1) The author attended a design thinking bootcamp at Stanford University's d.school in January 2016 that had a profound impact on their personal and professional development. 2) The experience left the author with renewed faith in creativity and design thinking as a methodology to solve problems and promote divergent thinking. 3) In 2016 and beyond, the author plans to lead an expedition called "NoElle" to design innovative learning spaces using design thinking that activate students' emotions and increase their creative confidence.

1. Jonathan Matta
NoElle
January 19, 2016
A human experiment
The Awakening
Just start. 2015 was a year of interview. A lot of interview. If you spent time speaking with
me, I likely owe you a ‘thank you.’ In your own way you helped me gain definition on something
that allowed me to ideate or prototype something new. I poked, a lot. Life poked back, and the
beauty of living a creative life is that you gain rapid experience and feedback. I’ve been put
down in the past for changing my mind, but I’ve come to accept that we live in a new economy,
and as such, a new way of thinking, one that rewards the rapid creation of new ideas in a fast
paced environment. If I held an opinion a year ago and changed my mind, guess what?…I
poked something and got feedback; real, sometimes latent, sometimes active, truths, that helped
me advance the thought. It’s evolution of the mind. It’s human growth. Enter 2016, and the
awakening…
Stanford University d.school
The weekend of January 8th and 9th was a weekend that came together without a great
deal of planning, but is one that I will look back at as a turning point in my personal and
professional worlds. Actually, let’s call it what it really is: HUMAN development and growth. 28
hours in Palo Alto at d.school bootcamp left me with a brain that hurt deep within my neocortex,
and a emotional response that is the equivalent of my children’s response to Santa’s delivery on
Christmas morning. My limbic brain, like everyone’s, is incapable of telling you how my d.school
experience touched my “why” in life, and I’ve come to accept that this is not only acceptable, but
down right awesome. Not being able to communicate how kick ass something is fully means, to
me, that it falls somewhere beyond “kick ass.” Like my kids, or my wife, or certain friendships.
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2. It’s like when my 5 year old son pumps his fist when Luke Skywalker saves his friends and blows
up Jabba’s sand ship. It’s the stuff that makes life all that it should ever be. It’s not only a belief
in superhero’s…it’s the belief that you can be a superhero.
I am not a stranger to design thinking as a methodology. A Jedi master to me, by the
name of David Jakes, introduced me to DT about two years ago, and I haven’t looked back. I
am an evangelist for it, and have applied it to my life and profession within learning spaces (albeit
in an often neutered fashion due to the lack of dreaming big, which strangles the ability to do
anything big, from public school politicians). This “new way” of thinking is something that my
kiddos are already learning. It will help them solve ambiguous and tough problems, but
ultimately, and I can’t stress this enough, it will help them live a creative life full of creative
confidence. If I was asked for my single takeaway from my trip to the d.school, it would be this
simple image that touches my emotions, activates thought, stirs me to create, and drives me to
start.
The d.school and IDEO’s way of thinking about creativity and design is a method that
frees the mind. To me, the only other equivalent would be art. I believe that design is art, and I
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3. love and crave the presence of art in my life as an adult. I love it more for my children, and for
children I don’t know, because it provides safety in learning. Tell me, aside from art…what
education created discipline promotes no “right” answers? What environment allows ideas to be
expressed safely, promoting divergent thinking, and champions resilient responses to failure?
What discipline do you know that begs for you to ask, over and over and over again, the number
one question that my own two kiddos love more than any other question in this world…
WHY?
WHY?
WHY?
WHY?
WHY?
I could go on and on about the d.school, what it means to me, the faith that it alone has
restored in me and my belief (or lack thereof) in higher education, and why you should learn
their teachings (they share so openly that it’s beyond easy to start), but for me, it’s now about this:
NOTHING IS A MISTAKE
THERE’S NO WIN
AND NO FAIL
THERE’S ONLY
MAKE
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4. It’s going to be messy
“The front end of innovation should be messy.” I quoted it because I’m pretty sure my
personal notes from the book “Creative Confidence” by Tom and David Kelley had it in there.
I’m not that smart to come up with a tag line like that. All I know, is that I’m going to try to
make a massive mess as I continue to grow my own experiment in 2016. Writing, which is
something I LOVE doing, is a big part of that mess. I am embarrassed to admit that I have
fallen so deeply in the trap of curating, worrying, or judging my own opinion at times that I
stopped writing altogether. Email doesn’t count (that’s not writing…it’s called playing defense).
I’m writing this, in some regard, as a way to design a failed prototype. I’ll post this to
some online forum, tag d.school, and #designthinking, as a way to learn, grow, and improve. It’s
a raw exposure to people who can judge me based on what I’ve written here. It’s a design
experiment in applying a growth mindset. I’ve always craved growth as a human; not for any
other purpose but to be happy, and I’m happy to have thrown this 5 page “essay” together on a 7
degree Tuesday morning in Chicago.
My manifesto is…NoElle
In 2016 and beyond, I am setting out to become a master of learning space design. The
name of this expedition is NoElle. I will lead, guide, and partner with those who want to bring
change to the student learning experience. I made a personal shift a few years ago of replying to
those who asked what I do for a living with a very simple “I live a creative life.” My regard for
being a champion innovator in living a creative life will help those who choose to take this
creative adventure with me to remove the false belief that they can’t be creative. I’ll do this
through using the d.school’s methodology of design thinking. The absolutely gorgeous DNA that
runs through this methodology is that it empowers the person, the user, to be a key and equal
player in designing (in this case) learning environments that touch the students emotion and
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5. stimulates energy. I believe the following with all of my being….that physical space can activate
an emotional response within the user if designed with the user in mind, first and foremost. A
critical component of this design experience and facilitating the expedition under my watch and
guided mastery is that it will leave students and teachers alike with an increased level of creative
confidence. I have a belief that physical space will transfer creative confidence to the student,
and dream of the day when all schools subscribe to the power that space plays. The d.school,
and my 28 hours there, did exactly this for me! This shift will allow the user to start with the
design challenge, but leave with a newfound and lifelong capability of belief in themselves to be
creative. To make. To try.
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