Design Thinking in Education

(Note: The following article is part of a larger research study entitled Design Thinking in Education: A Critical Review of Literature.  This is also uploaded at Academia.edu.)

One of the biggest challenges for education is how to prepare the students for a world that doesn’t yet exist. With the exponential advances in technology coupled with the rapid “shrinking” of the world through globalization, the challenge of future-proofing education is both a challenge that needs to be solved. Bruton (2010) argued that there is a need for this shift due to the world becoming an information society with tech-savvy students who learn more by absorption and experience than by reading and lecture.

Leading the global initiative is the Partnership for 21^st Century Skills (P21) focusing their efforts on the national college and career preparation conversation. P21 has played an active and crucial role in guiding education policy by building an alliance of future-thinking individuals to provide the framework of the 21^st Century Skills. Now becoming a global movement, its model is now widely recognized for integrating 21^st century skills into the core subjects of English, Mathematics, Science, Geography, Social Studies, Language and the Arts (Mishra & Kereluik, 2011).

Proponents of this movement asserted that education should be more responsive to the changes brought about by globalization and technology providing for services that can prepare the students to make relevant and sustained contributions to the future society (Ananiadou & Claro, 2009, Kereluik, et al, 2013; Laguardia & Pearl, 2009; Norris, et. al, 2012; Rutkowski, et al, 2011; Trilling and Hood, 1999).

In the Philippines, the P21 21^st century skills model has been integrated in the K-12 education reform agenda through the Department of Education’s (DepEd) National Educational Testing and Research Center (NETRC).   According to the Assessment, Curriculum and Technology Research Centre (ACTRC) (2015), a collaboration of the DepEd and the Assessment Research Centre of the University of Melbourne (UM-ARC), “the overarching aim of the project is to cater for the Filipino student in terms of the needs and conditions of education and employment in the Philippines.”

Central to the framework borne out of the collaboration between DepEd-NETRC and the UM-ARC are the threefold foci on: 1) Information, Media & Technology; 2) Learning and Innovation; and, 3) Communication. This framework is reminiscent of the P21 Model where overarching themes in methodology focus on critical and creative thinking, problem solving, innovation and collaboration. With this is the need to adopt a teaching methodology that supports the implementation of 21^st Century Learning, specifically in teaching creativity and innovation and integrating technology in the context of collaboration.

Design Thinking for 21^st Century Learning

Design Thinking is a discipline that uses the designer’s mindset and sensibility and methods to satisfy the needs of the end-users to arrive at a strategy that is both technologically feasible and business viable thereby converting into customer value and market opportunity (Brown, 2008). In addition, Serrat (2010) explains that design thinking is a non-linear protocol to “see, shape and build” infusing insight into the process in order to address unpredictable issues and problems. These issues and problems are what is referred by most design thinkers as “wicked problems” or problems that seems to have no solutions or whose solutions can only be solved by multidisciplinary means (Brown, 2008; Leinonen & Durall, 2014).   In short, design thinking uses the sensibilities or mindsets and methodologies often used by designers to create new ideas, solutions, alternatives and choices that satisfy the desires of the end users or stakeholders. Fundamentally, it is abductive in nature as it requires one to clear one’s mind of traditional solutions leading to new and creative problem solving (Fischer, 2015; Dunne & Martin, 2006; Johansson-Skoldberg & Wodilla, 2013; Donar, 2011; Schlenker, 2014). Serrat (2010) further explains that as a methodology employing abductive reasoning, design thinking is “empathic, personal, subjective, interpretive, integrative, experimental, synthetic, pictorial, dialectical, opportunistic and optimistic” that in sum builds “creative confidence” (Rauth, Koppen, Jobst & Meinel, 2010).

Educators who have applied design thinking in education argued that it promotes innovation, problem solving, creativity and collaboration (De Campos; Kwek, 2011; Anderson, 2012; Skaggs, et al, 2009; Scheer, et al 2011; Watson, 2015; Caruso, 2011).   Scheer & Plattner (2011), Bruton (2010), Carrol (2014), Noweski (2012), Kwek (2011) further argued that design thinking, as a Constructivist learning methodology or strategy, allows the student to be motivated for exploration and problem solving, being open to ideas, allowing them to be innovative and creative. Scheer and Plattner (2011) noted that Design Thinking is effective in fostering 21^st century learning through its application in complex interdisciplinary projects in a holistic constructivist manner. Design thinking, as a holistic concept to design cognition and learning, allows the participants to work successfully in multi-disciplinary teams as they creatively solve difficult real-life problems (Rauth, et al, 2010).

Going back to the global thrust of P21 and its application to the Philippine educational milieu of the ACTRC, existing research has shown that Design Thinking has the capability to foster creativity and innovation most especially when it is set in a collaborative multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach in problem solving. Carroll (2010), in her ethnographic research on Design Thinking in the middle school classroom, noted that it has an impact on the way that the students engage in the learning process encouraging creativity and innovation and fosters collaboration as students are willing to listen, take risks and share ideas among peers.

Because of the diverse application of Design Thinking as a methodology both in management and learning especially in the way it approaches problem solving (Kimbell, 2011), this has been applied in different fields and discipline such as enterprise, innovation work, social good and, in the last decade, education and learning in general (Beckman & Barry, 2007). Brown (2009) explains that design thinking is seen as a “powerful, effective, and broadly accessible” approach to impact innovation that can be integrated in business, education and other fields. The application continues to attract and inspire researches that can be effectively applied to operations, products, services, strategies and management (Serrat & Simon, 2010) and in a wide range of contexts beyond the traditional preoccupations of designers (Kimbell, 2011).   Although design thinking was at first only explored and developed in connection with professional designers, strategies and methodologies have been identified that are relevant to all disciplines and professions (Lindberg, Noweski & Meinel, 2010).

Unlike traditional learning methodologies, Design thinking follows a two-fold part being both a mindset (Carrol, 2014) and a dynamic non-linear process (Serrat & Simon, 2010). As such, this methodology is valuable for organizations and societies to innovate and initiate change due to the ways designers problem solve (Kimbell, 2011). What sets Design Thinking apart from other approaches is that it focuses on the process instead of the product. And as a creative process, it follows a mindset that is human-centered, action-oriented, prototype-driven and non-judgmental (Carrol, 2014). Thus, it espouses positivity and eliminates the fear of failure and maximizing input and participation from the participants.

Design Thinking as a Mindset

Brown (2008) argued that design thinking is not limited to a select group of people and that many people actually have an innate aptitude to do so.

Table 1. The Design Thinking Mindset

D.School Manual (2015)	Brown (2008)	Carroll et al (2010); Lande 2010
1.     Show Don’t Tell Communicating the vision in an impactful and meaningful way by creating experiences, telling stories well and using illustrative visuals	1.     Empathy Imagine the world from multiple perspectives in minute detail by taking a “people first” approach noticing things that others do not.	1.     Human-Centredness Focus is to make people the source of inspiration and direction for solving design challenges.
2.     Focus on Human Values Exhibit empathy for the people one is designing for to gain relevant feedback.	2.     Integrative Thinking Exhibit the ability to see the salient, sometimes contradictory, aspects of the problem, not relying on analytical processes.	2.     Empathy Develop empathy through a process of “needfinding” where one focuses on discovering people’s explicit and implicit needs.
3.     Craft Clarity – Produce a clear and inspiring vision to fuel ideation.	3.     Optimism Assume at least one potential solution is better than existing alternatives no matter how challenging the problem is.	3.     Mindfulness of Process Being thoughtful not only about the work that one does, but about how one does that work and on how will it improve the methods used.
4.     Embrace Experimentation Prototype and build, as an integral part of the process, to validate one’s idea in order to think and learn.	4.     Experimentalism Pose questions and explore constraints proceeding not in incremental tweaks but entirely new directions.	4.     Culture of Prototyping Focus on being highly experimental, building to think and engaging people with artifacts in order elicit and receive feedback to arrive at a better solution.
5.     Be Mindful of Process – Know where one is in the design process and the methods utilized and the goals set.	5.     Collaboration Enthusiastically collaborate with other disciplines (interdisciplinary) and by themselves multidisciplinary (significant experience with more than one discipline).	5.     Show Don’t Tell Express ideas in a non-verbal way to make ideas compelling and make one see problems and opportunities that discussion may not reveal.
6.     Bias Towards Action – Bias over doing and making over thinking and meeting.		6.     Bias Towards Action Focus on action-oriented behavior rather than discussion-based work.
7.     Radical Collaboration – Bring together people from varied backgrounds, expertise and viewpoints to bring out breakthrough insights and solutions from the diversity.		7.     Radical Collaboration Engage radically diverse multidisciplinary teams leading to greater innovations.

This is seen in how Carroll (2016) defined design thinking as a “foundation of mindsets or orientations to learning.” In summary, the following mindsets are common among different frameworks used by authors stated above: human-centeredness, empathy, mindfulness of process, culture of prototyping, show don’t tell, bias towards action and radical collaboration. Other mindsets or sensibilities identified include optimism, experimentalism and integrative thinking. These mindsets are reminiscent to the skills espoused by both P21 and the ACTRC.

Design Thinking as a Process

Figure 1. Design Thinking Process (D.School, 2015)

Design Thinking as a dynamic and non-linear framework (Scheer, et al, 2011) follows an iterative process broken down into five steps: (1) Empathize, (2) Define, (3) Ideate, (4) Prototype and, (5) Test. Carroll, Goldman, Britos, et al (2010) simply explains design thinking, as applied in education, is an approach to learning that focuses on developing students’ creative confidence and where participants engage in hands-on design challenges that focus on developing empathy, promoting a bias towards action, encouraging ideation, developing metacognitive awareness and fostering creative problem-solving.   It is a formal method for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues, with the intent of an improved future result” (Cohen, 2014). As an iterative process, it essentially does not follow the sequential waterfall model where progress is seen as flowing downwards. The whole idea is to fail, and fail fast, in order to learn from the failures and rapidly iterate in order not to miss opportunities and waste resources.

Design Thinking Application in Teaching & Learning

Design Thinking as a framework for learning has been proven to be applied in teaching business and entrepreneurship (Bruton, 2010; Mumford, Zoller & Profrta, 2016; Dunne & Martin, 2006; Laviolette, Lefebvre & Radu-Lefebvre, 2014; Nielsen & Storvang, 2014), management education (Schlenker, 2014), engineering education (Plattner, Meinel & Leifer, 2011; Dym, Agogino, et al, 2005; Skaggs, Fry & Howell, 2009; Altringer & Habbal, 2015), knowledge management (Wang & Wang, 2008); technological literacy (Wells, 2013); cryptography education (Alhamdani, 2016); spirituality education (Tan & Wong, 2012); writing studies (Purdy, 2014); art education (Watson, 2015), and distance education (Lloyd, 2013). Aside from its application in higher education, Design Thinking as a framework for learning is also applied in basic education or K-12 education (Carroll, Goldman & Britos, 2010; Donar, 2011; O’Donoghue & Berard, 2014; Carroll, 2014; Becker & Mentzer, 2015; Mentzer, Becker & Sutton, 2015).

The application of Design Thinking in schools basically falls into two spheres: 1) teaching-learning methodology; and, 2) curriculum design. According to IDEO (2009), an award-winning global design firm, progressive universities like Rotman and Stanford have trailblazed some successful early models in applying Design Thinking in the curriculum of primary and secondary schools. Carroll (2010) implemented an inter-disciplinary design curriculum by a team of university instructors in a public charter school to teach creativity through collaborative activities challenging students through emphatic problem solving to find answers to complex and difficult problems that have multiple viable solutions. And as a teaching methodology, Caroll (2014) and Lee & Wong (2015) argued that design thinking is anchored upon the Vygotskian Sococultural constructivist learning theory as it utilizes the scaffolding framework and predisposes a constructive way of learning: “motivation for exploration, openness for new ideas, creative thinking and other metacognitive competences (Noweski, 2012).”