Designathon learning from a student's POV: "fun, stressful, but exciting. I feel confident”
Insights from a weekend-long design learning and doing experience
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I’m writing because education wasn't designed around students but we can improve the learner experience through design. I share stories, tips, and work in progress weekly.
Why it matters: My latest work has allowed me to share design concepts with employees at the SD YMCA and students participating in a Designathon at UC San Diego. I spent some time with students to learn about how these experiences impacted them and what their experience was like and learned some valuable insights about how people experience learning design in community, and some potential opportunities to collaborate with forward-thinking organizations to create talent incubators and hiring pipelines.
Go deeper:
This past week I spent most of my time in the actual work of preparing, sharing, and coaching around design. After a few weeks in the logistics and coordination of a Designathon, Innovation Summit, and kickoff onsite with a new client, it was refreshing and energizing to be with people sharing design innovation with the world.
Growing the Innovation Culture at the SD YMCA
I was honored to serve as the Keynote for the San Diego YMCA’s 2nd Innovation Summit, sharing concepts, tips, and examples of how to build an innovation culture across the largest YMCA in the country. This is especially exciting because it kicks off my term of service on a Board subcommittee focused on Innovation for the Y as they explore how they serve the San Diego community using human-centered design.
I introduced the model I use with clients to guide innovation practice and connected to the ways they can bring these practices and approaches into their work every day. When you’re as close to your members, partners, participants, and communities as the Y is, all you need is a powerful framework to offer structure to the ways you already respond to the challenges in front of you. I’m really looking forward to what we can do together and offering a small bit of insight that helps accelerate their impact in SD.
Advising, Coaching, and Speaking at a UCSD Designathon
Among my projects for the UC San Diego Design Lab, I jumped in as an advisor and doer for their latest Designathon event: shaping the program and format, recruiting local coaches, speakers, and mentors, and helping create a great experience for students, coaches, and attendees.
After some last minute changes, I even had a chance to step in and give the 20-min overview of “Research and Sensemaking” on Saturday morning.
Every time I help with one of these events I learn something and I’m reminded why I love the format. But this time I set out to go a little deeper to find out why:
What students had to say
Only appropriate that following a designathon event that I should connect to student attendees for quick interviews to learn about their experience of the weekend and what’s sticking with them. There were some really valuable insights that only reinforced the power of these kinds of experiences and exposure to design:
🫠 The sprint environment holds tension of stress, excitement, and fun
Students shared they came in with uncertainty and curiosity to dive in, but few had much prior knowledge on the topic of California wildfires. They relied on experts, flash talks, mentoring, and their own research to dive into the topic, learn, and navigate the design process to address the defined challenge.
Several students described feeling frustrated and overwhelmed at times and how it was overcome with breakthroughs from users that helped them identify the needs they were designing for and work to address them through their ideas and prototypes.
Students especially reinforced the importance that mentors played through the weekend as they helped them get “unstuck” and offered structure and guidance when they needed it. With the constrained timeframe of a weekend, students expressed they felt the “stress and urgency and progress towards the outcome” and that “the schedule forced us to be urgent and take action— I liked that and hated it most.” “I hadn’t really done anything like this before. Was reminding me of sorority recruitment, I felt the same way: it was fun, stressful, but exciting.”
🪄 There is magic in learning how to co-create solutions with users
Multiple students shared how powerful it was to learn directly from their stakeholder audience (whether it was parents, homeowners, ranchers, or kids) and use their insight to understand their needs, build, prototype, and test solutions with them. “I liked seeing people being receptive to ideas, and finding alignment of needs and ideas, seeing that they were backed by our research.”
I was especially intrigued by the ways that students shared how valuable it was to experience “that the output always comes out different from what you expect,” suggesting the value in testing assumptions and experimenting with users. “When we found out we were getting a lot of feedback from our users, that was a key moment. All of the research we were doing was leading in a direction and that work was being paid off. Turning point was that we were learning what we were doing supported by our research.”
🔥 Afterwards, students felt accomplished and more confident in their abilities to tackle tough challenges, especially in a short timeframe
After successfully negotiating the problem solving process that design offers in the structured environment of the designathon one student said “I felt proud knowing that you can do something in a short amount of time. I’m becoming more confident in my ability as a designer and researcher with more experience.” “At the end I felt relief and proud of what we ended up submitting.” “When we finished I feel a lot of achievement (I can do something actually). There are times that I’ve wanted to pursue an idea, but sometimes life or other priorities get in the way. This built the confidence of if I want I can go out there and do it.”
A future for this format
After years of planning Service Jams and Designathons and testing new models, I’m most excited about ways that they can be used as a talent incubator and accelerator: solving problems for companies who offer a design challenge to work on, recruiting mentors to coach teams while they evaluate talent and team dynamics, and treat the entire event as a recruiting and hiring pipeline for real work opportunities (internships, jobs, etc).
I’m eager to find partners who want to test this approach, especially companies willing to offer sponsorship and a problem to work on in exchange for the insights that come out of student work and a pipeline of emerging, engaged local talent.
Insights from the Field
Bringing you voices from across education to answer:
What advice would you give to someone driving change in education?
“To innovative education leaders: Look to the edges of learning environments, not just the center, for transformative ideas. Traditional institutions operate within established value networks that can make meaningful change challenging, so consider explorations at the periphery where experimentation thrives. Think: neighborhood initiatives, after-school programs, community spaces—where interests can be followed without predetermined destinations. We're in a time between worlds where people are increasingly open to new models. Start with low-stakes opportunities outside conventional structures (host a hackathon? lunch and learn? independent study?) where curiosity leads and unexpected connections form naturally. By demonstrating what's possible at the edges first, you'll develop both the evidence and coalition needed for thoughtful system evolution.”
Tara Baumgarten, Edtech Learning Designer, Product Manager
Learning is better when it’s social.
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Wonderful reflection and newly discovered insights, Brian. I am delighted by your idea to use the design jam format for recruiting talent.