Where did Design Thinking come from?

• It’s crucial to develop and refine skills to understand and address

rapid changes in users’ environments and behaviours.
• The world has become increasingly interconnected and complex since
cognitive scientist and Nobel Prize laureate Herbert A. Simon first
mentioned design thinking in his 1969 book, The Sciences of the
Artificial, and then contributed many ideas to its principles.
• Professionals from a variety of fields, including academics,
architecture and engineering, subsequently advanced this highly
creative process to address human needs in the modern age.
What is Design Thinking
• 'Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that integrates
the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for
business success.'
• - Tim Brown, CEO, IDEO

• Design Thinking is a mindset and approach to learning, collaboration, and

problem solving. In practice, the design process is a structured framework
for identifying challenges, gathering information, generating potential
solutions, refining ideas, and testing solutions. Design Thinking can be
flexibly implemented; serving equally well as a framework for a course
design or a roadmap for an activity or group project.
Design Thinking is:
• A solutions-based approach to solving problems.
• An iterative, non-linear process.
• A way of thinking and working.
• Supported by a collection of strategies and methods.
• Design Thinking asks us to:
• Develop empathy and understand the needs of the people we are designing solutions
for.
• Define problems and opportunities for designing solutions.
• Generate and visualise creative ideas.
• Develop prototypes.
• Test solutions and seek feedback.
• Design Thinking is a framework that allows anyone to create unique and
innovative solutions through a user centred approach. Through deeply
understanding the needs of the user, one can ideate potential solutions,
test them and continue to make improvements based on reflections and
further conversations with users. The skills developed through this
process allow individuals to become problem solvers who think critically
and are able to collaborate effectively in order to innovate.
• This learning can happen in any classroom! From Art to Math and Social
Sciences to English, educators have been leveraging Design Thinking in
classrooms and schools to ensure that learning is connected to real-
world experiences and is meaningful to students. Many have adopted a
transdisciplinary approach to teaching rather than focusing on siloed
subject-related courses or learning blocks. Design Thinking shifts
teaching from content delivery to content discovery as students work
through this repeatable process.
Why is Design Thinking Important?
• You might be wondering why your elementary, primary and middle school
students need Design Thinking skills?
• Consider the rapidly changing world we live in. To thrive in the future students will
need to be adaptable and flexible. They will need to be prepared to face situations
that they have never seen before.
• Design Thinking is one of the best tools we can give our students to ensure they:
• Have creative confidence in their abilities to adapt and respond to new challenges.
• Are able to identify and develop innovative, creative solutions to problems they
and others encounter.
• Develop as optimistic, empathetic and active members of society who can
contribute to solving the complex challenges the world faces into the future.
How did the students in the video use
Design Thinking?
• In the video, we saw our first graders:
• Developing and agreeing on criteria for their designs.
• Selecting tools and materials – in this case, Makers Empire and 3D printing.
• Supporting each other to learn how to use the new tools.
• Producing a working prototype.
• The testing process for our first graders involved:
• Giving each other feedback
• Assessing their designs against the previous agreed criteria
• Making modifications and improvements to their designs
• Testing their designs in the context they would be used.
• Reflecting on their problem-solving processes and learning outcomes.
How will you teach Design Thinking?

• Now it’s your turn. Think about projects you can do with your own
students that will help enhance and deepen their learning. How might
you support your students to:
• Develop empathy, insights and understandings.
• Define a problem as an actionable question.
• Generate and visualise ideas.
• Develop prototypes; and
• Evaluate and test their designed solutions.
• While design thinking has its roots in the innovation/design sector, the process itself can be
used anywhere. Indeed, it is a great tool for teaching 21st century skills, as participants
must solve problems by finding and sorting through information, collaborating with others,
and iterating their solutions based on real world, authentic experience and feedback. (It is
also a great tool to develop and run a school, but that's a different post for a different day.)
• Practitioners of design thinking have different steps depending on their needs. We use
these steps:
• 1) Identify Opportunity
2) Design
3) Prototype
4) Get Feedback
5) Scale and Spread
6) Present
• In design thinking, you work through the steps together in small groups (or "Collabs").
Our task is to explore the question: How might we create ways to assess learning geared
to making tangible progress toward meaningful goals?
• With driving question in hand, each Collab is led by a trained facilitator. There are basic
ground rules for working together (like saying "yes, and" rather than "yes, but" when
disagreeing with someone), and using elements from improv comedy to help maintain a
culture of positivity, risk-taking, support and flexibility.
• This is important, as the goal is to break through the negative thinking that plagues the
big, thorny issues, and to come up with one prototype idea for solving one aspect of the
problem.
• This right here is another novel idea! We're not tasked with fixing the whole system.
This is an approach positing that small changes in the right places can have big impacts
on outcome.
 DESIGN THINKING
PROCESS –

Six Steps to Design Thinking

Step 1: Identify Opportunity
• Identify a big issue that is plaguing your school or community. Is there a
fundraising challenge? A school resource issue? A civic concern or an
environmental problem? You can also do a quick community needs
assessment, but don't get too bogged down in this. The idea is to pick a
need and move through the process. You can always iterate later.
• Once you've identified your issue, invite two to three parents or other
community members who are personally affected by this issue to share
their perspective with your students. You can have them there in person
or via Skype. Let students ask lots of questions. These are the people for
whom the students will be designing solutions.
 
Step 2: Design Process
• Once students have heard the issues facing their community via Step
1, give them sticky notes and pens and let them brainstorm solutions.
Invite them to be inspired by each other and build off each others'
ideas. Remember, no idea is too stupid! Once they've finished
brainstorming, identify the main themes that have emerged, and
break students into small groups to research their initial ideas.
• Here is where the "guide on the side" can really make a difference.
The students may have some wonderfully creative but entirely
impossible ideas! At this point, the teacher should guide them with
real world experience to help ensure that they have a good start.
Step 3: Prototype Phase
• Get a bunch of creative materials together and let the groups flesh
out their ideas into physical prototypes. As teams are creating, help
them think through their prototypes: How will each feature help the
people we interviewed in Step 1? Does this mesh with the research
they did? How will the prototype work? Which materials are the best
for the job?
• Once they're done, tell students they're going be pitching their ideas
to experts. Give them a chance to practice and refine their
presentations so they're comfortable and confident!
Step 4: Feedback
• Invite people who are experts and/or stakeholders in the field to
come to your school and have students present their prototypes to
them. Ask each expert to review each pitch and prototype, and give
students explicit feedback: what works with this idea, and what can
be improved?
Step 5: Scale and Spread
• This step is yet another excellent opportunity to practice "guide on
the side" facilitation. Help each group of students understand the
feedback they got, and work with them to understand the best way to
implement solutions. If there are multiple feedback points to be
addressed, the groups can break into subgroups to address each point
for efficiency. You might have students pick a project manager, and
have all the subgroups report back to that person.
Step 6: Present
• You might invite the community members you engaged in Step 1 of
this process, as well as others in your school or community to hear
the presentations and brainstorm actionable ways to bring the ideas
to fruition in an authentic setting. You could present both in-person
and online, or set up Skype calls with local businesses.
• Are you using aspects of design thinking now? Or do you feel that
design thinking might have a use in your classroom or school? How
might it work?
IMPLEMENTATION
 1. HOOK/ATTENTION GETTER
• Ask students to talk about this question:
• "What can you do to solve the problems of others?"
• Give students about 5 minutes to come up with as many answers the the question has
possible. Record the answers on the board for all students to see.
• Then tell them "what if I was to give you a process that will allow you to solve every
problem you and others encounter. Would you be willing to try it?"
• Give the students time to respond as a group.  Tell them the process you are going to
show them allow them to be creative and solve problems. It is called Design Thinking.
• Show them the youtube video.
2. LEARN FROM PEOPLE/EMPATHY
• Tell students that you are now going to give them the first step in the Design
Thinking process "empathy or learning from people.
• Tell them they are going to play a game and the results will gage their empathy.
• Give them 20 minutes to play the game then collect their scores. This game will
give them an insight into what empathy is.
• After playing the game as a class have groups of students determine the
definition of empathy and why it is useful in solving problems.
• After coming up with a cohesive definition of empathy as a class give the students
the following problem: Students at the school are missing too much personal
time because of the long distance travel to school.
3 FINDING PATTERNS
• After introducing the problem have each group create a Padlet that will
collect their observations as well as their interview answers.
• After creating their padlet give students one lunch period to collect
observations around the distances the students are travelling from. Tell
them to document who they interview (questions asked as well as their
answers) on Padlet.
• The following day have each group analyze their padlets into themes
that emerged from the following's days empathy activity. From their
themes and patterns have the students identify what the real problem is
regarding students missing personal time due to commute time.
4 DESIGN PRINCIPALS
• Have students take their themes, patterns, and focus of the problem
they found to make different options to solutions to the problem.
These should be done on paper and as many different solutions as
possible. Have students put the worst idea on their board first then
continue with idea after idea.
• I would give them a minimum of one class period to work on ideas.
Students need to be told that all ideas are welcome and they can only
use the phrase "Yes, and..." when talking about another person's idea.
This is to allow for expansion on an idea.
5 MAKE IT TANGABLE/ SOLUTION
• Use of the two apps above to make digital representations of their
solutions to the groups identified problem. They may also make a
physical model using common classroom and household items like
paper, cardboard, etc. They should then test their solution with the
student body and make changes where needed.
Lesson Plan 01
• Grade Level: 5-12
• Procedure:
1. Ask students to take 5-10 minutes to write a flashback narrative of one of their best learning experiences in school. To help them think about an experience, stress that such a
memory will be vivid - they'll remember names of people involved or the exact location in school it took place. They may have even kept a product of the experience (a photo, an
essay, a posterboard).

2. Have them share out.

3. Ask students to question why this educational experience stuck with them. What did they learn? What made it different than other experiences they've had?

4. Next, have students watch the following video on democratic education: http://www.youtube.com/goodideafolks.

5. Discussion: After watching the video, have students consider how their experiences were exemplified in the video or were not. Were their memorable educational experiences
reflected in the video?

6. Ask the class to brainstorm out ideas of how to take practices in their narratives and the video and implement them in their classroom or school for the next 3 days. This may
include going outdoors and finding leaves or plants and naming them and categorizing them for a science lesson. Or this may include creating treasure maps around the school using
math concepts (take 5 x 3 steps towards the flagpole from the front door). Or it may include suggestions to increase choice and shared decision-making in the classroom or school.

7. Allow students to formalize these suggestions in a letter to you, the teacher. Then you and the class discuss and decide together which 3 suggestions to implement for the next 3
days. Challenge yourself to expand beyond your comfort zone.
• Procedure:
• After 3 days, have a class meeting to discuss how the last 3 days went. Should the changes remain? Should there be additional changes? Different changes? Explore with the students
the possibilities to keep improving the classroom and the school as a whole.
• Have students present what they believe the purpose of education is"in reality, today as it exists. In contrast, have them present what they believe the purpose of education should
be. Some examples may be to get a job or make lots of money whereas some may believe the purpose should be to have fun and learn about oneself, and others may think
something completely different.