Why do we put up with bad design? Jamie Willett asks this question right away to help frame John’s skills and area of expertise
Empathy and more empathy. Really? Is that part of design? After listening to John Nash, I now know that it is. That never occurred to me much in the past, but it should have. Furthermore many school designs are basically setup for a command and control structure and less an empathetic view toward those we are serving. The box like configuration of schools does not serve our students in the way that it should.
He finishes up letting us know just how much empowerment and excitement educators can feel when they have influence over the design of their school buildings and daily operations of a school.
[tweetthis twitter_handles=”@jnash”]Empathy is an integral part of design[/tweetthis]
This interview was recorded live at the 7th annual 21st Century Learning Conference in Hong Kong.
John Nash is Associate Professor of Educational Leadership Studies, at the University of Kentucky, is the founder of the Laboratory on Design Thinking in Education (dLab) and a director of the Center for Advanced Study Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE), both housed at the University of Kentucky. John is a specialist in the design and prototyping of innovations in education. He teaches a range of courses on design thinking, school technology leadership, and school reform.
Nash is one of the founders of the OpenEye Group, a firm established in Sweden and the U.S. to provide leading-edge strategies that shorten time-to-impact in programs within nonprofit organizations, foundations, and government agencies.
He is the former associate director for evaluation at the Stanford Center for Innovations (SCIL), where he conducted applied research on improving program evaluation in grant-funded initiatives. He was also a grant maker for the Wallenberg Global Learning Network, an arm of the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation of Stockholm, Sweden, focused on enhancing learning outcomes through educational technology in the U.S., Sweden and Germany.