App Design Kickoff

Let students know that they are currently seated with the team that they will be working with throughout this app design project.

Team Contract

Display: Have students read through the top section of the activity guide. In order to support a positive and productive team work environment, each team will start by developing and signing an agreement. You can use this agreement throughout the course of the project to address and mediate issues among team members. Go through each section of the agreement with the whole class.

Communication: The communication section covers basic respectful communication guidelines. There are two open spaces for groups to add rules of their own. Ask groups to consider the modes of communication that they'd like to use and what the expectations should be. For example, we will use email to communicate outside of the classroom

Decision Making: While other sections are just bullet pointed lists, the decision making section includes a space for students to think of ways to manage disagreement. Encourage them to find a plan that will seem fair to everyone, even those with a minority point of view. You may want to have a small class brainstorm and modeling rules that encourage respectful conversations before having students return to their groups and make their own rules.

Participation: The participation section is meant to prevent students from getting stuck in situations where they are unsure how to proceed. Consider adding rules to this section as a whole class.

Signing the Contract: Once you've confirmed that all students understand and agree to the terms of the contract, have team members sign their names at the bottom.

Transition: If space allows, give each team some space to work on the next activity where they can spread out.

Distribute: Pass out sticky notes to each group.

Brainstorming

Display: Remind students of the brainstorming activity they did in the User-Centered Design Activity where they used post-it notes to generate as many users as they possibly could. We will be doing the same exercise for our team name, our topic, and our potential users. Remind them of some of the norms for this activity:

• One idea per sticky note
• No bad answers
• Build on others’ suggestions with “Yes, and…”
• Every idea is appreciated, no matter how wild!

Team Name: To warm up and practice brainstorming, give teams a few minutes to come up with a team name and record it on the activity guide. Encourage students to complete this in three steps:

• Write down any team name ideas on a post-it and place it in the center of your group
• As a team, categorize and group post-its
• As a team, discuss the options you like the most and decide on a team name.

Circulate: Monitor students as they complete this process, making sure students are following the brainstorming process. They will repeat this process many times throughout the unit, and developing a team name is a low-stakes way to practice the process itself.

Topic: Give teams roughly five minutes to choose a general topic for their app. It's important to remind them that they aren't trying to come up with what the app will do or any specifics at this point, but just agreeing on a general topic that it should address. They should use the same brainstorming process as above - ideas on stickies, grouping & categorizing ideas, then discussing and coming to a decision.

Circulate: Monitor students as they complete this process, focusing on whether or not students are sticking to communication, participation, and decision-making norms they decided earlier in the lesson. As you interact with groups, it may be helpful to model inclusive sentence starters that teams can use when brainstorming.

User Groups: Give students some time to generate ideas for different users who might use their app. They will have 5 minutes to generate their post-its and group them, but they don’t need to make a decision about specific users yet. Once teams have groups of possible users for their topic, they should discuss one or two potential categories they would like to focus on. They will have time during the next two lessons to further research and refine their target user group, but they want to have a clear starting point to guide that research.

Circulate: Monitor groups as they complete this process, focusing on their choice of user groups. Check that the groups are specific enough that students will be able to identify a set of needs common to the group's members. For example, "students" is probably too broad, since it could include a wide variety of ages and goals. For these examples, encourage students to get more specific, such as narrowing in on students by age or location or mode of transportation.