Who Gets to Choose the Audience?

When I first shared the LAUNCH Cycle publicly, my friend George Couros offered some gentle pushback. He questioned whether or not it was necessary to wait until the end of the design thinking cycle to share with the world.

So, it leaves me with this lingering question, “When is it time to send your work to an audience?”

This is something we didn’t spell out well when we first talked about this design thinking process. So, I’d like to clarify it a bit.

Who Gets to Decide the Audience?

My initial thought is that there are times when students should make things and share with the world without going through the LAUNCH Cycle. A student might, for example, sit down and write a blog post without spending hours on revision or even thinking too deeply about an audience. A class might have a Twitter account where students tweet out what they are doing or share their work on Instagram or Snapchat.

Sometimes students might create work for an audience of one. This is what happens in journaling. Often, the conversation around audience is split between two binary options of “kids should share with world” or “kids should keep away from online spaces.” But what if there’s some nuance that includes both paradigms? What if students keep some work private, share others with classmates, share other work with geeky tribes who share their interests and share other work with the world?

The key question is, “Who gets to choose the audience?” If we want to see creative, inquiry-driven classrooms that value choice and student agency, why not let them decide on the best audience?

Sharing the Product and Sharing the Process

So, back to design thinking. When students are going through the LAUNCH Cycle, they are working on a finished product that they will share with an audience. But there’s another layer to sharing and publishing. It’s the idea of sharing your process as well as your finished product. (Incidentally, I love Austin Kleon’s ideas on this in Show Your Work.)

Case in point, I’m working through these ideas of design thinking as I co-write Launch. I’m sharing my ideas through this process. I’m writing blog posts. I’m interviewing people. I’m asking for feedback. I’m creating design challenges. So, while I’m working on a finished, polished product, I’m inviting people into the messy process.

On some level, this gets to the heart of social media and publishing. These platforms we use are both content creation tools and communication tools. They are publishing platforms and spaces we inhabit. This mashup between the two mean students are able to focus on a finished work for an authentic audience (whether it’s a local or global audience, a physical product or digital media) but also share their process with an authentic community. It’s not either/or. It’s both.