“Fail fast, fail often”, was the refreshing battle cry at the innovative and creatively challenging workshop at the Sharjah International Book Fair
Introducing an avant-garde approach to tackling failure, the Design Thinking workshop at the 42nd Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF 2023) has taught children how to focus on finding
solutions to any problem, and learning from setbacks they face.
Created for children aged 10 and above, the workshop is based on Stanford University’s Design
Thinking methodology for creative problem-solving. Using this innovative technique, the children
were asked to build the highest tower they possibly could, using marshmallows, skewers and
masking tape.
“Though this sounds simple, it is not easy. Even professional engineers fail in the first few
attempts. Either the tower bends, cracks, or falls over. This is where kids have to use the
concept of Rapid Prototyping and think, what is going wrong? They must try to find the reason
and either fix the issue or come up with a new design that works,” said Omar alZuabi – Senior AI
& Robotics Trainer.
Instead of overanalyzing an existing problem, Design Thinking advocates the ‘Fail fast and fail
often’ method of thinking whereby the children must keep their thinking caps on, continuously
learn from their failures, pin-point where the exact problem exists and find a new solution that
will eventually work.
“Design Thinking is a very important step if you want to do anything – from writing a book to
building a car, or anything else. If someone is feeling stuck as if they are running out of ideas,
Design Thinking helps put a structure to thinking, by enabling them to evaluate the steps
needed to overcome any problem,” alZuabi added.
Fun and educational, the 42nd Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF) is hosting exciting activities
for family members of all age groups. 2,033 publishers are showcasing over 1.5 million book
titles, including 800,000 in Arabic and 700,000 in other languages. The prestigious event is
taking place from 01 November to 12 November 2023, at the Sharjah Expo Centre.
