TD&T091 Talking about empathetic design

Finally James Bleach, Dave Bausor and me found a mutually convenient time, working across international time zones, to talk about empathy in D&T.

Episode transcript

Mentioned in this episode

Big Life Fix https://youtu.be/munVsXsqqSc

Jude Pullen https://www.youtube.com/c/JudePullen

PrintLab https://www.makeablechallenge.com

Empathy Toolkit https://www.ashoka.org/en/files/startempathytoolkitpdf

http://designonline.org.au/toolkit-empathy-toolkit/

E-Nable https://enablingthefuture.org

DOT – Bill Nichol - https://www.education.designingourtomorrow.com

Dave Bausor online
Twitter @topbrum
Facebook TopBrumD&T
Instagram dave_bausor
Work webpage www.elycollege.com

James Bleach online
Instagram –jambledandt
LinkedIn – James Bleach
Twitter - @Edu_jbleach and @jambledandt
Facebook – Group: JambleD&T
Website – www.jambledandt.com

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Transcript

Alison Hardy: 0:49

Well, finally today I'm managing to record a conversation with Dave Bausor. I bet I've got that wrong already, haven't I? Yeah, thank you very much. He's given me a thumbs up. I've got it. And James bleach, we tried to record this before Christmas, but we actually just went off on a whole other conversation about all sorts of different things. So we're back again, today to record a conversation, hopefully, well, probably not involving me too much, but James and Dave, cuz I think they can talk their way through this quite confidently it's their area, about the place of empathy in design and technology. You may well have been following these two on Facebook or on social media in other places, but I'm going to give them a moment to introduce themselves. So Dave, I'm gonna start with you. Can you give us a little bit of information about who you are, where you are and what you do?

Dave Bausor: 1:38

Hi, there, yeah, Dave Bausor. I'm currently a Ely College Academy, which is part of the SEMA trust. I'm the Lead practitioner for design and technology. And I'm also the trust director for d and t, which is a new role that I sort of started this year. And I've been teaching, this is my 26th year.

Alison Hardy: 1:58

And you've won really well. Thank you very much. Sorry, if you're all listening, you can't see we're all we're all on video. And James, over to you.

James Bleach: 2:08

Yeah, Hi, I'm James bleach, and I'm Head of Design and Technology at Tanglin Trust School in Singapore. And I am moving I've just kind of announced that I'm moving in the summer to startup design and technology Sherburn, which is in Qatar. And I have been teaching for about 15 years now. But I've I've just always enjoyed the kind of networking side and sort of taking every opportunity I can get to learn more, and then passing on that knowledge or experiences with other DMT teachers.

Alison Hardy: 2:41

Great, well, it's actually really good to talk with you. I mean, we had that conversation before Christmas, I know. But we've kind of touched base on social media, but never really sat and chatted. So it's been really great to, to have the time with you to talk about all things design and technology. Now, I'm interested in thinking about what the curriculum could be like for design and technology. You'll both know that I've got this book out with Eddie Norman about redesigning D&T. I know that Dave, you've put that on social media about saying it's a great book, thank you very much. You're not on commission. But that's been really nice to see. And I'm not coming to this was saying that I've got a solution. I'm kind of reaching out and asking people what their thoughts are. So it's really great to hear that you to have these conversations about empathy in design and technology. So I'm going to hand over to you and let you between you kind of talk about what that is and where it is and how you do it in D&T. Over to you.

Dave Bausor: 3:36

Okay, I think, really, for me, and I think it's always been there within the subject. But I think it's what I find with design and technology certain over the last 26 years and I've been involved in it is that new things come out, you see new things, you get involved in things, and then they sort of unfortunately, sort of drift away into the distance, and then you go through your career, and then all of a sudden, they come back again. So I think empathy is always been in the curriculum. And I think now more than ever, certainly, after, or as some of us are still in the pandemic and in lockdown and things like that, as we've seen in terms of a subject. I think it's it's so so important that we share that and celebrate that and get our students who I think a lot of students sort of go under the radar, they you know, they've got this ability, they've got this, these fantastic ideas can be very creative and innovative. But I think sometimes, the way curriculums are set up, perhaps no, that's probably another conversation can be quite constraining. But in terms of my own experience, there's been lots of little highlights. I won't go through them all now. But even in my first and Qt year when I'm deploying A Day in the Life cards, and trying to step into somebody else's shoes and getting students to think about what it's like to be somebody else other than themselves. And even that, you know, I deployed that it worked really well. And then I did something else and almost forgot that I done that. And then when having having conversations and revisiting things and things like when the new specification came out, and a lot of dt colleagues were like worse, this is really scary. And it was like, hang on a minute. This is a real opportunity here. And it just gets you to go, oh, yeah, we've done this in the past. And we did that and it worked really well. Why don't we revisit? And there's been lots of other things for me, meeting, a colleague called John Willis, which I'm sure we'll touch on a little bit later. But all sorts of things. And I do think that empathy is always been there and it's a case of teasing it out and building on it.

Alison Hardy: 5:44

I'm going to put in that I think because it's also about giving it its name using the word had empathy, isn't it rather than talking about just about users and understanding people and things like a day in the life, those cards, I mean, there's the stuff that's my do and the stuff from Bill nickel that supports those ideas. And I'll put links in the show notes to, to some of those things. As you say, it's always been there. But we haven't necessarily always used that word, empathy to kind of to label it. It's funny how it lots of things come back. But as you said, another conversation, but God, James, you were going to say something about this?

James Bleach: 6:20

And yes, just when you put it in the context of, you know, where does it fit into a curriculum, I think that the, one of the problems that I've found is that there is so much potential content for a design and technology curriculum. And every school is set up slightly differently, you know, teachers have different skill sets, kids with different needs, different equipment, in the rooms that you've got, you might have one member of staff we talked about, as a full department compared to maybe I've no 10 In a large department. So, you know, there are so many things that you have to factor in. I think that I've just been quite lucky more recently, that I've been able to rewrite our curriculum. And we've been given the opportunity to use the British curriculum as a guideline. And I think that's where it becomes important is that most printed advice and documentation are guidelines, you know, they're open for interpretation. And I think that, you know, we live in fear of not covering enough content for, or by the time that the pupils get to year 11, or by the time they get to year 13. And I think that we almost need to take the pressure off ourselves a little bit with that one. Because it's, you know, do you do cover everything to a small level? Or do you? Do you look at certain areas and get the learning a little bit deeper. And it's, you know, don't get me wrong, it's not an easy thing to decide. But that's what you should be doing, as a department is thinking about, you know, where these opportunities are to explore a little bit further. And there have been many conversations over the years about, you know, our pupils really designing, you know, and how much should we be determining what they are making, obviously, there, there's room for skills to be taught and repetitive repetitions of skill across the group, but you have to factor in opportunities where you let go a little bit, and it might just be that you, you know, you give a time restriction, or, you know, you just give a certain amount of materials or processes, but you have to give them a little bit of freedom to, to make mistakes, and, you know, yes, you'll get some projects that are handed in when a prototype is looking a little bit rough around the edges. But it's but that's the way the sort of context driven GCSE is nowadays, you know, it's more about the ideas that the pupils come up with, and how well they can prototype, you know, we don't need to teach them to be the sort of highly skilled joiner, you know, it doesn't need to be like that, for design and technology, you know, that we need to focus more on, on designing and understanding what, what our role is as a problem solver. And the only way we're ever going to do that is if we're open to learning from each other. And I think, you know, everybody has something that they can teach you, whether it's your next door neighbour or, or somebody with a particular need or impairment. And there are lots of projects out there now, where they are the focus, you know, trying to get us to open our minds to understand the needs of others a bit more. And how you do that, there are some great resources out there, obviously, Dave mentioned, how he achieved that, I tend to try and speak to as many people as I can, my sister in law's father has Parkinson's. So, you know, I, she was quite happy to share loads of resources and links and information with me about what it's like to live with Parkinson's, and, and it just completely sort of blew my mind as to all the different effects that can have on your daily life. Whereas, you know, maybe before learning from her, I just thought that maybe yes, you get these kind of mixed brain signals, and you get like a sort of tremors in a way and that that would have been the level of my understanding. So I think we, as teachers have to, you know, people throw around a term lifelong learners, but we have to just genuinely be interested to hear from other people and hear their stories. Because it is exciting, really, because as soon as you learn from one person about their daily routine, and the problems they have, like they show in the big life fix, you sit there and you just see all these opportunities popping up and you get kids that have the same experience, and it's a lot more powerful learning experience.

Dave Bausor: 10:34

Now, I think also just carrying on from that, I think it was Jude pulling that said, wasn't it he said, fall in love with the problem and not the outcome. And that sort of quite recently and that really resonated with me and you're right i mean When the when the new specification came out, I had a, quite a challenging small group of, of year 11 Boys, and one of the context from the exam board was need to the disabled. And when I first said that as a context to these, these lads, they were like, you know, all their stereotypical views of what disabled actually meant was, it was quite interesting. I mean, some, you know, I wouldn't share life because they were that type of student, but with a little bit of sort of coaching, and a little bit of discussion. I mean, I remember saying to them, you know, why don't you actually go away and understand what does disability actually mean. And within a very short period of time, they came back to me and they said, it's, you know, it's amazing how many disabilities there actually are, that we didn't know were called disabilities. And one student came up to me and said, Sir, is mental health a disability? And I said, You know what, I don't know. I can't answer that. Let's go away and find out. And he went and did some research. And he came back to me, and he said, I've discovered that if something meets a certain, say, five criteria, it's considered debilitating. And I never knew that before. And all of a sudden, you saw this penny drop with the students that actually are stereotypical views. They're not right. But actually, with a little bit of thought, and a little bit of careful investigation, were really drilling down into this. And one of the students out of that class latched on to the fact that in our school, there was a year seven pupil that had recently started that was suffering with nystagmus. Quite a severe visual impairment. And he went on a journey of supporting him and working with him. And I remember that year seven students coming into the classroom, and testing models and prototypes that this year 11 student had made, and to just sit there and witness that was incredibly powerful. And, and James is right. Actually having that in front of you and seeing it for real, really resonated with not only me, but with all the other students. And I always pull that example out every single year and say, Look at this, and students are now more there empathising, more with what's going on around them. So you know, we have students in our school that suffer with Dyslexia as all schools do. But there's a lot of students that have dyslexic tendencies. And I've had students that have said, Look, we know that their students, I myself suffer with dyslexia, they would say, but they would also come back to you and say, but I've identified that there students that struggle with reading and writing, that aren't diagnosed with dyslexia. And it's the students that are saying that, and for me, that's really, really powerful, because it's getting them to understand what is going on, around them in their classrooms, their mates, as James has said, relatives, and they're able to understand and empathise with it a lot better. And therefore, that has massive influence on the work that they do.

Alison Hardy: 14:06

Well, that that was a bit that I was I was leading onto as you were both talking. So you know, giving examples about empathy and understanding different groups of people, you know, a value areas around children, learning about, you know, the life beyond their own sphere and starting to stand in other people's shoes and have that have that empathy about been able to walk alongside them and understand it. So my thinking was, well, that that is all great, and that and that phrase, doesn't belittle the power of what's happening. But it's what's the context and the purpose of that within design and technology development? And so I'd sort of written the question, and I mean, the impact is powerful in terms of their humanity, and who they are as people, and that and that development. But then relating this back to Design and Technology. What difference does this greater deeper understanding empathy make for developing their DMT capability? So I suppose that's the next part of it is it'd be really interested to hear how you see and why you see this important in terms of developing their DMT capability.

Dave Bausor: 15:19

I mean, I

James Bleach: 15:20

think just see, so I think the sometimes you can ask a pupil to come up with a or certainly on the old spec, you you kind of had a number of designs they had to come up with in their head. You know, we needed to see a full page of ideas or three full pages of ideas and then develop three more. And I think that giving pupils a well informed starting point can really work enhance their their ability in design, you know, they, what design is, is about problem solving, you know, we're trying to help somebody to do something, or we're trying to help somebody and make their life a little bit easier in some way. And it's not always it's not always but not well, no, not always. But I think that, you know, that's certainly what I like to explore in similar tasks, when we are looking at empathy. You know, we are, we are trying to look at real life problems, real life solutions, you know, we might not always get through to, you know, an advanced solution, but it's, it's about their design thinking. And sometimes, you know, the tasks are purely designed based without prototyping. So there are all kinds of tests that you can do, where the pupils tend to have, like a different level of kind of how open their mind is when they're putting their pencil to paper. So I think that the more people that they can learn from the, you know, guess we talked about humanity in there and improving people as human beings, but I think that it just gets them to think of all these unknown problems, and then that really concentrating as they are coming up with an idea about, you know, how something might feel or how something might look, or does it attract attention? Or, you know, how could it be stored when not being used. And I think that the greater understanding of the person's needs, the, the sort of greater starting point they're at with their design.

Dave Bausor: 17:18

I think also, it's, for me, as well, it's like a journey of discovery in terms of luck. If you want to categorise it as a skill, or an attribute. It's like that journey of discovery. And sometimes they might be setting out to address a particular problem or a need, or a difficulty, but actually, they might along the way, discover something else. And it might go in a different direction. And I mean, for me, as well. And I mentioned John Willis earlier, but one of the things that struck me with John who was born disabled, he came in and did some work with our students. But it was very much about the simplistic approach, that actually it doesn't have to be overly complicated. And what he did with our students was he showed them very overdesigned if they're the right, if that's the right term, or term, or very, very complicated items that made his day to day life actually worse. And then he got out these simple approaches and kids were like, actually, yeah, that that like him. And he thinks as simple as, like a chip fryer in a pan to cook his vegetables. So when he pulls it out of the pan, the water stays in the pan, but he's vegetables are in the cage. little simple things like that, and doing these buttons up because he's got no, no arms or hands. And it's just a piece of metal with a loop and a hook on it. And the kids were sort of like, wow, it doesn't actually have to be this all singing, all dancing, electronic sort of fandangled thing that is attached, it can be something that's very, very simple and very, very easy that might get missed. And for me, that was, that was very, very interesting, that sort of simplistic approach, but to have him working with the students, again, was really, really powerful. So yeah, there's the journey of discovery, I think is a really, really important one.

Alison Hardy: 19:21

Right? So So what's an interesting is, you're, you're using these real life contexts, for a better phrase, in some ways, with people that, that they know, you talked about your seven child, people that they're familiar with people they have access to, and they can gain a deeper understanding with. There's also people that are outside that they can't touch, if that makes sense. In terms of you can't bring them into the classroom. But it's how do you then, you know, you've I think you've both touched on this a little bit is you take that, and they have that now deeper understanding of the context, the problem, the situation, the the real life issues that people have that that they weren't previously familiar with, is then taking those thoughts and moving it into an action of resolution of design solutions, design ideas, how do you how do you kind of then bring that into the classroom in terms of, you know, we've really understood the situation. What's the what's next? You know, the designing the resolving, how do you do that? What you're doing with it? How do you keep people involved?

James Bleach: 20:37

Sorry, just to my daughter appear at the door. And

Alison Hardy: 20:42

it's okay, a bit of background noise. As always, it's always useful. It's not my dog this week.

James Bleach: 20:46

It's fine. I think we've we've as again, you know, we're we're discovering that at the moment too, because you know, all of these project ideas or opportunities that we've kind of stumbled across across the years, and we're learning at the same time. So, you know, we can be doing a project, we started one, where we were looking at using computer aided design and manufacture to prototype arm casts and you know, just as an exercise really looking at how to sculpt in Fusion 360. And then we give pupils an opportunity then to look at a topic related to medical needs, and we give them the freedom of a few weeks to then present back. Sometimes it can lead to opportunities, where, as Dave said, somebody notices your work and then comes in, it just enhances that learning experience for the pupils, it might even present somebody that they are contacts that they can, you know, make use of later down the line when they get into the sort of real design and make coursework projects. But at the same time, we found that when we do projects like that, more and more stories come out, as we mentioned earlier about people they know, outside of school, and I think it you know, it makes them you get pupils that pop back and they go, Alright, I've designed this to try and help my dad do this, or my cousin do this, or my helper do this. And, you know, it's interesting to see them take take on tasks by themselves for problems that they've spotted themselves. We find a lot of people that do EP Q over here, which is a an extra qualification. And I coming back into the workshop, and they're, you know, they're taking on these skills that they've previously learned to DT, and they're wanting to apply them to kind of random projects that they do. But then we also, you know, we have a young lad who's has a, a chariot equals sort of walking frame to assist him. And, you know, he turned up, because, I mean, he goes around really fast on this thing around school. And he had snapped a handle off, he'd basically gone through one of the bolts. And my sixth formers are in there. And we're we're doing an assistive device project at the moment. And they, they just gathered around him straightaway. And they were they were analysing his chariot, and they were discussing ways that they might be able to fix it. And then they were learning from this lat, about the other problems that he has with his chariot, you know, what would he do to improve it? And they were saying, well, couldn't we design something now and 3d printed and see if that will work for him for when he's going around school? I think it just opens doors, if anything, you know, it is nice to try and direct certain pupils. Well, I don't like to direct them too much. But to give them more exciting projects at GCSE, you know, when they get I think a lot of it is around that real person, you know, having a live project, because what I don't think there is the engagement when they just pick their customer is a 14 year old, you know, and they've Googled an image of one, you know, if they've got these real life contexts, and they've, they've been trained to have these conversations with people and to learn more from them, I think they're more likely to have valid powerful projects as they get into GCSE as they get to a level and that's only really going to enhance their love for the subject. So, you know, are we hopefully bringing better device designers into the world you know, more more open minded designers, people that want to make a real difference.

Dave Bausor: 24:40

I mean, I I'd use the word unlocking what I found is that unlocks I suppose their awareness and they look at things or we want them to look at things through different eyes, because I think sometimes they can be quite clouded I mean, that two or three years ago, we decided to introduce identifying needs and difficulties as a unit of work in year seven, because we fail you know, if you're not targeting the students lower down the score and even at primary level, you know, if you're if you're doing it right then by the time they get up to GCSE, like James has said they get to GCSE and they get to a level and they're better designers. So for more remains as well and more independent. Yes, so you can throw pretty much not literally, but you can pretty much throw anything at them. And then they'll you can see their minds are working. And I think the coat that James use the word coaching and guidance I think if you do that a lower age, lower down the skull, and then you keep revisiting it. That's what I found is It's no good doing, say a unit of work at the beginning of year seven, and then forgetting about it, and then coming back in year nine or year 10. And saying, right, we're going to revisit context. For me, it's about that drip feeding all the time. So things like regular contextual challenges, little mini competitions, trying to get real life people in to address real problems. I mean, even even things like not necessarily humans, but the things to do with pets, and anything like that, you know, there's all sorts of things that can be done. But is that for me, is that unlocking? And it's that awareness and looking at things through different eyes? And then once they've gone through that, and they're regularly going through that, it just becomes automatic? And isn't that what we're doing? Anyway, when we're teaching them, we want to teach them. We want to teach them things. And then we want them to take it away and develop it and enhance it, and revisit and embed it. And we want them to do that with empathy and understanding, don't we? We do. Yeah,

Alison Hardy: 26:56

you make him I'm going to I'm going to chip in again, because when you were talking about identifying needs, and we started this conversation, Dave, with you talking about how empathy has actually kind of been there all the time, in the background around design intelligence, sometimes it comes to the fore, is if you were around in the 2000s and late 1990s, the Nuffield resources and the PI's approach, where you explored the physical, intellectual, emotional and social needs. And that was a framework that's in in the Nuffield stuff, and I'll put a link in the show notes too. It's on Deonte, for the anti bollocks and Tobin's website. And that that was that was really helpful to kind of give a frame of let's look at the physical needs, the intellectual needs, the emotional and the social. And it's hard. It is hard. It you know, and I think we kind of have to be really clear sometimes in design and technology, that the learning the thinking is hard, having empathy, having an understanding of things that are outside our own world, are really difficult. But that is one of the things that a good designer can do really well. And so actually, what I think what you're you're both trying to do, and you're both talking about is this, yes, you're unlocking, but underneath that you're giving these children, the experience of understanding things in a design as a designer word, by having an understanding of different people, different contexts, in such a real way that when they're designing, they're able to draw on that understanding and be able to put themselves in those places to be able to come up with resolutions that are, are more appropriate than as your colleague John has said. It's a knick knack, that is just so complex. It's it's unrealistic. And and so I think that that is that is something to, to think about is what what this is doing is actually giving them those design thinking you use the term, James, it's a contentious phrase, we're not kind of all quite clear and agree about what we mean by design thinking. To do that to to resolve things. And then the other thing I wanted to just pick up on that you you were both talking about, about kind of revisiting things. And again, this, this goes back to 1990s. And work that Dave Perry did at the Royal College of Art around the spiral curriculum. And Christine Council talks about this when she talks about what do middle leaders of subjects heads heads department, middle school leaders, have you ever think about in their curriculum, you know, so what are you doing in year nine that builds on what they did in year seven, you know, and that spiral, and it's kind of quite natural in design and technology that we we actually kind of do plan a spiral curriculum, although we don't necessarily read it. I mean, we're working with a fantastic Head of Department of Army. And we've been talking about the spiral curriculum and design and technology and really constructing it with care about when do we revisit things. And this comes back to what you were saying earlier, James, about the surface and the deep learning because you were talking about do you do touch a lot of things or do you go go deeper? And so some people listening to smoking crack, this is another thing that I've got to bring into my curriculum. And that's why I keep coming back to how is this developing children's DMT capability because to me, that is the essence of what for DMT curriculum is doing. And so if we can justify and understand that, what what this thing is that we're teaching and what it's doing to develop the ante capability, and where we're teaching it and where we're building on it in a spiral curriculum. As we're developing these young people, as autonomous learners, I use the word autonomous rather than independent listen to previous podcast and you'll find out why. And but I think I think that that's kind of all part of it. So I'm what I'm trying to do there is bring in what you're talking about, about empathy, all the things that you've talked about, about curriculum or curriculum design, why we do it? So think about how we're developing children's Danti capability. So I think what you're doing is, is really rich and really powerful. And, and this, this weaving it not not weaving it into the curriculum implies it's hidden. But actually, it's a, it's a clear part of your curriculum and your ethos around what you seem to be voting you believe the anti curriculum is foreign about?

James Bleach: 31:11

Yeah, I think it is a clear part, at different stages. And obviously Dave's talks about the the sort of repetition you sell through spiral curriculum. And I think, personally, I've found that, you know, I genuinely, genuinely have an interest in learning about different people, and who we can design for and who we can discuss with the children. But it's not all about disabilities, for example, you know, of course, it's not empathy is a much bigger topic. So I think that when we when we look at certain cases, which can be very, very powerful projects, I like to think that if we then took a couple of steps back, and we're designing for, well, I'm hoping that the, the intended goal is that pupils are just not always thinking about themselves. You know, I guess that's what I hoped for in the long term is that they, they find it a lot easier to think about designing for other people. Now, that's whether they have particular needs or not, or whether some of these needs are quite extreme or not. But I just find that at the moment, you know, some of the projects that we are doing, we have a lot more access to experienced people, I guess, nowadays. So for example, as we said, in, you know, the big life fix, and then contacting some of the designers on that show, or following other projects that they do. But you can also, you know, putting up that prosthetics projects that I was doing, and then having somebody contact me and say, Can I come in and talk to your children about it because I've run a prosthetics company. And he told his story about his son who was in an accident and lost both of his legs. And they decided to go down the route of digitising prosthetics. So that, you know, it didn't matter what country you were in, you know, these files, much like a supposed to enable project would be prosthetic hands. And they are trying to improve things by making these, you know, giving people access to designers no matter where they are. And these files are cloud based, and that, you know, they can be over in another country in seconds. And so it's, it's just opening up lots of opportunities. But you know, which is why it's interesting, I guess, for design teachers, and for some design students, it doesn't work with all of them, of course it doesn't. But if we can get back to the bare bones, and we're just trying to get them to, you know, they're quite good at thinking about themselves and what they need and what they want. But what we're trying to do is get them to think about what other people need and what they want. And can they gain a greater understanding of that.

Dave Bausor: 33:55

And also think as well, things like the UN sustainability goals as well. You know, I mentioned disability earlier, but there's so much out there, that students can be involved in and work. I mean, you can just throw literally a sustainability goal on the table to generate discussion. And I think he's also having time to do that. I do think there's also a little bit of fear, and maybe a little bit of lack of confidence as well, with particularly when the new specification came out. It was like, How on earth am I going to tackle this? Because there had been that sort of, maybe slightly entrenched, or it was easy, the old legacy spec. I mean, you know, it was mp3 docking stations, and all this sort of stuff, you know, as James sort of alluded to earlier, but it's just for me, in my classroom, I like to see my students thinking, and if it is chat, oh, I say to them, and they say, Oh, I'm stuck, or this is quite difficult. And I always say good. It's good that you're thinking and it's good that you're challenging yourself. And it's good that you've got to sit there and scratch your head and it isn't all about here's here's something, there is a place for, you know, go and make that object read this plan, make that item. Draw it that way. There is absolutely there is a place for that. But it's also about that. This is really tough. You know, this is this is really difficult, have really got to think about this. And for me that is trying to get students to be like that. And as I said earlier, to look at things maybe through different eyes. I mean, I had a student that did a project in year 10 around holding a pen somebody was finding it a TA was finding it difficult to hold a pen properly. And now she's designing something else that that happens to be based around the hand, but it's a completely different context and a completely different need. But she's still using those skills of looking at it, and trying to understand it, and going back to the person that's potentially going to make use of it. And I know that when she goes on to do a level that she's just going to fly, because she's got this, she's got this ability to look at things beyond the obvious.

James Bleach: 36:17

Yeah. And if she, if she goes beyond, you know, if she, if she studies design later on, and becomes a designer or manufacturer of the, you know, wide variety of options that she'll have, she's not going to walk into a studio and somebody is going to tell her, you know, what she needs to make, you know, she has to go in as a problem solver. So, you know, yes, we need to learn the initial skills, which is why there is a place for more instructional work, but to get them to be a bit more open minded, and you know, be able to spot problems as well as attempt to solve them. You know, that's just as important.

Alison Hardy: 36:50

It's been really great to listen to you both. And, you know, I'm kind of cutting this short, but I know that, you know, there's, there's so much more to say. And I know people listening will have lots of different ways that they're doing similar things to you, and maybe not articulating it in the way that you are around empathy. So it's been really good to catch up with you both today. And I'm hoping you're going to come back and talk about some of the things that you're doing, as well and get some of the people involved in talking about their practice in DBT. So, before we finish, I'm going to ask both of you to just tell people where they can find you if they want to come in looking for you. Not in a stalkerish way, in general, the anti way, James, you first.

James Bleach: 37:29

Yeah, I do most of my collaborative work through Jambo DMT Facebook group, I am on other social media under the same name. But I would say that, you know, if you're wanting to actually engage in discussions, then then that's the place to get me. If that leads to further work, where you require my email address, or so on. I'm always happy to share that one as well.

Alison Hardy: 37:52

Brilliant. Okay, thank you, Dave.

Dave Bausor: 37:55

Likewise, top Brome, D and T on Facebook. So I to sort of have my own sort of slightly smaller group than James's, but it is there and also at top Rome on Twitter, and usual social media platforms.

Alison Hardy: 38:12

That's great. Thanks so much for your time, both of you. I know we're in a bit of a strange time different days. In the same time, space as me we're at half past nine in the morning. And James, what time is it with you in Singapore?

James Bleach: 38:24

Just gone half past five. Late afternoon.

Alison Hardy: 38:28

Right. Okay. Well, it's good to talk to you both and hopefully we'll do it again soon. Okay, thank you problem.