Make Sense of Learnings

Instructions

When you conduct an interview, engage parents, or test a new idea, you’ll end up with a lot of information.  Now it’s time to start making sense of it and prioritizing what your design solution will be. Ideally, you can do this with a team, who has also been gathering data and stories alongside you, but you can also use these steps to make sense of the learnings on your own.

Suggested Time: 30 - 60 Minutes per discussion. This process is best done the day of or the day after the interview, research, or test. 

Materials Needed: Pens, Post-its, a wall or board, stickers if voting

Participants: You and your team, and other interested stakeholders. You could even include students to help you make sense of what you heard and build trust for ongoing collaboration.

Step One

Set up your space. You’ll want to be able to put Post-its on a wall or big piece of paper where everyone you can see clearly.

Step Two

Individually or as a team, share key information about who you met, facts you gathered, or impressions you’ve formed. Put each point on an individual Post-it note that can be moved around in later steps.

Step Three

Cluster Post-it notes based on themes and patterns you are seeing. Give each cluster a header — like “Choice” or “Time” — so it’s easy to glance at the board and see what is emerging.  Ask questions like , “How would we categorize this?”, “Is there a way these things might be connected?” to help you and your team synthesize the information.

Step Four

Once you have created clusters, step back and look for design opportunities that might respond to the patterns that emerge from the groupings. Perhaps this points to a new idea you should try. Maybe it has uncovered a new question that you’d like to further understand. Write these out on Post-it notes or in a summary document.

Step Five

Now that you have a set of ideas and/or learning questions, how should you proceed? You probably can’t do everything if you are sourcing bigger, more complex ideas, so you’ll need to prioritize which ideas to pursue. Use the Feedback Prioritization Worksheet to consider each of the options in turn or have your colleagues vote on which ideas posted on the board are most aligned with what you are trying to achieve.

Tool

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