Culturally Relevant Design Thinking

This lesson combines two approaches: culturally relevant teaching and design thinking. The term “culturally relevant” refers to instruction that includes modification of curricula, culture identity development, and social justice learning and action. Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. The reason for this mix is to encourage students from diverse backgrounds to relate course content to their cultural contexts. It also helps students develop a sense of belonging.

One application of this combined approach is the cypher, as explained by artist and educator Toni Blackman:

Culturally relevant teaching and design thinking go hand in hand, as "cyphering" involves brainstorming (idea generation), which can be communicated in many ways, including sketching, prototyping, or building. Additionally, this lesson includes other methods that can help diverse groups of students get into the maker mindset.

In hip-hop culture, a cypher takes place when participants form a circle and, one after another, enter into the center and perform: to perform in a cypher is to cypher, or to be cyphering. As Emmanuel Adelekun notes,

A cypher doesn’t need a stage or designated area in which to take place, they can, and do, form anywhere; at parties, in clubs, outside on the concrete, in train stations, on a beach, in someone’s living room.

You can find examples of the cypher in communities around the world and in a variety of environments (see photos). This includes on playgrounds, in galleries, and even in school-based fabrication labs, or makerspaces. Traditionally, there is music or a beat that is established that the performers respond to through spoken word or dance. However, the response can be in any form, including prototyping, which involves creating simple model of a proposed solution used to test or validate ideas. Other elements or "rules" of the cypher:

• There’s no limit to the amount of people who can be in a cypher.

• Age and gender don't matter in a cypher.

• Cyphers are not limited to one circle.

• You don’t have to qualify to cypher, you just do it.

In a classroom or makerspace setting, the cypher can created by enabling students to work 'in the round', so to speak. Teachers can arrange the physical space (tables, chairs) in a circle, or cluster small groups of students together around tables to form mini-cyphers.

Students are given a design brief, which presents a problem that needs to be solved, constraints, and protocols for a project. This document defines the core details of the design project, as well as provide examples of works that serve as exemplars.

Individually or in groups, students can map out their ideas in a design cypher, in response to the brief. The objective is to move students from imitation to iteration and improvisation, which involves improving and polishing a design over time. Students get feedback on their design maps from their peers and respond to this with a prototype that is done quickly and cheaply, so that they can make appropriate refinements or possible changes in direction.

Design briefs and design maps are described in more detail in the next steps.

A design brief defines the core details of a design project, including its goals, scope, and strategy. It provides students with tasks and constraints. In many ways, it works like a roadmap or a blueprint, informing design decisions and guiding the overall workflow of the project, from conception to completion. A brief can include tasks such as design (concept) mapping or coding.

The design brief can be presented as a Google document or slideshow that is shared with students prior to design mapping and building prototypes. Students should have access to the brief throughout the project and they can use or refer to it as criteria to assess their work.

Design (concept) mapping or 'personal meaning mapping' scaffolds and centers student knowledge, and defines the why behind making a project. This task can be used as both a formative or summative assessment. It can be a guide for implementing a design brief. Students can use words, phrases or even pictures. They can provide responses in any order and can illustrate links between concepts and secondary associations with their words / pictures. The focus of this exercise is support design thinking.

Additionally, models and demonstrations can set the scene for the mapping activity, especially through cultural modeling—scaffolding cultural knowledge to support discipline-specific learning—and showing students what can be done. Students should take notes when being presented with an overall theme, topic, or prompt. Then, they can organize and use their notes to create their own design map.

Individually or in groups, students connect their main project idea to one or more ideas. They can do this in a Google slide, or on a large sheet of paper with markers or pencils. They can use different colors to differentiate sub-themes, or times (pre- and post).

Students should present their design maps and talk about the next phase: creating the prototype.

Design mapping and peer reviews integrate the cypher into the design thinking process as a way to help students come up with innovative solutions to prototype. Collaborative peer reviews can consist of gallery walks, with each group providing constructive critiques for other groups' prototypes. Projects do not have to be finished to be peer reviewed. Each group answers worksheet questions about the prototypes they see, in rounds. Students, in their groups, should be given enough time to read and discuss their peers’ feedback. They should also be given time to respond through iteration on their prototypes.

As an extension of this activity, members of the community can be invited to take part in one of the peer reviews, as long as they follow the protocols and critique student work constructively (ex. use a worksheet).

Note: The way that a peer review is structured is open-ended. This step shows a couple of examples.

As far as how the cypher and other culturally relevant approaches are used in the classroom the sky is the limit. Invite students or practitioners to demonstrate the cypher or look at examples online. For example,

Another example shows a teacher and students collaborating with AI and a student-built "artbot". Students learned how to code with AI and build robots that respond to human movements and, in this case, draws on paper. Students responded by adding to the machine drawing:

These examples demonstrate how cultural and creative practices can inform the design thinking process. Participation can include students interacting with themselves, physical and digital artifacts, or even with machines they make. Making "artbots" can extend the design cypher / mapping /prototyping activities.