Stakeholder Mapping: Who Are we Solving a Problem for anyway?

One of my favorite Design Thinking methods that I learned from the LUMA Institute is called "stakeholder mapping." This method is one of the first I use when kicking off a design challenge or even as a reflection activity to check for student learning or awareness of a topic or issue. I like to have students create a stakeholder map to think about who primary and secondary stakeholders in a given system might be, what their relationship is and portray any adverse reactions or relationships currently at play within these stakeholders. 

In our flu design challenge this year, Ellis girls in biology created stakeholder maps focusing on people within the Ellis community that would be impacted by a student having the flu or missing school. As the teacher, I walked around to each team and posed suggestions and gave basic feedback without leading them or taking control of their mapping process. I really focus on having students spend some time to negotiate and debate the placement and size of the stakeholders and personalize them. I typically show a draft and a refined version of a completed stakeholder map from another project to show them what they are working towards. 

All of the Stakeholder Maps for the Ellis Flu Design Challenge 

The image above shows a  zoomed in view of a stakeholder map produced by Ellis 11th grade biology students -  notice this team's selection of color, size of stakeholders and arrows to indicate relationships. With the stakeholder map now done, the team was informed on who to start interviewing, where to conduct field observations and who they will be designing solutions for. This process took about an hour and provided interesting discussion among the class. 

Watch this 2 minute PD video to learn more: