In design thinking, one way of doing things called the "d.school" model from Stanford University. It has five steps:

• Empathize: This is like putting yourself in someone else's shoes. You watch, listen, and talk to people to understand who you're designing for and what problem you're trying to solve.

• Define: Once you understand the problem and the people involved, you write down a clear statement that describes the challenge. This statement guides your actions.

• Ideate: In this step, you and your team come up with as many ideas as possible. You don't judge them right away; you let your creativity flow to find new and creative solutions.

• Prototype: Now, you start building a version of your solution. It's okay if it's not perfect at first. You can make changes and try different things. This step doesn't need a lot of time or resources.

• Test: After you've made a prototype, you show it to the people who will use it. This helps you understand their needs better and make your solution even better. You keep going through these steps and making improvements until you have a good solution.

Remember, you can go back and forth between these steps, and they don't always have to happen in order. It's all about being flexible and finding the best solution by trying things out and learning along the way.

Before you launch in, stop and consider the potential impacts of any project. Who or what might be positively or negatively affected by it. Impacts on people could be monetary, emotional, physical or spiritual. For example:

• You should make sure you are not stealing other people's ideas (intellectual property). 

• You should make sure you are allowed to use other people’s content like music or tutorials (copyright). 

• The content should be inoffensive and age appropriate (moral/ethical and legal). 

• The content should be viewable by ALL people on their device and not create any barriers to them viewing it. (accessibility). 

• And lots more!

Fill out the Kaitiakitanga slides in your Portfolio now

Now research online and by talking to people. You should aim to have made a decision within one or two lessons. Don’t rush into a decision and make sure you feel you have made a good decision before you continue.

Now go and gather content- images, text,  links. The more you get, the better your research will be. You’ll want to get links to tutorials that might help you AND pictures of existing outcomes similar to the ones you could make. It might be real world pictures of things that would make a great subject for a 3d modeling project.

Fill out the “Research” slides in your document now.

Right now, you could make almost anything. But it’s time to pick a few decent ideas and get other peoples opinions about which idea would be best.

Show some manaakitanga and talk to friends, family or your teacher about some of the best ideas you have had so far.In order to do that, you will need to write three short proposal outlines.

A proposal outline looks like this:

I could make ……… because……………………

Eg. 

Option #1: I could make John a set of modular dungeon corridors because that will make it easier to design his levels for his game as he can just stick them together however he needs.

Options #2: I could make John decoration items like torches and barrels because that will make his levels much more interesting and it would be easier to make.

Option #3: I could make John a Skeleton enemy with a sword and shield to go in his game because that would make his game more scary and give the player an enemy to combat. 

Complete the “Options” pages of your portfolio now

Take your options to at least three people to see which one they think would be the best idea to pursue. You could talk to friends, classmates, family or your teacher. Ask them what they think about each of the ideas.

Remember to listen to their response, both positive and negative and summarize what they said in the document. Then complete your own pros and cons for each outline. Using this process, you’ll decide which idea is best to continue developing.

Complete the Summary of Feedback pages of your portfolio now

Now you have to define your potential solution and the issue it is designed to solve with a problem statement. This is most basically defined as "WHO needs WHAT and WHY?"

For example:

• (Who) My friend John needs (What) a bunch of low poly 3d models for his dungeon crawler game. (Why) He is not very good at 3d modeling but is a good programmer and we will make a better game if we team up.

• (Who) Game programmers who visit sketchfab are looking for (What) good low poly 3d models for their project (Why) because 3d modeling is time consuming and they need to quickly prototype ideas for their game.

• etc……..

It is a great idea to get this checked with your teacher and redraft to make it clearer. It is really important that the problem and the solution is clearly defined so that you have a clear path ahead of you for the actual design phase.

Complete your Problem Statement slide in your document now. 

The topic is quite hard to grasp and you are going to have to be able to write a clear set of requirements (what someting must do) and specifications (how exactly it's going to do it) for your project idea.

Watch the video to help get a good understanding of the topic and then complete the worksheet below. Make sure you make a copy of the doc and then have a go filling it out. All instructions are inside the document.

This is your last chance to get feedback. Now that you have something that looks like your design, actively get some feedback and listen to the suggestions people make. Show manaakitanga by changing the design, colors, requirements or specification. And make sure you show it to them again to see if they prefer the change. 

This phase might take a little time but hopefully, before too long, you have a design that you and your stakeholders are happy with.

Fill out Summary of Feedback#2 slide now

Now you have some improvements to make. If you have gathered good feedback, you will have a couple of things to change or add. You will be spending a lot of time making this, so it's worth getting it right before you begin.

Take one last look at your design, refraft, check spelling and grammar and add in any last final touches, images, sketches or descriptions.

Copy and paste the finished design document into the Final Design Slides now.

Congratulations! You've used kaitiakitanga and manaakitanga, considered people and involved people in your design process. Now you have a design that you KNOW is good and that you can justify.

Your assessment for this task will be in term 4 and will be a written exam. It will contain questions about your design decisions and how you used kaitiakitanga and manaakitanga. 

To prepare you, and to act as a study guide for later, complete the Justify my Design slides to the best of your ability now.