The D3 toolkits are a resource for educators who are interested in incorporating design into their classroom. They were developed in collaboration with students and teachers and offer tools to help spark and facilitate creative, action-based projects that are relevant to student interests and community needs.

The D3 Methodology (“Dream it, Design it, Do it”) is a flexible process for thinking and taking action like a designer. Sponsored by the New Learning Institute in collaboration with Commonstudio, D3 was developed over the course of many months of on-the-ground work in live classroom settings. By the spring of 2013, the D3 process had been successfully deployed at three sites. Two test sites were public schools in Los Angeles, and another was a program for homeless teens in Minneapolis. As we observed teens taking on projects ranging from community gardens and civic murals to local bicycle advocacy,we knew that D3 was working. But as our small team of consultants became increasingly overwhelmed by growing interest and new opportunities, our challenge became the perennial problem of scalability. In short, D3 needed a way to grow into new educational contexts without overextending our limited resources and capacity.

As professional designers coming from various backgrounds, we understood the challenge of taking a complex and often ambiguous topic like design process and packaging it in the most accessible way possible to those who may be experiencing it for the first time. We also recognized that every classroom, school, teacher, and student is different. No one formula works for everyone all the time. With these constraints in mind, we asked ourselves how we might create a suite of toolkits that were digestible, flexible, and relevant, with multiple pathways for planning and facilitating projects small and large.

Our research and ethnography began with a full year of immersion in the public school system at LAUSD, the second largest district in the nation. We targeted urban Middle schools and high schools in largely under-served neighborhoods in East and South LA. We met with and learned as much as we could from students and teachers, to administrators, parents and local residents. In order to understand the needs, concerns and potential role of all stakeholders involved, we conducted interviews and activities that allowed us to actively listen to and carefully consider the diversity of perspectives they represent. This process also allowed us to experience and observe first hand some of the unique challenges of working with and instructing at risk young people.

The initial versions of the toolkit content grew out of this deep understanding and engagement in the trenches of public education and were refined by further insights and testing. In the winter of 2013, we engaged a larger cross section of diverse educators and facilitators from across the country to test the first draft of the toolkits and provide feedback. They represented a multitude of perspectives, from elementary to high school, in both urban and rural contexts. The toolkits walked them through a series of sections that contained live design challenges, project examples, D3 planning tools. They documented their interactions with the toolkits in detail and provided feedback on how the content and layout could be improved to better suit their unique needs.

In addition to these critical insights for improvement, this feedback underpinned the current three-tiered structure of the toolkits. They are intended to be read in sequence, working from macro to micro scale considerations, including:

1) Intro
The goal of this toolkit is to provide a broad overview of what design is and why it matters while demonstrating the value of design thinking in an educational setting.

2) D3 Process Toolkit
This toolkit helps educators gain a deep understanding of the D3 process by providing (interactive) detailed walk throughs, interactive challenges, and examples of D3 in action.

3) D3 Strategies Toolkit
This toolkit provides an overview of practical tips, insights, and best practices to help educators plan, facilitate, manage, and assess design-based projects with their students.

We live in a world where creative skills are in high demand, generously rewarded, yet under-emphasized in K-12 education. Stated in simple terms, D3 builds creative confidence and critical thinking in young people by teaching them how to think like designers. The D3 process (Dream it, Design it, Do it) is a simple toolset that incorporates a variety of approaches to 21st century learning and instruction. D3 also incorporates many of the same design thinking principles that are used in the creative professional world today. D3 programs and projects challenge young people to take their ideas seriously as they become problem solvers, innovators, risk-takers, and creators while developing projects that are meaningful to them.

We believe that the next generation of innovators, entrepreneurs, and thinkers are currently sitting the classrooms of urban schools across America. Their potential is bright, but their options for discovering expressing that potential is often limited. Empowering these young people begins with empowering their teachers with relevant new tools capable of giving form to the intrinsic passions and capabilities of their students. The D3 toolkits rise to this challenge by offering a fun, free, and interactive entry point for educators who are interested in empowering young people through design.

The overall philosophy informing the Toolkits was one of distillation- reflecting on, learning from, and instrumentalizing the successes and failures of past D3 projects and programs to create a final product that made sense to educators.

Other crucial aspects of our process included a desire to:
Keep it real. Using our partnerships with various school sites and institutions as a testing ground for new ideas and strategies proved to be immensely helpful. Working with practicing teachers and students provided feedback in real time about what could be improved.

Show and do, don’t tell. In talking to many teachers over many months, we got the sense that traditional models of professional development in public education could be improved. We knew that D3 could offer a fun alternative if presented in the right light. This informed the decision to include examples and interactive demonstrations whenever possible, as well as paying keen attention to the overall graphic layout and legibility of the toolkits. Many of the activities take on the form of games and challenges, rather than bulky blocks of stale text.

To date, D3 has been used by educators of all kinds in a range of settings to empower many educators and young people. The toolkits are available as a free digital download on our website (d3lab.org) and will soon be expanded to include physical formats, tools and supplements. D3 process has already been used as a guide to bring hundreds of student projects to life and with the help of the toolkits is poised to grow sustainably in the years to come.