Design Thinking in Practise with Kuva Jacobs

About Kuva Jacobs

Kuva is a Learning Design Strategist, Instructional Designer, and the Founding Director of Redpoint Consulting. Her passion for learning design seeded from a PhD in mathematics when she created visual, interactive, flash based modules that brought complex mathematical equations to life.

Kuva’s focus is on improving the experience of the learner through interactivity, engagement and creative use of multimedia. She creates highly technical training materials right from the analysis phase through to design and delivery.

Key takeaways:

• Constructivism is a theory that learners construct new understandings and knowledge – integrating with what they already know. Constructivism is the ‘Grandfather’ of human centred design. Constructivism and human centred design helped shift the learner to the centre of the learning experience.
• It’s important that learners design something for themselves for the product to work effectively. The use of virtual design sprints can help ensure the clients are engaged and involved along the process.
• Online whiteboards such as Miro enable online remote design sessions. Miro allows users to be all in one space, and you can organise and structure the information really well.
• Design thinking  gives you a closer connection to your learners. Be open to innovating in ways that suit your audience through working with key learners and identifying what people want to know.

Chapters:

• (00:00:00) Introduction.
• (00:01:35) How Kuva came to use design thinking in her learning design practice.
• (00:08:06) A process for using virtual design sprints.
• (00:12:34) How Miro succeeds a lot more when used virtually than in-person.
• (00:15:00) Using a survey to gather opinions for the prototype.
• (00:16:48) Shifting to design thinking in learning projects – and learning from epic fails.
• (00:22:19) The importance of understanding your audience and identifying how they want to learn.
• (00:23:05) Advice to people about using design thinking.

Links from the podcast:

• Connect with Kuva Jacobs on LinkedIn
• Redpoint Consulting
• Read Kuva's article on How I Applied Human Centred Design principles to Learning Design
• Miro