the audience. How will they see, hear, and experience the story you want to tell? Devlin, who has designed sets for Kanye West, Beyoncé, and Rihanna, as well as for fashion shows, plays, operas, and ballets, considers both the spirit of the performance and the experience that the audience will share. What will bring your story to life and help you connect with your audience?
Collaborator Badge 1 of 4
Nice work getting the conversation started! Collaboration is key to the design process!
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