Is Design Thinking in education the future or just a fad?
Exploring how Design Thinking can be used in education and why it isn’t just another buzzword to impress parents
Up until the beginning of 2020, I didn’t really know much about Design Thinking. I had briefly come across it online when I had read some articles relating to business strategy.
It was when I was researching new teaching methods and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) curriculums that I first discovered Design Thinking in education. I was looking for a pedagogy that promoted independent thinking and 21st century skills like creativity, communication, critical thinking and collaboration. Design Thinking not only does both of these things, but it also fits seamlessly with technology and innovation which was another area I was interested in developing in youth education.
More than just a process
So, what exactly is Design Thinking? The simplest way to define it is a framework to design solutions to problems. Framework makes it sound quite theoretical and process-based, which it can be when used by businesses or public organisations, but when using it in education, I prefer to think of it as more of a problem solving mindset.
As a design model, it can be thought of as a 5-step iterative process, the origins of which date back to 1960s but were popularised by the the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford also known as d.school (see below image).
A key aspect of Design Thinking is that it is human-centered, or user-centric for product or service design, and so empathy is ingrained in the process from the first step. After empathizing and thinking about who and how a problem is affecting someone, the second step is to define the problem with more specificity. Then, the next two steps in the process are where creativity comes into play, as potential solutions are brainstormed and then prototypes are made. Finally, the solutions are tested and feedback is obtained for further development.
Now, a lot of people who have experienced designing or creating something, may be initially skeptical and say that they have always been following these steps, and that Design Thinking offers nothing particularly groundbreaking or new.
I felt the same way at first when reading about it. However, as I mentioned, Design Thinking is not just about following steps in a process, it’s about developing a mindset which enhances creativity, innovation and efficiency for problem solvers. And once you dive deeper into the steps, and start using the plethora of activities and exercises which aid in empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping and testing out solutions, you begin to notice really how effective Design Thinking can be versus a more simplistic less structured approach.
A world of problems
Design Thinking can be applied in many different areas of both business and society. In business, it is often lauded for its use by companies to innovate products and in recent years it has become a buzzword banded around for its application in tech companies like Google, Apple and AirBnB. Not everyone in the business and design world holds Design Thinking with such high regard and praise though, as is evidenced by the fact that searching “Design Thinking” on Youtube brings up a video on the first page entitled “Natasha Jen: Design Thinking is Bullsh*t”.
However, I am not here to argue the case for Design Thinking in business. I want to examine its use in education.
Design Thinking as an education framework has become more popular since the turn of the century, and similar to its use in business there are some who question it’s effectiveness and suggest that it may be a fad. I believe the opposite and I will explain why.
If you look at the timing, and why Design Thinking has become more prominent over the last few decades, it is closely linked to technology and its impact on society.
If we assume the primary goal of youth education is to nurture and develop children to be responsible workers and leaders of society in the future. Then, the how and what we are teaching children in schools should be centred around developing the skills for these jobs of the future. This is generally what public education systems have been doing across the world for the last 200 years, and generally it has worked well.
The problem is, over the last 20 years we have seen a paradigm shift start to occur within the world of work and jobs. The internet and digital age has transformed the typical career path. It used to be, graduate university and get a 9-to–5 office job at a company, and work your way up the company ladder. Now though, jobs and careers are vastly different, they are remote, borderless and project-based. Where and how we work has completely changed, and in this new technology-driven world, workers require a different set of skills in order to thrive in this environment. Yet, many education systems still today continue to use outdated teaching methods and curriculums that focus on the skills for jobs of the past not the present or the future. And so, many of the children at schools today are not being properly prepared for the future.
Preparing for the future
So, what exactly are these skills that children should be learning? Well, these are the 21st century skills like communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking and curiosity that I mentioned before. These skills have always been vital in the workplace, but they are becoming increasingly more important as technology progresses and we see automation and AI take over jobs and tasks. You see, these are the skills that AI and robots can’t easily learn and they require a human element.
A report titled “The changing nature of work and skills in the digital age” published by the EU in 2019, highlights just how important these types of skills are compared to the more traditional skills like numeracy and literacy. You can see from the image below taken from the report, that skills like problem solving, teamwork, planning and communication, now and in the future, have a lot more importance than both advanced literacy and numeracy.
It is these 21st century skills that Design Thinking helps to nurture and develop.
When students follow the Design Thinking process and use it to design solutions to problems they experience first hand what its like to:
- Work in a team which has a diverse range of personalities and skills.
- Communicate ideas and thoughts, and learn to respect the opinions of others.
- Think in both a divergent and convergent way, when brainstorming ideas and then designing one solution.
- Develop prototypes from ideas.
- Fail, learn from mistakes and then try again.
When you put all of these experiences and skills together you are preparing students for a future world which embraces diversity, a digitally connected world filled with scientists and artists who think independently and collaboratively about both global and local problems, and are ready to not only succeed but also fail.
Design Thinking takes education out of the rigid industrial age and brings it into the fast-moving 21st century. I believe it is so imperative that children start learning and experiencing from a young age what it’s like to be an innovator, creator and problem-solver. And one of the most effective ways to do this is by teaching them Design Thinking.
If students develop a Design Thinking mindset in the classroom, it not only provides them with the necessary skills to flourish in their future careers, but it can also help them understand social and environmental problems. By incorporating global problems like climate change, poverty, and mental health into a Design Thinking course students can start thinking about the future of our planet and addressing the biggest problem of all — sustainability. And this is exactly what I have been doing at Teach Today with our Design Thinking workshops.
Empowering children to design a better world
Just under a year ago, in April 2020, I became a licensed facilitator of Designathon workshops. A Designathon is a 3–4 hour workshop in which students (aged 9–13 years old) work in groups to design solutions to global problems based around the UN sustainable development goals.
The Designathon curriculum was developed in the Netherlands and is being used in over the 45 countries across the globe. Teach Today was the first to offer Designathons in South Korea, and we launched our workshops at the Seoul Arts Center in July 2020. Due to the Covid-19 restrictions the workshops were limited to smaller groups but this did not hinder the effectiveness of the curriculum and the students were able to fully experience the Design Thinking process.
The Designathon workshops were a great starting point for the overall vision and plan for Teach Today. Since the launch last Summer, we have done over 15 workshops, and have also created and started using our own curriculum both offline and online. I will write in more detail about what we have been up to over the last year in upcoming blog articles.
Going back to the articles title and answering the question, is Design Thinking in education the future or just a fad? Based on my experience working with children and teaching Design Thinking over the past year, I truly believe that if anything it will only get bigger and more popular in classrooms in the future, as more and more schools start to move away from the old traditional ways of teaching and look for learning tools that are centred around innovation and sustainability.
So, the next time you are trying to solve a problem whether it be in your business, in your community or with your learning, try out Design Thinking yourself, you won’t be disappointed!
If you would like to know more about Design Thinking in education, please feel free to contact me on my LinkedIn.
