Innovators' CompassResources

These tools make the same 5 questions accessible for different people and moments.

Everything here is free to use. I only ask attribution and that you share your experiences with me and, if comfortable, with others.

Use the <> buttons at the top right of each row to see more!

GRAPHIC RESOURCES

Here is a single, print-quality PDF of all these resources.

Poster (& versions)

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Chichewa Compass created by Emas Potolani for CorpsAfrica in Malawi.

Spanish Sketchnoted Compass created by Valeria Rodriguez

Chinese Compass created by Huijin Yu, Lili Xu Brandt and Darren He for Otto Scharmer’s IDEAS program.

Worksheets

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worksheets

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Prompts & Games

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Signs, Slides, and Tangible Shapes

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Info Graphics

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APPS

ICOMPASS.ME: FREE ONLINE COMPASS APP

A free digital compass to doodle in—on your own, or with others! Give it a try and let me and its creator, Hieu Nguyen, know how it works for you!

COMPASS TEMPLATE IN MURAL

For users of the incredible online collaboration workspace MURAL, MURAL has made an Innovators' Compass template available—along with tools well-known in the innovation world like Empathy Map and Business Model Canvas! Thank you MURAL!

VIDEO

RESOURCES GALLERY

INNOVATORS COMPASS: ABOUT & EXAMPLES

This 5-1/2 minutes includes an introduction, examples, and resources.

Innovators' Compass is 5 questions that unstick us. Created by Ela Ben-Ur, inspired by many different people and practices, and in use from preschools to the US Conference on AIDS.

DEMO: COACHED PERSONAL CHALLENGE LANDSCAPE & COMPASS

Ela Ben-Ur coaches an entrepreneur/leadership development professional in seeing his landscape of challenges (4 min), building the Innovators' Compass from his own experiences (9 min), and using it on a personal challenge (22 min). Thanks to filmaker Gregory Mang for donating his time!

TRAINING AGILE TEACHERS WITH THE COMPASS

The Woodrow Wilson Academy of Teaching and Learning, the new graduate school of education in partnership with MIT, has chosen to use design, practiced using Innovators' Compass, as a central competency. See Dan Coleman, Chief Learning Officer, and their cohort of teaching students in action!

ELEMENTARY PRINCIPALS’ REAL EXAMPLES

Dawn McWilliams and Mitch Davis, Principal and Assistant Principal of an elemtary charter school in Aurora, CO, walk through Compasses made by their teachers to collaborate on school culture topics, and with students resolving a conflict in the school office.

SCIENCE PROJECTS & PARENT CONVERSATIONS: REAL EXAMPLES

Miami teacher Valeria Rodriguez shows Compass templates she gives her students to help them express their understanding at the start and end of science projects, and that she creates to support collaborative conversations with parents at conference time.

PRODUCT DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT

At a cafe on a busy street in Boston’s Innovation District, Kyle Savage talks about using Innovators' Compass in a user interface design firm—to offer a usable design process for the team, scaffold client meetings and engagement, and support his individual creative process.

COMMUNITY PROJECTS AND CAPACITY BUILDING

Garrett Mason describes his work using the Compass in Africa to give local trainees a framework to connect all the human-centered design tools they learn, and to structure their community-based project work.

CORPSAFRICA HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN

Two more beautiful videos about Garrett Mason's incredible human-centered-design work with CorpsAfrica in Malawi. Each gives a lovely little shout-out to the compass, which Garrett used as an over-arching tool, complemented by other human-centered design tools like empathy maps.

1-2 MINUTE ANIMATED TOURS OF EACH COMPASS SPACE

1-2 minute videos that guide you in feeling, and going deep, in each space of the Compass (older version). This is a picture of all the cues given, one at a time, in the videos.

AUDIO

INTERVIEW FOR DESIGN THINKING 101 PODCAST

Dawan Stanford, Director of Design Thinking at Elon University and I talk about making Design Thinking accessible.

INTERVIEW FOR PODCAST JOURNEYS

Bogata-based educator Chris Davis got curious at the end of SXSW Edu in March 2017 about the background of design thinking and my work, and asked me to sit and chat with him for his podcast. Note: the sound dramatically improves at 16:08.

INTERVIEW FOR RESULTS MAY VARY PODCAST

Recorded in August 2015 for their Results May Vary podcast about what would happen if we used Design Thinking in our daily lives, Tracy Deluca and Chris Waugh ask great questions about the development of the compass. While it has evolved considerably since, the discussion is great and the core questions still hold.

WRITING

BY ELA BEN-UR

Final chapter of Taking Design Thinking to school

I'm honored to have the last chapter "Developing Portable, Powerful Design Thinking: The Innovators' Compass" in the book Taking Design Thinking To School edited by Shelley Goldman and Zaza Kabayadondo of Stanford University’s Research in Education and Design Lab (Routledge, November 2016). I can't post it here, but will happily send you a copy.

COMPASS BLOG POST FOR MURAL.LY

Short blog post with practical tips, written for the design collaboration platform Mural.ly (online sticky notes!), which has kindly included the Compass as one of its framework templates (along with Business Model Canvass, Empathy Maps, and others).

UP WITH COMMUNITY PASSION PROJECT INTERVIEW

In response to Nicola Chin's thoughtful questions, including: Tell me about your passion project? Who's shoulders are you standing on? Your greatest learning? Challenge? Fear? Risk? Fun? How are you organizing people for this project?

HIGH SCHOOL and COLLEGE Course descriptions

More details and materials around two courses extensively based on the Compass: Caroline Meeks’ app design course at Prospect Hill Academy Charter High School, and my design-with-an-older-adult course with Caitrin Lynch at Olin College of Engineering.

BY OTHERS

Tara Martin's chapter about the Compass in her book Be REAL: Educate from the Heart

Tara Martin's wonderful book about using our human technology to educate includes a chapter about how she adapted and used the Compass to understand and support educators when she began as an administrator. Thank you for educating from the heart, Tara, and enabling people to do so—including with Innovators' Compass!

Dan ryder on MEDIUM: DESIGN FOR BOOK CHARACTERS

Dan's Medium piece highlighting a a project he did with his English students using the Compass that bridged English and Engineering to design for characters' needs in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird.

ERIN QUINN on MEDIUM: CREATING CLASSROOM CULTURE

Erin Quinn's medium piece about working with a class to use the Compass, alongside other wonderful tools, to design their own, inclusive, culture.

ARI YARES' BLOG ABOUT FAMILY MORNINGS

Psychologist and administrator Ari Yares wrote about the Compass to help his family co-design a way through the chaos of family mornings and lunch packing.

LICENSING

These materials are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. For noncommercial use, I just ask for attribution and feedback! Please, please tweet your experiences, or contact me to share your experiences!