The Awesome Impossible, Unstoppable, Gadget – featuring Trixie O’Toole
Since my research really focuses broadly on studying the impact and success or failure of using design thinking and creative thinking techniques as a means to problem solve – why not through a children’s book into the experiment.
Both of my husband and I are “traditional” designers. We are tasked with solving various problems using our design skills – text and image combinations to communicate a specific message to certain targets to achieve a desired outcome – whether it is purely informative or persuasive.
This time, we were challenged with a problem : why is there such a lack of women in the STEM fields? When does this start? We all take the same math and science courses so what is going on? What could two designers do about it?
After doing a bit of research – we reach that about third grade, girls start dropping out of the math and science game. They become quieter in class, less secure and confident as their grades drop and they move into other areas of interests. Could using design thinking and critical thinking and problem solving offset these trends? Using the design thinking processes of empathize, ideate, prototype, test and refine we think we can offer a solution? More discovery is necessary. What else can we do as designers? What other unique insights that designers utilize hourly could we tap into? What about our training into primary and secondary targets discovery? How about my experience into advertising influencer/purchaser scenarios combined with a competitive analysis? Using a variety of professional/educational processes we presented a possible solution – develop a series of children’s book that indoctrinates girls into finding success even earlier than when it is predicted that girls begin to drop out or lose interest. There are books for young readers (girls) to admire female leaders in science fields – but most are from a historical perspective; studying Jane Goodall, Joan Proctor, Rachel Carson and their love of animals. The book we decided on was to focus on a female heroine – a monster scientist who uses design thinking and creative thinking to solve a series of problems for an even younger age so that young girls can begin to normalize the ideas that girls can be heroes and scientists – all the while finding their voices, find problems and solving them, while teaching them to stand up and not be ignored. The book concept was picked up by an international publisher Imprint – an imprint of Macmillan Publishing and is set to release in September 2019 (currently pre-orders can be found on Amazon – Trixie, Barnes and Noble