The document describes prototypes created by students for helping high schoolers recognize the soft skills they acquire. Prototype A involved students creating a skills map to track their progress. Some students said it would be too burdensome without time in school. Prototype B instead proposed students create art each period showing their skills growth. Students strongly preferred this as it resonated more emotionally and required deeper thinking than just filling out a map. They felt it would motivate students more to demonstrate their skills through art. Feedback noted art may still need a reflection piece to clarify which skills were being shown.

1. Design
Thinking Class
Prototyping

2. Problem/Insight
 High school students need a way to
realize that they are acquiring the soft
skills they will need in the world of work
because they don’t realize they’re getting
those skills in school.

3. Prototype A
Students create a soft-skills acquisition map that
they fill out as they progress through high school, so
they see they are in fact getting the skills they need
to be successful in the work force

5. • School• Extra-
curricular
• Home• Work
Worked as
youth group
leader in
synagogue
Babysat little
sister on
weekly basis
Led group
project on cell
reproduction
in Biology
class
Was stage
manager for
school play
Quarter 4: Freshman Year
Sample prototype:

6. SELF
TEACHER
PARENT
EMPLOYER
FEEDBACK LOOP
Relevant parties help stakeholders refine their ideas about the
soft skills they’ve acquired in this Feedback Loop

7. Response to Prototype A
 Two rising sophomore
girls said they’d find
the format doable
only if they were
given school time to
complete the chart.
It would be too
burdensome to
complete otherwise.
 Add surveys to the
Feedback Loop
 They liked the format
of both the Map and
the Feedback Loop
 They like that the
system brings what
goes on outside of
school into school

8. Idea
Students create an art project of their own choosing that they
add to each marking period in order to show how they’ve
progressed in the acquisition of soft skills they and the school
have decided are important. Students can choose from a list of
art projects and do a different one each marking period, or they
can complete the same kind of art project each marking period.
They can even keep adding to the same medium all year.

9. My sample prototype

10. Poems by Me
How I Grew in
Leadership,
Confidence,
Organization,
and
Collaboration
The ME Channel
YouTube videos
showing how I
grew in my soft
skills
A Mural by Me
How I Grew in my
Soft Skills,
An artistic
representation
My Mask
How I Can’t Hide
the
Soft Skills
I’ve Acquired
Stakeholders helped me to refine the prototype, so students had
choices in how they presented their ideas and weren’t locked into
one medium per year or marking period.

11. Response to Prototype B
 Students liked this
prototype
unequivocally
better than the
previous one,
though they had
liked Prototype A
well enough before
they saw Prototype
B
 Students responded
more emotionally
and enthusiastically
to Prototype B
(confirming for me
that students love art
because it resonates
with them
emotionally and
helps them form a
bond with what
they’re learning)

12. Response to Prototype B, cont.
 Interviewees confidently
said students would
want to do the art
project more than the
acquisition map
 Quote from one student:
“You have to put in
more effort and think
about it more.”
 This again confirms my
thinking that arts
integration forces
students to think more
divergently about their
work.
 Students agreed
there might need to
be a reflection piece
with an art project, if
it wasn’t clear from
the medium how
students had shown
they had acquired
the soft skills they
were claiming to
have obtained
