THE DESIGN THINKING CLASSROOM: CONDUCTING VIRTUAL DESIGN ENGAGEMENTS
Conducting virtual meetings with stakeholders is a great way to expand the context for student design processes and initiatives. It’s also a great way to teach them the skills required to effectively engage online.
The most important (and challenging) requirement of virtual meetings: Make them as human as possible. Technology can be naturally isolating and everyone just went through a global pandemic and are tired of online meetings. Despite this, virtual design engagements are here to stay and can be an integral part of a design-thinking classroom experience.
Recommendations
Conduct a design experience with your students where they use the design process to create expectations and processes for conducting virtual meetings.
Set clear agendas and objectives for each meeting. Send these prior to the meeting so that you don’t have to do it during valuable scheduled online time.
Set ground rules for behavior and communication during the meeting to ensure a respectful and productive environment.
Test your technology and connectivity before the meeting to avoid technical difficulties. Be sure that the meeting is configured properly and that all hosts are assigned as needed. Nothing derails a virtual experience more than tech issues. If a participant is having connectivity problems, have them turn off their camera.
Encourage attendees to mute their microphones when not speaking to reduce background noise. As you know, unmuting will be an issue!
Use online visual tools and platforms, such as MURAL, Miro or Google Classroom, to make the meeting participatory and to keep attendees engaged. Encourage participation and engagement from all attendees through the use of polls, Q&A sessions, and breakout rooms.
Take breaks at regular intervals to avoid burnout and allow for stretching and movement.
Use the chat feature to facilitate communication and the sharing of documents.
Follow up with attendees after the meeting to ensure that action items are being addressed and to gather feedback on the meeting format.
Consider using virtual meeting software with features such as recording, transcription, and closed captioning to make the meeting accessible to a wider audience. I use Zoom as my online meeting tool and I have added Rev, which automatically transcribes all of my Zoom meetings into a text-based document. This is invaluable as I don’t have to take notes - I can listen and manage the conversation. Note: make sure that you ask if the meeting can be recorded. In many states, it is illegal to record people without their permission. I one person objects, then don’t record. As an alternative to Rev, try otter.ai.
