ruslpóstur minn

Improving on perfection is a challenge, but it can be done (see above). Surely, with final projects due tomorrow, and 15 weeks or 'Processes and Perspectives' under my belt, I can build a better mouse trap with the steel trap of my mind.

With Acceptance, I would strongly argue that consideration of joy and interest are understated. I have spent my adult life doing joyless tasks for money and didn't even think to question my self-imposed misery until I sold my company at 35 and had the luxury and ownership of my own time, along with the existential despair that comes from having time to ponder mortality. I vowed to make sure my next gig was not a gig but something I found challenging and engaging. This program has been mind-blowing in that regard - everyone seems to take having a fulfilling, challenging, interesting job as a given.

This is me from age 22-35.

Definition is, for me, the hardest step of all and might need to be part of Analysis as a preliminary step. I sense that Definition ought to be the hypothesis the analysis seeks to approve or disprove, at least at first. Or perhaps Analysis and Definition are more intertwined and iterative than implied.

In reality, in Design Essentials and in this class, there has been a ton of iteration in the Analysis-Definition-Ideation cycle, where the ideas born of brainstorming then spark another round of research and refinement and further ideation. I suppose this is saying that Selection is not final and decisive, at least the first time through - that it is a narrowing down that leads to a recycling of the initial ideas.

If this process and class were a Taco Bell dinner item (a strong case can be made for this assertion, said as an unabashed, lifelong, border-running, fourth-mealing fan of the Bell), we are taught that the trademark Seven Layer Burrito Innovation Process iterates at the last stage, Evaluation. This class emphasizes that it is then that a determination is made then that these delicious ingredients ought to be something else. The group would, say, at that point revisit the implementation and ideate, prototype, and then unfurl our burrito into, say, a Beef Bowl Supreme.

The Wisdom of Gorditas

In reality, we are always evaluating, revisiting steps, morphing the ingredients found in the inspired authenticity of the Beef Enchirito back into the proletariat's friend, the Burrito Supreme, when we have workaday concerns such as cost and market reach. Yet simultaneously we are considering the utility and beauty of a Gordita, having since decided upon a price point, and are still admiring the purity of the synthesis inherent in a CrunchWrap Supreme and its over-the-top hedonism, until at last, having built our castle in the clouds, we start to strip away the artifice of sour cream and third-party Dorito shells. It is then that we start approaching the pure genius of the Meximelt, the T-Bell menu item of the Gods, having taken a circuitous route from minimalism to utilitarianism to maximalism to essentialism in finding the perfect Taco Bell item for our order.

Fin

I think a better parallel can be found in parallel processing in computers, where multiple threads crunch numbers and commands simultaneously. A thread completes, and a queuing superthread is notified. Our minds hold opinions that shift, valuations that fluctuate, and opinions that ebb and flow. We work on different ideas, and certainly have a focus but are also processing and learning as we go, and weighing new variables and changing our assessments of past variables once dismissed. While we work on something, a new thread completes, or another thread takes a new idea as a variable and starts churning away on some calculations.

That is not to say that this process is wrong. It is not! Or rather, I have no reason to think it is wrong, and it is a framework that I am glad to have learned. What I mean to say is that the linearity implied is not to be taken literally, and that we can have several of these processes running, multithreaded and asynchronous, informing each other, all at different individual stages, all at once. We advance to a prototype knowing already that it isn't that good, already considering the replacement. We solve a problem knowing there is a bigger, better problem around the corner, knowing our solution is looking like a compromise or bridge to a better opportunity. Our minds are churning away on new ideas and ideating at each stage and evaluating at each step, just waiting for us to take a shower or jog to hit us with a completed thread of another thought.

If we were to evaluate the actual output of our group work as if we were a startup launching into the world, I would be obsessed with working with teachers. This would include Soliciting Feedback from teachers via a Beta test and frequent checkins and deep involvement in our product's design and evolution. We aren't educators and everything we know is from a high level, abstracted perspective.

We would want, for new features, to roll them out to our beta testing community and then provide rubrics for measuring if the feature is improved or a keeper (or not). We want to provide space for qualitative feedback too. This would something like Formative evaluation since they are getting an incomplete product in a sense and are providing continuous Kaizen-style feedback to us and then ideally improved products back at them.

I think ranking is better than polling, because we want to know relative improvements and not absolutes when it comes to feature enhancements - are we on the right track? I don't really want to ask a user if we are approaching their Platonic ideal for some feature or pedagogical technique, we might get inappropriately slammed for something we are pretty good but not perfect at doing. In the end the poll numbers I care about are new users and repeat visitors - voting with their feet (or thumbs) so to speak.

Assessing each stage of this process has largely been defined by the deliverable produced as defined by the stage. That is to say, for ideation were there a lot of ideas, for acceptance have we all agreed on the rules of the road for working together, etc. In that sense, this was a successful project. The team worked well together, the team came to agreements quickly, each stage produced more than it needed to, and we were able to swap roles and avoid butting heads.

It is hard to throw down metrics for some of these process stages, but for example, in ideation we came up with 4 pages worth of ideas (about 80 ideas). For the analysis stage, we have 20 pages of notes, links, images, and resources pulled together into a Google doc. For implementation we have 6 or 7 mockups of different aspects of the site and a site map as a guide to our vision. I can't say if this is a lot relative to other groups, and such a comparison wouldn't mean a thing to me, but I can say that we never wanted for resources to pull from.

Our group is creating an app that lives on a browser and as a native mobile client. We have some mockups and a site architecture design to explore how our solution functions and provide a sense of what it does.

Desktop Browser (Chrome) View

This is the landing page for our app.

There is also a native app component on iOS and Android. We have mockups for a splash (loading) screen and the equivalent landing and news pages.

Native app loading / splash screen

Our native mobile apps have a touch friendly menu and a welcoming design

Of course our mobile-first design philosophy shines with our responsive mobile site

LearnLab Site map with our major features

The Site Map lets one dig in to the functionality we are aspiring to. We left off the minutae of login pages and security but be assured they are there in our hearts and our plans, encrypted at 2048 bits. Our major educational, teacher-skill-enhancing offerings are 1) networking including leadership training and mentorship, 2) Training resources for certification and Best practices, 3) open source materials including books and lesson plans, and 4) latest news including academic research and case studies.

Our logo

This video from the modern poet Rick Ross encapsulates the implementation stage and our mindset. The heist is planned, the trap is set, and now it is time to execute and soon enjoy the spoils.

This group is fortunately, like the crime lords in the music video, an A-Team, though of design, business and tech specialists and not bank heists and drug dealing, and that expertise makes this project a pleasure. I suppose that is one of the benefits of this program - it is fun to work with people that are good at what they do. Maybe this is only a revelation to me.

And yet, we did not divide up the work by expertise, but by what skill we wanted to hone, the better to become a bunch of wily utility players instead of playing it safe. Our designer is doing wireframing and app architecture, our developer is putting the deck together, the business folks are helping on research, and overall there has been a lot of 'how can I help?' and no 'ungh do I have to?'

One of the implementation techniques we use have been the distillation concept - how can we turn all these words into fun visuals, and this mountain of data and reseach into something easily grasped? We have a few working ideas also about mocking up a classroom environment to show the app in action to help make it less of an exercise in imagination.

As far as presentation concepts, we are going to use a couple of data visualizations, a table, wireframing, a site map, and a rendering of a class room. These are still works in progress but we are aiming to be complete by next class in a week so that we can spend the last week fine tuning the presentation.

We are struggling with the audience-centric issues around this project. Who are we presenting to? Are we imaging this to be a room of Venture Capitalists or is this an episode of Shark Tank? Could we be trying to secure a grant or presenting this as part of a crowdfunding pitch? I am assuming in general here that this is a pitch deck of some sort and we have our tin cup out but maybe that is assuming too much.

Rick Ross also has a lot to say about obtaining funding and the mindset one needs to maintain reliable cash flow as a bootstrapped young entrepreneur. He was not afraid of extending his distribution and

Pitching Ideas to Stakeholders

We have used several methods.

Plebiscite

We held a vote on the name since there was no consensus passion for any one idea. We ideated and spat out about 20 names and we each voted on 5. LearnLab was the winner with 3 votes.

Failed pitch

I've been politically radicalized by Trump and have been flirting with the idea of joining the socialist party (DSA) so wanted to put something in the app allowing for teacher work stoppages and wildcat strikes as we are seeing throughout the country today. I think this pitch failed because it was too nakedly subversive where we want the app to be subtly disruptive and subversive. I agree it carried too much risk for the benefit of endearing us to the intelligentsia that will carry the proletariat to glorious victory in the struggle against global capital oppression.

Effective Pitch

The table format did not travel particularly well to tumblr and to this theme in particular as an HTML table. Instead I took a screenshot for an image and also included a downloadable PDF for your viewing pleasure.

We used a couple of the techniques outlined in the selection section, albeit with less intention than would be ideal since we started thinking about Selection before we completed the asynchronous material.

While we didn't apply the force ranking numbers, we were able to use the principles of the Kepner-Tregoe method to winnow down the list of ideas considerably by looking at risks and concerns. A leading concern was cost - we were able to throw out ideas that required technology that is either not developed yet or is prohibitively expensive. One of these ideas was prefab classrooms designed just so to optimize 21st century learning styles.

Another concern is scope. We have a practical need to finish the assignment and a business need to start off with something closer to a single product rather than coming out of the womb with a full suite of products for huge markets. We also had a mission to be impactful along the axis of student autonomy, digital immersion, and developing soft skills / student social skills. To that end, we were able to categorize some ideas as student-facing and lop them off the list, since we were going to focus on teacher-facing software solutions. About half of our ideas revolved around ideas such as 'virtual lab' or classroom hardware and we could ditch those quickly.

We considered business concerns also. There is a risk that if you go into the virtual textbook sales business, the 5 incumbents that control 80% of the market and know all of the major players will crush you. Selling furniture into schools means you are competing head to head with giants such as Virco, Smith System, Herman Miller, Steelcase and Knoll. In short, picking a product that is competing on features with fairly nimble competitors is a recipe for probably getting copied and undercut.

This cognitive shift led to us using the Idea Potpourri method. First we had Margaret's thought of 'Stack Overflow but for teachers' which led to ideas of 'app store but for lesson plans' and then 'Wikipedia but for textbooks'. We took a step back, looked for common threads to what we are proposing, and realized that what we are designing is a software platform for and by teachers. We were able to establish four pillars.

The Four Pillars of Our Ed-Tech Solution

Leadership Training

Continuing Education

Best Practices

Trending Topics

These were the general categories of things our platform should support for teachers. These principles then let us decide on a yes/no basis if an idea was suitable for inclusion.

There are three additional skills kids need in the 21st century to thrive that are not taught well at present in the USA:

autonomy

digital literacy

soft social skills

and these serve as another yes/no consideration - if something does not serve those ideals we could kick it out.

Vision Statement, Beta Version

We empower and enlighten teachers to create smarter, thriving kids.

Problem We Are Solving

What is a product or service that can comprehensively address the shortcomings of USA K-5 (elementary) education?

Initial Feature Lineup for our Platform

LEADERSHIP/DEVELOPMENT

Leadership in classroom articles & exercises

LinkedIn-like connection service

Mentorship matching service

CONTINUING EDUCATION

Udemy/Lynda

Online courses for recertification/re-cert

BEST PRACTICES

Lesson plans

Case studies

Optimal classroom layout tool - AR/VR

Platform for open source Wikipedia-style textbooks with lesson plans and tests

TRENDING

New technology

Of the many methods and techniques available for selecting an idea, I think the methodology that our group found most natural and useful on this assignment was the idea potpourri.

We had a variety of ideas, perhaps even being guilty of the rare sin of having too many ideas, though many of them were pretty fanciful. Our process in narrowing down ideas started with a pragmatic consideration of what we could accomplish in the next few weeks. So the first decision we made to narrow our scope to grades Kindergarten through 5th grade.

The next method we used was to take a look at the effectiveness of different teaching methods based on what we found in our research. Our analysis showed that teaching quality was the biggest determinant of success in international comparisons.

We also found that three skills are ideal for the poor kids forced to work in the 21st century economy: autonomy, digital literacy, and social skills / soft skills. This served as a useful filter for winnowing down the ideas further. Ideas such as my one of my own amazing contributions that nevertheless did not advance these goals - i.e. the Tupac Shakur hologram as a rap teacher - could easily be put aside, were knocked out in a version of the Decision Maker's Checklist.

One cannot simply journal about brainstorming without using the many clip-art-like brainstorming icons from the internet. It does not feel right.

much better

As mentioned in the other assignment this week, we had two brainstorming sessions. One was live over Adobe Connect and the second was live over Google Hangouts, while 3/4 of the group were driving. I was home so served as scribe, using pen and paper to record everything, sticking to writing words in English and my home-made shorthand of symbols and squiggles. Later I transcribed to Google Docs to record for posterity and share the results with the group.

In between these two sessions, we had a general shared 'research' Google doc that held both the results of our research and some of the random ideas that floated into peoples' heads, and these were dutifully copied onto the brainstorming doc as well.

I think for both sessions people felt enthusiastic about the mission though after our first session, we had a small pivot. Grant had hopped into our discussion and as we understood the assignment better, we realized we needed a project goal and question that could be monetized more directly. This caused us to feel a little crestfallen. We talked it out over Slack and came around to thinking that all was not lost, but that our scope was perhaps too broad and ambitious and that narrowing our scope and focusing on productizing (is that a word?) our concepts was the way to go.

Productizationalism

Both sessions were about an hour. The second session was where the productization really took off. Margaret led us down the software and app route and suddenly we could sell our ideas and concepts. Thinking digitally opened up our minds to the possibilities of Tupac holograms, holodecks, immersive AR and VR experiences for students, and apps that can help teachers apply progressive teaching methodologies and room design to their work.

We knew of specific ideas surrounding creative class layout design in Scandinavia, Canada, and at some progressive charter schools in California. So bringing up what we knew about this plus thinking about monetization and what a VC would invest in was a bit of forced connection/connecting and lateral thinking. We thought about apps similar to the IKEA room layout app that provides augmented reality views of rooms with new furniture placed around. There were also thoughts about a software as a service model where we provide cloud storage and apps for teachers and administrators in addition to Chromebooks for a kind of all-in-one 'school in a box' application. We could solve ancillary problems such as administering and grading tests and taking attendance that are chores for teachers.

We riffed on ways to include kids' mobile phones instead of banning them. Maybe the app could extend to student phones and then include a second screen for immersive additional content or perhaps become a medium for test-taking or notes. It could also help us in virtual or augmented reality teaching scenarios where native speakers appear to teach a foreign language or virtual dissections of frogs take place.

Our group brainstorm mostly relied on three of the techniques, though informally. Only upon reflection did I realize this.

We had two brainstorming sessions.

brainstorm 1

The first session was during the end of class when we broke into our groups. The second session was on a call together. We came up with a question for each session, though the second session was heavily influenced by our conversation with Grant where we realized that we need to monetize our idea somehow. I think some in the group had grander visions free of filthy lucre but I was relieved since I am a shameless money grubber hoping to become incredibly wealthy one day.

Brainstorm 1

We struggled with the broadness of our problem definition, so the initial brainstorm was somewhat meta, thoughts on thoughts and wrestling with definitions. We started thinking about big picture changes to education based on what we know about current schools and what we know about countries that are ahead of us on the league tables.

We added in a bit of lateral thinking in approaching this from the perspective of a venture capitalist - what would they invest in? What is an education product that would appeal to an investor? What would make for a good business?

This led to ideas about physical classroom layout and products sort of in the vein of furniture, consulting and advisory services sold to school districts, and even classrooms themselves. My experience selling to government tells me that this is a horrible business but I just hated the paperwork and glacial pace.

brainstorm 2

I suppose we utilized the Take a Break and Other Places method, as the second brainstorm, conducted over Google Hangouts, concerned new attempts after a 4 day break at cracking this case. We redefined and refocused the problem to K-12 education, and thought of new approaches. This was a more productive session. Three of the four of us were in the car during the call, perhaps opening up minds as the consciousness, which would normally filter ideas perhaps and self-criticize, was preoccupied with driving a car. I think this is part of the ideas I have read about in 'A Mind for Numbers' about creative thinking, learning, and the science behind why the Pomodoro Technique works.

Brainstorm 2

Margaret took this in a cool direction by mentioning we could make an app or website that advised teachers. I had been stuck in a mental rut of dreaming up physical products and thinking of things like robot dog companions or immersive seating bubbles and pods, prefab containers such as shipping containers wired for the latest gadgets and connectivity, seats on chairs, lego furniture the kids build, and two person pair programming desks.

Defintion

While this is a process that is supposed to be one of synthesis and culling the herd gathered in research, we did a bit of ideating trying to come up with a problem. This phase was, for me, the hardest because we picked such a broad, insanely ambitious topic.

I think we considered both the audience and our own abilities. In some sense, we are in a design-centric program and so a design-centric project is one where we are molding physical things, impacting the relationship and placement of objects real and virtual, and interested in the interaction and intersection of people and things. Getting into the weeds of what a school teaches or how teachers teach is fascinating, vital, and probably too far outside our scope. However, we can come at those issues indirectly - a two person desk for pair programming facilitation will inherently influence how a programming class is taught.

I think looking at foreign classrooms was incredibly illuminating as was talking to my friend who is a principal at a local charter school. We can change easily how kids experience school and pick up stragglers by being mindful of the different way kids learn and interact. We also need to be aware that screen time and suburbia and helicopter parenting is leading to isolation and kids that can't interact well with each other. More socialization, team work, and attention being paid to different learning modes can turn around kids who are pretty much neglected and written off now because they happen to be kinesthetic or aural learners and schools prioritize visual learning and written learners.

We settled on a problem definition:

today’s classroom environment is failing our kids for their future.

The wording may get moved around a bit but I think the gist of the issues are set. We are going to look at ways changing the classroom environment can improve how kids are taught. We each had thoughts about different aspects of education we want to see improve. I had initially wanted to look at how programming and computer science are both taught and treated as separate topics instead of integrated across subjects. We had other team members that had focused on curriculum changes and subjects that were being taught, and others focused on educational philosophy.

We all wanted to see some sort of focus on education reform, and we were most interested in K-12. There was a sense that curriculum reform was too broad to include for the time we have on the project, and potentially not something we could design effectively. However, we think we can address aspects of this in other ways. My definition was too specialized and really not something that there was clear research on - there is yet to be an established, best practice methodology for teaching CS to students short of massive investments in teachers to teach it.

After a bit of ideating on a conference call, we discussed some of the cool things we uncovered in our research, engaging in something like lateral thinking, trying to come up with common threads. We talked about what we disliked about school - the conformity, the rules, the rigidness. We discussed the things we saw in our research on foreign schools, and how some schools in Japan and Europe were dedicated to children down to their architecture. Some schools lacked walls between classes, others had running tracks on the roof so children could exercise freely and often.

Headphones

My Master & Dynamic MH30 Headphones are brown leather and silver metal. They have two 3.5mm inputs and have adjustable metal arms and have a one inch thick headband. The ears make a tight seal and have a nice, balanced mid range and treble.

My Master & Dynamic MH30 Headphones are silver metal but have a gunmetal patina. The headband flexes but is almost too small for my gigantic head. The sound is remarkable but the bass is a bit thin for some genres of music.

Baseball Hat

My Los Angeles Dodgers hat is blue and has the 'LA' insignia in white stitching. It is filthy on the outside and on the inside as I rarely wash it and wear it frequently. It is a size 8 for my gigantic head and yet somehow makes my head appear even larger than it is.

My Los Angeles Dodgers hat is well worn but the stitching is holding up. The brim is growing brown with dirt but has achieved an aesthetically pleasing curve. There are six ventilation holes (called eyelets) in my baseball hat but only one fabric-covered button (called a squatchee).

Frozen Treat

The box of Trader Joe's Gone Bananas chocolate covered banana slices is almost empty and the chocolate is all over my fingers. The box is yellow and white and has illustrated monkeys all over it. The illustration of the banana has an open peel and has the chocolate bits arranged as if it came out of the banana.

The box of Trader Joe's Gone Bananas chocolate covered banana slices is cold from the freezer but has chocolate smears from melted chocolate on the box lid. The box has a plastic container inside but this is now empty of its chocolate-covered banana slice contents. The monkeys on the box are illustrated in a cartoon style but the actual chocolate-banana slices are illustrated in a realistic style.

Dodgers Cup

The Los Angeles Dodgers World Series Commemorative Cup is blue and black and has white text and gold accents. This cup holds 32 ounces of liquid and has a narrow base and a wide mouth. There is an illustration of the World Series trophy the team did not win in gold and WORLD SERIES in white lettering. There is a large red vertical stripe and it says Coca-Cola on the stripe and there are also two baseballs on the stripe and each ball has the Coca-Cola logo.

The Los Angeles Dodgers World Series Commemorative Cup is made of cheap plastic but it cost me $15 when I bought it at the game. There are 19 years written on the side of the cup for World Series appearances but only 6 are in gold denoting a victory. The Dodgers logo and 'LA' emblem are written on the cup but the Coca-Cola logo and 'World Series 2017' are much larger.

Kachina Doll

My kachina doll is 18 inches tall and is as tall as the Godzilla doll on the other side of my desk and nearly as tall as my desk lamp. It holds my headset cords and my earbuds and some velcro zip ties I used for cable management. It is red and turquoise and white and black. It has a fabric toga and moccasins more resembling boots and frilly leather leggings and sea shells hanging off of it and a necklace with beads and stones. It has a mask with teeth and upturned horns and feathers and protruding eyes.

Morphological Analysis

I have spent a lot of time over the last week scratching my head over morphological analysis and how this tool helps me. This link has helped me understand the origins. I remain a skeptic. What does a morphological analysis do exactly?

There is a lot of confusion produced by trying to do this exercise before we have defined a problem. We are still engaging in this meta analysis of problem solving while also solving an actual but vague problem. It is headache fuel. We are collecting research on a subject but also with the morphological analysis we are assuming a problem to be solved, an assumption that we have our hands around not just a subject but a pretty specific subject since this exercise tries to create a matrix of every conceivable permutation of specific values. If a goal of the morphological analysis is to let us know our subject is broad, we also already knew that. This feeds the sense that the insights are kind of trivial.

This Zwicky box, which represents a morphological analysis, shows every permutation of three values. Each inner cube is than an combination of these three possible values. So for parameter 1, let's say we are describing urinals, so P1 can be shape. Parameter 2 can be waste removal architecture. Parameter 3 is color. Parameter 1 then can be, if we are using this exact 5x5x5 Zwicky box, bathtub stood on end, ice-cream-cone-shaped, pear-shaped, trough or wall/inset. Parameter 2 can be water-less, flush activated, continuous flush, motion activated, and timer-activated. Parameter 3 for color can be also material, so I'll break convention a little and combine them for porcelain white, steel silver, decorative plastic multi-color, tiled multi-color, and painted other.

The most I can make of this mental exercise is that it is a way to be MECE: Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive (thanks first boss who was an ex-McKinsey guy). You explore every possible combination that you know of which to me is a limitation. It is like the Dominos Pizza online Pizza Maker - you are bounded by culture and reality. I can't put ice cream or a hat on my pizza. So this exercise is good for exploring what is, but isn't all that blue sky imaginative. I am left wondering if this is really best suited for new subjects or overly complex and technical ones, where there are huge gaps in what we know.

Reflections on Techniques

I like Common Sense on paper. It is helpful to see what my prejudices are and my default mood. An idea dump at the same time is also very helpful. Journaling has also made me more reflective and conscious of my choices as I make them instead of just free falling down an internet rabbit hole.

I am definitely a pack rat and think it superior to collecting as you go. You never know when you will have needed that one article or quote you were on the fence about keeping around.

Of the other techniques, I think I instinctively do a lot of pattern matching and try to see threads, which in hindsight is dangerous as others have obviously done so to make sense of their subject and so you may end up regurgitating a story people tell rather than the story of what is actually happening. Squeeze and Stretch It are good techniques and part of that for me in practice is following the links and the footnotes to get closer to source material.

Jumping to Conclusions is not a bad option if you are throwing up a hypothesis that you can try to quickly knock down, once you have collected a bit more research. It is also good to try and collect counterpoints to arguments to get a more well-rounded approach or at least anticipate objections.

Research

Research, for me, is the fun part. I enjoy the subject we picked and had just enough baseline knowledge that I could start pulling interesting things together quickly. We are using a book The Fourth Industrial Revolution as a foundation and then I went on the internet using academic journals and articles from more serious magazines as sources.

The best way I can imagine success is with text supporting pictures of the apex predator of our species, Daniel Craig's James Bond. This character represents a Platonic ideal of traits I admire: stoicism, determination, grim satisfaction in defeating his enemies, sense of style and sophistication, good taste, a pitch black sense of humor, professionalism, and efficiency. In short, when I visualize success, I see James Bond.

My Mental State Upon Succeeding

Upon completing the project, I will feel more sophisticated, more accomplished, and deserving of an adult reward such as a martini. When we succeed I will glow with the confidence of Her Majesty's most capable assassin-spy and an unmatched Lothario.

Accomplishing My Goal and Immediate Impact of My Goal

Accomplishing my goal will give me the quiet fulfillment of the professional spy who takes great pride in his service of Her Majesty. My goal or desired outcome is a professionally executed, well-crafted, thoughtful, and clever product which is received well by faculty and my peers. I will look back at a difficult mission pulled off with Bond's aplomb. In an ideal world, it becomes the seed for a business that will make me incredibly wealthy and impactful. But in the shorter term, achieving this goal earns me quiet respect and enhanced camarederie with my group.

Who benefits from my success? Global and Local Impacts

Bond is a loner, but he relies on his team and his various female companions to succeed time and again. I hope that my team benefits immediately from my success. In fact, I don't see a separation of our successes; we will sink or swim together, and am happy being Q as I am being Bond - Q gets shot at far less and keeps more regular hours. Should we find a product for the world to use, then our customers and stakeholders will benefit from our project, and we will all be enriched. Perhaps our project, even if not made into a product, service, or business, can be released to the world and used as the basis for something like an open source project, nonprofit, further research, or world-changing shift in educational policy that launches the human race into a thousand year epoch of unparalleled learning and achievement. Not to oversell our homework assignment or anything.

What kind of rewards could come from the success of your undertaking?

Bond is, of course, rich with excellent, ableit expensive, taste. Obviously, I am hoping that the success of this project leads to personal wealth and the freedom and opportunities that only mountains of money can provide. We could turn this project into a product or service that can be sold, turned into a business, and launches my career into a new, exciting direction. I am looking for entrepreneurial opportunities and have an interest in solving big, difficult problems. I think even if this does not lead to a personal financial transformation and a new business, it will be a great addition to my portfolio and a way to hone my craft of making digital products and working with teams of creatives, businesspeople, and engineers. Plus, I will have three new, talented friends.

What are your motivating factors for succeeding?

First and foremost, I am competitive, and want to beat all of the other teams. I don't know that this makes sense in this context, as there are no prizes awarded nor is there an objective way to say that a project is the best given that there will be different problems addressed. However, my competitive drive motivates me even when I know there are no medals being awarded. I am motivated also by a desire to get the most out of my short time at USC as possible. I see no point in spending all this time and money only to phone in solutions. Lastly, I am motivated by my own perfectionism and pride in having high standards for my work.

What makes you interested in the problem in the first place?

Like Wu-Tang and this photoshopped image, I am for the children. I've had abysmal experiences in public schools and bad for-profit schools, I've had transformative classes and experiences elsewhere. There is a need to change education to make it better suited for our age. Young people need to be exposed to the breadth of career options available and to have STEAM stressed from the minute they enter kindergarten. As a mid-life career switcher, I also know firsthand how expensive and difficult it is to retool and then convince someone to hire you instead of a recent grad. Continuing education, workforce development, and ongoing technical training are going to be essential for modern labor pools and for addressing structural unemployment that is the result of our nation's legacy of inequality and neglect of whole populations. Lastly, automation is going to obliterate whole job classifications in my lifetime, so learning how to learn and creating a better education mousetrap are going to save the proletariat.

What is compelling about seeing this to its end result?

It can be argued that, despite Bond's aristocratic upbringing, Craig's 007 brings a decisively working class sensibility to the character. His Bond is a hardworking artisan of killing and spycraft, a man who is most satisfied when using his talent and training to accomplish his mission. Similarly, I am eager to translate the things I am learning into practice and output for my portfolio. Molding my brain to adopt design thinking is exciting stuff and requires me to finish the things I start. Also completing the mission is entirely the point - Bond doesn't let his targets off with a warning.

What level of investment do you have in the solution succeeding?

Some of the contingencies that may impede progress include:

Competing time commitments

Scope of project being too wide for the time allotted

Personal emergency removing a team member

Loss of interest in the topic

Interpersonal conflicts

Any single stage taking too long

Indecision

Having to go back to the drawing board on any of the problem solving stages

We then collectively decided on a meeting framework to hold us all accountable and established the norms described below for our group.

Delegation & Decision-Making:

“Divide and Conquer”: We all like the idea of deciding general goals in broad strokes by consensus. Then tasks are delegated, granting our team members autonomy with that task.

Communication:

We will primarily use a private Slack channel (“P&P Channel”). We exchanged emails and mobile numbers for escalation in case of an emergency.

Documentation:

We are all happy using Google Docs for collaboration.

Consequences:

We are hoping that the set weekly meeting heads off issues before we need to discipline anyone.

Rewards:

Upon successful completion, we plan to celebrate with wine.

Celebration depicted below

Norms:

Group when we need to and individual contributions when we need to

Respect delegation and run full force towards milestones

100% attendance for our group meeting every Monday 7:30pm

Understanding Limits:

Narrowing down specific achievable issues to address what is impacting the current state of education

Realistic timelines and what is possible during our last ~8 weeks together

Understanding and being empathetic to team members outside commitments (e.g. work, family, etc)

Establish Reasonable and Feasible Goals

Team’s Intentions:

Our intentions are to propose reasonable Educational Reform solutions to make America Intelligent Again

We expect we will celebrate and learn together

Team Gaps:

We currently don’t have any educators on our direct team, but we have many K-12 educators in close network.

The benefits that may accrue to me by working in this group are many!

I am excited about the opportunity to work with this team. We were quickly able to achieve consensus on the team norms and everyone has been very agreeable, so first and foremost, I want to surpass their expectations and avoid being a dud of a team member. Shame and guilt avoidance are clear benefits.

I want more positive experience simply working in a team, as much of my career has been either as a boss or as a solo entrepreneur. Learning to be an effective team member is something I want to master most.

The topic of modernizing eduction genuinely interests me intellectually and emotionally as an American concerned about our nation's future. We can only win on brilliance unless the rest of the world simply passes us by and we become a low cost producer again, and with automation and autonomous vehicles, whole swathes of the low skilled work force are about to be disrupted. Education is how we avoid that fate.

School and education has always been something I have enjoyed and I have generally been a good student. I have experience with all sorts of educational experiences, from traditional public school and a liberal arts education in a four year college to corporate training sessions, developer bootcamps, one-on-one developer mentorships, community college classes, meditation workshops, MOOCs and now this program, a hybrid online/in-person Master's degree. The landscape of education is shifting rapidly and the need to train (and retrain) people for in-demand jobs, especially technical jobs, quickly is greater than ever. So I stand to benefit from working on a topic I care about and having passion for it.

Education is a fantastic market to consider and one that is still playing catch up with other parts of the economy. I might be able to find a product or business idea through this research.

This could be me after this project

I hope to be able to hone my technical craft and my general business experience through this experience. I would accomplish this by learning from my teammates who are all very accomplished.

I hope to make new friends and grow my professional network.

Of all the skills taught in the program, the one I hope to get a better eye for design and be able to talk about design more intelligently. So, the potential to get better at design as a discipline is a potential benefit.

The subject matter with a problem to solve: Education, more specifically, Education as it is related to making America intelligent again. This encompasses training for the 21st century economy and relates to themes touched on in books such as The Fourth Industrial Revolution by Klaus Schwab.

Our professional rationales for why we should be part of a team are as follows:

Margaret - Design Thinking & Looking at Sideways Perspective

Aileen - Multidisciplinary

Russell - Technology

Eric - Business