For the past six weeks we have been trialing our workbook series, “You Made It!” with children between the ages of 7-10 in Shanghai, China. The goal of the books is to encourage children’s creativity through providing hands-on, open-ended learning materials.
While we thought we were testing our workbook, it turns out the children were really testing us.
After months of planning and designing the book, we were ready to begin our trials. Naturally, most of the young testers approached the workbooks exactly as we had imagined. They carefully followed the prompts, stayed neatly inside the boxes, and completed the activities as written and intended. Ironically, this is exactly what The Mind Orchard strives NOT to do.
We had fallen into the very trap we were trying to avoid: children often look for the “correct” answer, even when there isn’t one. We almost missed this mistake entirely.
Luckily, there was Eason. Eason is a model student, he is fluent in both Chinese and English, earns outstanding grades, excels in extracurricular activities, and is also polite, charming, and wonderfully curious. Here’s how Eason ended up being our greatest teacher.
Although we believed that we had thought of everything, Eason showed us in just a few minutes how much we had never considered. We quickly realized how little we knew and how much there was still to learn.
Eason was excited to get started. He had heard about the project and had ideas before he even saw the product. Here’s the problem, the boxes we’d designed weren’t big enough. Not because his handwriting was large, of course, but because his ideas were. Every page felt limiting. He wanted to add elements we hadn’t asked for, drawing beyond the borders and adding new ones entirely. He’d run out of space long before he ran out of ideas.
We don’t want to be another institution that unintentionally places limits on creativity. This goes against everything we believe in. And this was a humbling realization, to say the least.
Eason reminded us how children don’t always think within the structures that adults create for them. And they shouldn’t. Sometimes the best response is using the materials in a way we never expected.
That realization has changed how we’re designing the entire book.
So what now? We’ve started over from scratch. Well, not exactly. But it certainly feels that way. We’ve stripped the books down significantly, reduced instruction, made the prompts more imaginative, and made the drawing spaces larger. There’s a delicate balance between giving children enough guidance to spark their thinking and enough freedom to take their ideas somewhere completely unexpected.
So why Shanghai? Well, we lived in Shanghai for almost a decade and still have many great connections there. Many of the students are learning English as a second language, so we are able to test the instructions and prompts for clarity. Secondly, many Chinese students are accustomed to more structured learning styles, which makes it especially interesting to see how they respond to an open-ended, creative style of learning. Finally, the books will be printed in China as part of our self-publishing journey. We thought it was fitting that some of our first readers would come from a place that has been such an important part of our lives.
So what’s next? Instead of asking, “Did they complete the activity correctly?”, we’re asking ourselves, “Did this activity create space for their ideas to grow and flourish?” Our goal for the books has shifted from guiding each step to simply providing the starting point. We’ve moved away from creating a book that teaches kids to become an entrepreneur and toward creating one that teaches them how to visualize, discover, and develop their own ideas.
Originally, we had planned to refine, proofread, and perfect the books this summer with a September release date. Although we’d still love to meet that timeline, we’ve been reminded of our own philosophy: great ideas deserve time, and it’s ok to grow at your own pace.
So we’re slowing down. We’re listening. We’re using the feedback from our trials to question every design choice that might unintentionally limit creativity. It’s a lot more work than we expected.
But it’s absolutely worth it.
One of the greatest lessons entrepreneurship teaches is to listen to your customers. In our case, it’s children. They’ve already made this book better than we ever could have made it by ourselves. We are so thankful to be learning alongside this amazing group of future leaders.
Sometimes the best way to create something for children is simple: step back and let them show you how it should be done.