Turning shared challenges into focused action
How 40+ people at USC’s Career Center turned a retreat into a launchpad for student-centered problem solving
👋 Hi there!
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:
A few hours together can do more than tick boxes—it can surface unspoken challenges, reveal shared instincts, and turn a retreat into a working lab for problem-solving. At South Carolina, the right prompts, data, and pacing helped the Career Center team move from insight to action fast. A gallery walk grounded ideas in evidence before we used the Game of 35 to narrow dozens of possibilities into eight focused pursuits, most centered on reaching students who don’t yet know the value they offer. By the end, teams left with confidence, language, and a method to investigate—not just admire—the problems, and a clear next step: meet students where they are, learn from them, and shape what comes next.
Go deeper:
Last week I spent an afternoon with the Career Center team at University of South Carolina.
Returning to a familiar campus
I love the Columbia airport. I missed traveling there. In a strange way the city and University have been one of the most consistent threads of my career spending 2-3 times a year traveling to Columbia and Greenville to attend Board meetings for the National Association for Campus as a grad student and then again years later as a Consultant at EAB.
In fact, of the handful of people I know on campus these days, Stacey and I ran into each other on the horseshoe completely by ourselves. An epic story of serendipity and a fun way to start a workshop day!
Setting the stage for design
This session was meant as a quick intro and primer on human centered design, time spent with their data and national trends, and then aligning on areas of curiosity they want to spend time on by going out into campus for interviews when we’re together again in the coming weeks.
What they said
What struck me slowly surfaced in conversations throughout the afternoon, but really stuck out in the comments post session:
What did you like most, and what could be improved?
“Finding out we are all mostly on the same page.”
“Team collaboration was enjoyed.”
“Round table conversations”
“This was well organized and made sense - I think that the collaboration was good but since the career center has so much going on we could have picked more intentional groups to work on a problem based on our team and scope of work!”
“Collaborating with team”
“Individual table discussions”
“I enjoyed the activities that involved movement around the room and practicing interview questions.”
“The opportunity to learn more about my colleagues”
Connection. Alignment. Just a few hours together and shared engagement around the challenges the team faced made an impact.
Designing the container for engagement
In design sessions, my goal is to create the container that engagement takes place; putting the right questions, prompts, information and exercises at the right time to carry the mental, physical, and emotional energy of a group through a shared experience of solving problems together.
Given this particular session was part of a start of year retreat, the team was primed for success.
But what stands out most is the power of sharing and spending time on the unspoken challenges we face to work on them together.
From data to curiosity
In sessions like this I love to crowdsource the problems that the team will tackle in small groups generated out of the data that’s been collected in a gallery walk of University and National data (and as much of a mix of quantitative and qualitative sources we have access to).
Individuals surfaced themes that stuck with them from the Gallery Walk and then formed them into problems they wanted to focus on and curiosities they wanted to investigate. I hoped to use Scopey for this as it’s been a useful technology-enabled “coach” in the past, but after some trouble and friction, we narrowed in the old fashion way.
Prioritizing what matters
Once everyone has a problem their curious about, I use an exercise called “Game of 35” to share, discuss, and ultimately prioritize ideas. It’s chaotic and quick, which causes some anxiety and tension, along with some worthwhile excitement and connection.
The team narrowed in on their top ideas based on how they distributed 7 points evaluating 2 ideas at a time over 5 rounds (with 35 being the highest possible score an idea gets, hence the name).
The big takeaway from the ideas
What was most insightful were the ideas that that surfaced from the group. 6-8 of the highest rated ideas all centered around engaging with students who weren’t aware of what they do.
Importantly, we included some student survey data in the gallery and their feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Naturally, many then made the connection to “how can we get this good stuff to more students?”
Launching the top eight
We decided to move down the list to expand the number of topics teams would work and landed on the following “top 8” that the group self selected into.
Each group then developed, tested, discussed, and refined questions and a plan they’ll use to go out into campus, talk to students, and learn about student experiences.
Why I love this launch point
I love the launch point of teaching groups about design. By the end of the day they’re buzzing with empowerment and permission to solve problems in a new way. So often I talk to teams that want to address the challenges they see and just don’t know how. Then I watch them make connections, see their role in new ways, and start taking advantage of the powerful tool they have available to them.
It’s why I started this work in the first place one unsuspecting weekend in February at a Global Service Jam in Washington, DC 10 years ago. And it’s why I love this work. It’s not about me, it’s about what we can do when we approach messy, complex problems with the right tools and mindsets.
What’s next
Over the coming weeks I hope to review and coach their questions, encourage them to prototype their questions, and do some reform about the best times and places to find students to talk to.
I shared Career Advice for HS students on Miguel’s Podcast
After a high school talk on design thinking a few weeks ago, Miguel, a student in the audience, asked me to be a guest on his podcast. He wanted to know more about my career and get some advice on exploring careers for his classmates in his audience.
This was a super fun conversation about “life as a designer,” my career and path to entrepreneurship, and a few well-intentioned soap box moments about the skills needed to succeed in the future of work.
Share it with a HS student in your life. Thanks again for having me on, Miguel
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