2025 showcase resources
Designing for the 2025 ShowcaseLearn more about the themes, tools and resources to help with your team’s 2025 Showcase design.
design teams
2025 Showcase Themes
FOSTERING CONNECTIONS
Knowing that humans are hardwired for connection, the invitation is to design a series of experiences that enable students to feel deeply connected to the adults in the school, each other, and a shared vision of the school’s purpose.
BUILDING PATHWAYS TO SUCCESS
Knowing that finding a pathway to adult success is important to having agency, the invitation is to design a series of experiences that allow each school member to discover potential pathways and vocations beyond high school that resonate with their individual passion and future views of themselves.
Resources & Tools
Here are some resources and tools teams may find useful with their design efforts.
How Do You Move from an Idea to a Prototype?
Industrial Designer Alex Coriano weighs in on moving from ideas to prototypes.
Alex’s tips on going from ideas to prototypes:
- Sketch: Try to visualize your ideas.
- Prototype: Use foam core, paper, and similar materials to build out your idea.
- Communicate: Use your prototype as a way to share your idea to your team or potential customers.
Paper Prototype
In Design Thinking projects, paper prototypes are an innovative tool to find out about user needs. They are quick and cheap to build, and if they fail, they can be discarded without much loss. This video demonstrates three different examples of paper prototypes and gives you practical insights for your own projects.
Understand Mixtape
Whether you have been working on a project for some time or just starting, a core-principle of design thinking is engaging with real people — particularly the users and customers of your work. deep understanding of your users leads to new perspectives which, in turn, spawn novel solutions.
Take this moment now to (re)engage with your users. This mixtape will lead you through interviewing and observing users, and then synthesizing your findings to discover meaningful needs and insights.
Designing in a Generative EcoSystem
According to the Cambridge Dictionary if something is generative it is able to produce or create something. An ecosystem is a system that environments and their organisms form through their interactions or relationships.
Every living system changes using the same dynamics, be it an individual, team, school, community, country or planet.
Relationships are all there is. Nothing living lives alone. Everything exists only as potential until it manifests in relationship.
Life changes through emergence: separate parts interact in a network of relationships. What emerges is new and different, never the sum of the parts. Adapted from Berkana Institute: A new paradigm for leading change
Brené Brown on Blame
You are probably a bit of a blamer – most of us are. But why should we give it up? In this witty video, inspirational thinker Brené Brown considers why we blame others, how it sabotages our relationships, and why we desperately need to move beyond this toxic behaviour.
The Ladder of Connectedness Explained
This video explores the Ladder of Connectedness. It was created by New York Center for Interpersonal Development for students in their Summer Youth Program. NYCID believes in building community and nurturing personal growth.
Ikigai
Ikigai, pronounced “ee-kee-guy,” is a Japanese concept that unites the joy of life with a sense of purpose. The term is a combination of the Japanese words ‘iki’ (to live) and ‘gai’ (reason), which together signify “a reason to live.” Learn more about ikigai
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