For three days, the design museum of V&A Dundee was the host of EduJamUK 2022 and welcomed us generously with its astonishing atmosphere. However, one of the most eye-catching objects of the place was not inside the museum itself. After years of operating on the sea, the RRS Discovery is a barque-rigged auxiliary steamship located just next to the V&A. You see the Discovery and the Design in one single frame!

It seems that developing a product or service with a high level of quality like the V&A building is not possible without having the discovery element by its side. Thus, it was not surprising to see a considerable part of the EduJam concentrated on the first half of the diamond model, reminding us to dedicate enough time to understand the challenges rather than jumping to the ideation process. During the event, we realized that gathering around a table and thinking deeply might not help us to be innovative. We had to leave our comfort zone to talk to our target people, and obviously, we were rejected multiple times. It was unpleasant initially, but everything changed after receiving the first responses, which enabled us to see the challenges from other perspectives.

Using the invaluable tools, we have been given, we managed to analyze the insights of the discovery stage and define the exact issue to be addressed.

Just when we had thought we were done with the hard part, the second phase of the double diamond was equally exhilarating. The process of ideation had us knocking every working cell in our body.

It involved us channelling all the thoughts and instances collected from the task of talking to people and forming a generalized question to symbolize a trend noticed from the interviews and target that cause. It pushed us to draw insights on various levels of how a choice can play a major role in education. We gathered data from people about how it is extremely hard for some people to make choices and how it has impacted them. We further noticed that most people are scared of making the choice because it could be wrong. It was then that we learnt that the push to make a choice is what people need without worrying about the outcome too much.

Next came the prototyping phase in this we brought our ideas to life. A big thanks to Andy de Vale for pushing us to leave all the insecure thoughts of not being creative or artistic behind and inspiring us to just pick up a pen and sketch our vision. The outcomes were magical. The presentations of all group ideas and solutions blew our minds. It was a great end to a beautiful weekend of successful jamming. The learnings from this weekend will be carried forward a long way ahead. It genuinely changed us as people overall.