"Superagency Over Self" — Building capability by solving your own problem
Concepts: AI as cognitive partner (not tool). Superagency mindset: your limits are not fixed. Meta-habits: Slow Down, Know Yourself, Take the Lead.
Interactive activity to prepare you for the Superagency Challenge. Explores what superagency means and how to identify problems worth solving.
Identify 2-3 things you've wanted to change or would like to change now to increase your productivity or overall wellness that you feel unsure about being able to tackle. Select one.
10 min thinking BEFORE any AI interaction. What have you already tried? What do you actually know?
📅 In-Class Plan (Wednesday)
👥 Peer Conversation (In-Class Wednesday)
Core question: "What's the bottleneck when conversations fail?"
Skill: How to create conditions for understanding
See the Session Slides for the Conversation Guide with depth ladder prompts to help you go deeper.
Concepts: Willpower vs. Design thinking. UMPIRE framework: Understand and Map/Match phases. 5 Whys technique. Problem vs. symptom distinction.
Keep & Clarify, Reframe, or Replace your challenge — with specificity about what you need to learn and what "solved" looks like.
Apply 5 Whys to your chosen challenge. Why have previous attempts failed? Draft problem statement.
What did you discover by asking 'why' repeatedly? What was the real barrier?
Design human process first, then identify tech support. Use Symbiotic Thinking Dojo to help draft your architecture.
📅 In-Class Plan (Wednesday)
👥 Peer Conversation (In-Class Wednesday)
"Walk me through why you stopped where you stopped. What was your thinking at each step?" Partner asks follow-up questions until they truly understand the reasoning.
Skill: How to understand someone's reasoning process (not just their conclusion)
Concepts: Stakeholder knowledge as design advantage. Connecting self-knowledge to design decisions. Demo preparation.
Interactive quiz connecting self-knowledge to design decisions. Forces the connection: "I know [X] about myself, which is why my experiment does [Y]."
Work with Framer to develop your design story, then pass through Reflector's quality rubric. Reflector won't approve shallow answers.
Demo preparation: Draft your demo answers. Preview the Human Value Statement. Identify what's still weak.
📅 In-Class Plan (Wednesday)
👥 Peer Conversation (In-Class Wednesday)
"What's one design decision you made that reflects something you know about yourself? What would a stranger designing for you have gotten wrong?"
Skill: How to articulate the connection between self-knowledge and design
Concepts: UMPIRE: Reflect and Evaluate phases. Human Value Proposition: What did YOU contribute that AI couldn't?
Handwritten demo (30 min) → partner types your answers into the AI-facilitated discussion tool → AI generates probing questions → face-to-face discussion → download JSON and upload to Canvas.
📅 In-Class Plan (Wednesday)
🌉 Sprint 2 Starts This Week
What connected Sprint 1 to Sprint 2 for you? What do you want to carry forward, and what do you want to leave behind?
Learn what Sprint 2 is about — the shift to partner work, grading structure, and two-part goal setting.
What will you accomplish in Sprint 2? Set specific, measurable goals.
Sprint 2: Mirror — You've solved your own problem. Can you solve someone else's? You'll identify a close acquaintance with a real challenge and apply everything you learned in Sprint 1 to their situation. Stakeholder: Someone you know.