REFLECTION ON LEARNING LAUNCH TOOL

CHALLENGE & SELECTION

In my last role at a university, I was assigned the task of setting up a fabrication studio for the

college, from scratch. While I had a technical background in engineering, I was a fresh graduate and I  had never set up a fabrication space before. Since this was a liberal arts college, I had limited support  from other staff and faculty. I was expected to learn on the job, and due to strict schedules, I also had a  limited amount of time to achieve the objective. The scope of this project included selecting and  purchasing the equipment required for the space, designing the space, and designing programs and  workshops that would be conducted in the space for the community members. The challenge was to set  up the fabrication space with limited time and resources. To meet this challenge I needed a solution that  would allow to learn on the go, make mistakes that are small and easy to rectify, and provide me with  meaningful information on the performance of my ideas.

While I didn’t know it then, I chose to apply the principles of the “learning launch” tool to this

challenge. I had a natural inclination to experimentation due to my academic background, so I decided  that I would break down the challenge and conduct mini experiments. My mini experiments would help  me identify, from a pool of ideas, what worked best and what didn’t, economically and as quickly as  possible. I also needed room to make mistakes, and retrace my steps. Cheap, fast experiments with the  purpose of learning and gaining new insight is precisely what I planned to do, and as the lecture in  week 4 suggests, is at the heart of the of the learning launch tool.

APPLICATION

Before I could start my experimentation, I did an extensive survey of “what is” being done in

institutions around the world. That helped me identify benchmarks and performance goals that I would  have to strive towards. Armed with this knowledge, I designed my experiments. One of my  experiments was focused on gauging the interest in 3D printing machines in the space and the scope of  their use. I had to pick from multiple types of 3D printers, each with its own speciality, and price tag. I  realized, that given the tight schedule, it would make sense for me to start small and quickly purchase a  single 3D printer so that interested students and faculty can actually try this machine out first hand and  provide me with informed feedback and opinions. If something went wrong, I would still be able to  salvage the machine and I would be able to spend the rest of my resources wisely.

Another experiment focused on workshop design. Most of the machines in the fabrication studio

were new to faculty and students. I needed to gauge interest levels, skill levels, and identify methods of  teaching that resonated with my audience. Hence, I started the workshop series with a workshop on  computer aided design - since that was a fundamental skill that they would have to learn before they  could start using machines like the 3D printers. Since I had never designed a workshop before or taught  a class, I decided to gather feedback on the go and keep my workshop flexible so that I could  accommodate the classes diverse questions better. The workshops would be limited to a small number  of students at a time, and I decided not to follow a fixed and restrictive syllabus. The students were  encouraged to ask lots of questions. The workshops were free of cost for attendees, and I used open  source software to keep the cost of the workshops down.

I also designed a survey that allowed students to voice their opinions on a variety of issues

pertaining to the fabrication space; including opening hours, culture of the space, potential future  projects, their ideas for new machines or technology in the space. Concurrently, I was trying out

different opening hours for the space in practice; this allowed students to give more reliable feedback  from real experience.

INSIGHT

The experiments were a huge success. In the first experiment on 3D printing machines, faculty and

students were using the machine extensively, and in ways that I would not have imagined. One faculty  used the 3D printer to print out scale models of dinosaur bones that they could use in class, instead of  just using pictures. I was able to use the results from this experiment to make a strong case for  purchasing more 3D printers, that were larger and with more functionality. Now, the fabrication space  has four 3D printers; each can print different volumes and with different resolutions. Since the  community has seen that experimentation has led to this positive change, they are still carrying out  these learning experiments and developing new ideas based on those learnings. The last 3D printer we  bought came as a result of students demanding more open source 3D printing machines so that they  could control different parameters of printing - this was a very unique insight as all my secondary and  tertiary research indicated the exact opposite, that most users preferred a automated or smart printer  which required little input or configuration.

The workshop experiment initially made the workshops seem longer and more tedious but after a

few iterations, students and faculty started responding to them favourably. An insight that surprised me  was that even though most of the students did not have a background in science or were not pursuing a  bachelors in a hard science field, they were very aware of the technological developments and their  various applications. A fine arts student, who was interested in oil paintings and sculptures, took keen  interest in computer aided design workshops. The student provided me with insight on how I can  improve the workshop by discussing and demonstrating the software’s application in the fine arts. This  allowed me to learn something new, and then share that new knowledge with my students.

Lastly, I did not anticipate or account for the demand for sewing machines in the fabrication space,

a result that kept coming up in the survey. Hence, I met up with some of the students and faculty who  wanted the sewing machines so that I could understand their perspective better and identify what  specific needs would need to be met. This allowed me to identify the blind spots in my view of the role  and function of the fabrication space.

APPROACH

The learning launch/experimentation approach definitely served its purpose and was successful in

helping me deal with the challenge of setting up the fabrication space. By allowing me to break down  the big challenge into smaller chunks and attack them individually meant that even with little  experience or formal knowledge in the field, I was able to deliver a favourable outcome. However, after  learning about the various design thinking tools, I now believe that if I had applied a combination of  tools, such as mind mapping with learning launch, the result would have been better.

Mind mapping would have helped me involve members of the community [students, staff, faculty]

in the process a lot earlier. I could have gained some of the insights even before the experiments began  and I could have used that knowledge to improve the experiment design. If I had the time and resources,  I would have also liked to have done a visualization exercise with the administrators of the space, that  would have helped them design better policy and procedure for the operation of the fabrication space.

