The Week 16 team showing off the lab before the sprint – the lab that needs the added sparkle!

This event is one of the “Belonging” projects at Edinburgh Napier University, where students are encouraged to get involved in developing their community.

On the 15^th of May 2019, Celina McTavish (3^rd year DMID student) conducted a design sprint to gather students` ideas on what “belonging” means to them and how we can use these ideas to bring a sense of community to our lab. The session was organised in four steps  with eight students who regularly use the lab.

We began with an  ice-breaker followed by a 20-minute brainstorming session where students were asked the following:

• How would you describe “belonging”? (Write this)
• What does “belonging” look like to you? (Draw this)
• What are some objects that could create a sense of comfort and inclusion in a room? (draw or write)
• What can enhance students` connection with the university? (draw or write)

Capturing ideas on what “belonging” means

Some of the ideas – it’s going to be tricky to please everyone!

Students engaged with the brainstorming session by writing and drawing their thoughts on post-it notes. To try to encourage more interactions with this session, everyone came up to the front of the room and helped organise the post-it notes into sub-categories. Grouping the ideas helped to reveal keyword answers to each question.

Celina and Wilf collect everyone’s ideas

Following this brainstorming session,  prototype sketches are being created that will be used to develop  real solutions for the lab. The design sprint is focused on collectively designing an environment that emits a sense of belonging to a community with a goal of enhancing student connection with the university.

Celina works with the group to identify key areas for development.

Thanks to Celina Mctavish for writing this post.  There will be a follow up showing the detailed plans for the lab soon.