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1 What is design thinking?
1 What is design thinking?
Design thinking is a human-centred approach to learning, collaboration, and problem solving (Buhl et al., 2019) and a process through which you can identify a problem, gather information about it, come up with possible solutions, test, and refine your solutions.
The process is usually circular and iterative and at each stage, you reflect on your design thinking process and revise it again. Design thinking is a mindset for thinking and working used by designers when they are trying to innovate in the real world (The Teaching and Learning Lab, 2024).
To illustrate further what design thinking is, Gemini AI (in December 2023) was asked to provide an analogy – here's what it came up with.
Imagine you're baking a cake for your friend. That's design thinking in action! But instead of frosting and sprinkles, you're using empathy, creativity, and a bit of trial-and-error to solve a problem: making a friend happy with a delicious cake.
Here's the recipe:
- Empathy: Ask your friend what kind of cake they love – chocolate, fruity, maybe even carrot spice? Get inside their head and understand their needs.
- Define the problem: What makes the perfect cake for them? Is it moistness, decoration, or a specific flavour? Focus on solving their specific problem, not just baking any old cake.
- Get creative: Brainstorm tons of ideas! Maybe a layered chocolate cake with hidden berries, or a carrot cake shaped like a flower. Think outside the box and let your imagination run wild.
- Prototype: Don't wait for perfection, bake a quick, smaller version of your best idea. It can be messy, but it gets the testing started.
- Test and improve: Give your friend a bite! Ask for their honest feedback. Is it too sweet? Not moist enough? Use their feedback to adjust your recipe and bake an even better cake next time.
That's it! Design thinking is just like baking a cake. You use empathy to understand the problem, get creative with solutions, test them out, and keep improving until you reach the perfect outcomes.
For teachers:
- Use this cake analogy to explain design thinking to your students.
- Break down projects into smaller, manageable steps like the design thinking process.
- Encourage experimentation and learning from mistakes, just like in baking.
- Celebrate creativity and innovative solutions, not just ‘correct’ answers.
Remember, design thinking isn't about baking the perfect cake every time. It's about the journey of learning, adapting, and creating something productive and meaningful together!
Next, go to 1.1 Why is design thinking important?
1.1 Why is design thinking important?
In a changing world, our students and future citizens need to be flexible, adaptable and ready to cope with situations they haven't seen before. Design thinking is a great set of processes to help students to:
develop confidence to respond and adapt to challenges
be able to develop innovative and creative solutions to the problems they face
become active and empathetic members of society that can contribute to solving complex issues (e.g. pollution, climate change) (Buhl et al., 2019)
develop 21st-century skills (Matthews and Wrigley, 2017).
Further reading
The guide below gives more information about design thinking including visuals, videos, and templates you can use with your students:
- Makers Empire − What is Design Thinking? A Handy Guide for Teachers
There are several scientific studies examining the use of design thinking in industry to support the development of new products and services. Yet, there are not so many studies examining how design thinking can be effectively used in teaching, especially in primary and secondary education. Also, there are even fewer studies that try to use digital technologies to deliver most or all phases of design thinking to students.
What we know so far is that design thinking can connect students’ knowledge to real-life issues and promote creative thinking and problem solving across different disciplines. This can have a positive impact on the development of 21st-century skills (Razzouk and Shute, 2012; Aflatoony et al., 2017).
In a study conducted by Lin et al. (2024), the use of design thinking was employed to aid the teaching of Information Technology (IT) courses to junior middle school students. This study found that design thinking helped enhance the students’ creativity as shown in their digital works and also improved their awareness of using IT applications to solve everyday challenges.
In another study (Cutumisu et al., 2020), middle school students who used design thinking strategies, such as critical feedback-seeking and revising, performed better when designing digital posters. The findings of the study suggest that these design thinking strategies can have a positive association with student performance.
Certain phases of design thinking are shown to relate to specific learning outcomes, for example:
reflective skills were developed from defining a problem
critical thinking was practised when students were asked to identify a best solution
modelling enabled collaboration and communication.
1.2 How is design thinking different to problem-based learning?
Design thinking has some unique characteristics that make it distinct from problem-based learning (Spencer, 2022) as it is:
- More user-centred – the starting point of a design thinking project is an understanding of end-users needs, feelings, perspectives, and challenges to find a desirable and feasible solution.
- Focused on iterative prototyping and testing to find the best solution.
- A teaching approach that motivates, as it builds on student voice and choice, e.g. students come up with their own solutions, co-create a driving question, and then test and decide how to improve their solution.
- A hands-on, experiential approach to teaching as a solution is created, crafted, or developed by students rather than just found by them.
Design thinking also has some commonalities with problem-based learning (Spencer, 2022):
- Design thinking can be used to give structure to problem-based learning –
- It follows a set of steps (often five) while problem-based learning is more loose and up to the teacher to define.
- The steps of problem-based learning such as identifying a problem, researching information and proposing solutions can be similar to design thinking.
- Both approaches are focused on examining real life, complex problems, and authentic learning situations.
- The role of a teacher is to facilitate a process of problem solving and support students as needed while they engage with the process.
- Both approaches can help students to develop the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in the 21st century.
Further reading
If you wish to learn more about problem-based learning, read ‘Problem-based Learning in Geography: Towards a Critical Assessment of its Purposes, Benefits and Risks’ by Pawson et al. (2011).
Pawson, E. et al. (2006) Problem-based learning in geography: Towards a critical assessment of its purposes, benefits and risks, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 30(1), pp. 103–116. Available at: https://doi.org/ 10.1080/ 03098260500499709
1.3 An example of a design thinking project
The below example of a design thinking project aims to address the following problem:
How can we design and build a helpful and thoughtful backpack for a friend?
It is a project designed for elementary school students. It includes the following steps:
The teacher helps students understand what ‘empathise’ means – this is the starting point of the process of design as it relates to what end-users (in this example students) think, feel and do about the problem of designing a helpful and thoughtful backpack.
To empathise with end-users, students can ask questions like:
- Walk me through the contents of your backpack (or tote bag, etc.)?
- Why do you have a particular item in your backpack?
- When do you carry your backpack?
Students synthesise the information they gathered and define the problem with greater detail in a statement:
‘________ (friend’s name) needs a way to ________ (friend’s need) because (or ‘but…’ or ‘surprisingly…’) __________ (insight).’
e.g. Jeremy needs a way to carry a large notebook (bigger than A4 size) to class because he needs to use it for project work but does not have a large enough space in his current bag.
Students brainstorm ideas of how to solve the problem (or come up with possible solutions) which should relate to their statement above. Students can write their ideas down.
Students discuss and decide on one idea they would like to build or create.
Students build the best solution to the problem by creating a prototype – this is a first prototype of the solution. The teacher have provided them with physical material such as cartons, bottles, scissors to create a backpack.
Students test their prototypes by checking if they work well, or as intended. They ask other students questions like:
- What does their friend like about their backpack?
- What is helpful about this backpack?
- How is the design of this backpack thoughtful?
Adapted from Edtech Classroom (2021)
Activity 1 The added value of using technology in design thinking
Think of the backpack example shown above − what activities would you normally do to teach students:
- How to empathise (collect data from others about what they think, feel, need).
- How to amend and improve ‘prototypes’ or solutions.
- How could you teach the above with the help of technology (think of any useful applications you know about)?
- Could technology help you to teach in an easy and more effective way than other means such as cartons and bottles?
Write down your thoughts and reflections in the box below.
Discussion
Students can collect data about their end-users by using web applications such as Google Forms or by designing and printing out questionnaires.
As in the example of the backpack, using materials such as cartons and bottles to create a backpack is a great idea. However, students should be able to iterate and improve the design of their backpacks, after they collect feedback from others. This may prove to be quite challenging when reusing physical material that has already been cut and processed. For example, cartons may not be fit for purpose anymore and students may have to start the design process again from scratch.
In the example above, the process of design iteration can be easily managed online; with the right software, an online version of the backpack could be tweaked, manipulated, and improved with the press of a button.
1.4 Outcomes of design thinking projects
Often in industry, the outcome of a design thinking project can be the creation of a solution to a problem users have. This can be a tangible outcome like a new product or a new service and when this happens it can be viewed as ‘design as making’.
In teaching, the outcomes of a design thinking project can be broader. An outcome may be a new product or service like in industry, or it could be a digital artefact such as an online game or a 3D-printed physical artefact. An outcome may also be a pitch for a solution in the form of a presentation or video made by students. Design thinking outcomes can therefore be in the form of:
- New ways of thinking around a problem (enhanced learning, changes in behaviour).
- Understanding multiple perspectives.
- Iterating and revising ideas.
- Being flexible and adaptable.
Activity 2 What is design thinking?
After reading through Section 1, let's see what you’ve learned so far.
a.
To create the most aesthetically pleasing design.
b.
To develop innovative solutions that meet user needs.
c.
To follow a strict, linear problem-solving process.
d.
To generate as many ideas as possible without considering feasibility.
The correct answer is b.
Feedback
Design thinking is an iterative process, grounded in reality, that does not aim to create aesthetically pleasing designs, although this can sometimes be an outcome of a project.
The main goal of design thinking is to develop innovative solutions that meet user needs.
a.
Iterative and cyclical process.
b.
Focus on user empathy and insights.
c.
Reliance on quantitative data.
d.
Encouragement of experimentation and failure.
The correct answer is c.
Feedback
In design thinking, both qualitative and quantitative data can be collected − interviewing end-users (qualitative data) can be a great way of collecting feedback that can improve a prototype.
A reliance on quantitative data, however, is not a characteristic of design thinking.
a.
Both design thinking and PBL are user-centred approaches; however, design thinking is an experiential approach that allows students to create and craft the solutions rather than just finding them.
b.
Both design thinking and PBL focus on problem solving; however, design thinking enables users to develop and test prototypes.
c.
In design thinking, a teacher or facilitator helps students by providing inputs on prototypes whereas in PBL, a facilitator helps students to find information and resources.
d.
In design thinking, students begin to empathise with the users to create a prototype that meets their users’ needs whereas in PBL, a prototype may be the final outcome which is disconnected to the empathising process.
The correct answers are a, b and d.
Feedback
The student is in the centre of design thinking. The role of the teacher is to facilitate and support students when needed, in order to successfully engage with the design thinking process. For example, a teacher can give feedback to prototypes while also help students to find information.
a.
New designs of services and solutions.
b.
New artefacts (physical or digital).
c.
Incorporating multiple ideas into creating artefacts.
d.
A solution based on students’ assumptions of what a problem looks like.
The correct answer is d.
Feedback
Students can have their own assumptions about a problem, yet, as part of the design thinking process, they have to research the problem and collect scientific information that can help them define what this looks like, such as survey end-users or identify and read reliable sources of information on the web.
A solution based on students’ assumptions of what a problem looks like, however, is not an outcome of design thinking.
Next, move onto 2 Using technology for design thinking.