Writing and Design Thinking

Writing is one of the many learning activities in our Distance Learning programme and One Odd Bunch each have several writing goals to master. After deciding on the genre for their writing, e.g. narrative, explanation, poetic etc., they then needed to come up with an idea. Sometimes coming up with an idea can be difficult, so we provide them with a variety of prompts and ideas to choose from in our 'Writing Zone'.

The art of writing - whether it be a story or explaining the why and how, involves a series of steps - planning, drafting, recrafting and editing. I feel that the steps in writing are very similar to the process in Design Thinking:

• Empathise - reason for writing: to entertain, inform, report, personal etc.
• Define - identify the audience and purpose for writing
• Ideate - plan for writing; generate ideas; what are the key points to include
• Prototype - draft up ideas and organise for paragraphing; consider language and                        structure; vocabulary, spelling and punctuation
• Test - get feedback and make changes to improve your writing

What do you think?

Here is a slice of the published writing that One Odd Bunch have 'designed and produced'. Enjoy!