What is Design Thinking and how can teachers get started?

With this introductory guide to design thinking for educators, we lay the foundations for better problem solving and creative ideas.

Use this introduction as a launchpad for your further research, skill development and professional growth in creative problem solving with design thinking.


What is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is a creative, human-centred process for developing new ideas and solving problems.

The design process includes five phases: empathising with the user, identifying needs and defining the problem, envisioning what could be, generating potential solutions, prototyping ideas and testing prototypes with users.

The five phases are often labelled:

  1. Empathise
  2. Define
  3. Ideate
  4. Prototype
  5. Test

Design thinking aims to uncover creative solutions for complex problems through generating ideas, testing them with stakeholders, and refining them in an iterative process until they are ready for implementation.

The process is often illustrated - this is an example of the Double Diamond representation of the Design thinking process.
The process is often illustrated – this is an example of the Double Diamond representation of the Design process.

Why is it called design thinking?

For professional designers and design-oriented creatives, design thinking is their standard process or way of doing things.

Many disciplines, including education, have co-opted design thinking techniques to develop innovative solutions or product development processes.

Design thinking is also sometimes called design-led innovation or a design methodology. It is a series of:

design-specific cognitive activities that designers apply during the process of designing

Visser, W. 2006

The opportunity in education is for us to use design methods and designerly ways of thinking intentionally.

My experience across the last decade of applying these methods for thinking in an education setting challenges and provokes new ways of approaching long-standing problems and issues.

Who invented design thinking?

Design thinking originated from design disciplines, creativity research and design practice between the 1940s and 1960s.

One of the first authors to write about design thinking was John E. Arnold (1959), who identified design thinking as a design methodology. Arnold distinguishes four areas of design thinking and developmental change:

  1. Novel functionality
  2. Higher levels of performance
  3. Lower production costs
  4. Increased saleability

The term design thinking came into widespread use in the 2000s when David Kelley, founder of the design consultancy IDEO, shifted design thinking from creative engineering to innovation management. 

Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.

Tim Brown, Chair of IDEO

Although our experience in education with design thinking is in the last 10-15 years, the practice goes back much further—a good reminder of the limitations of our use as non-design professionals.

Create a space for your design thinking work
Create a space for your design thinking work

Design Thinking Steps

The design thinking process is made up of five steps or stages. What are the 5 stages of design thinking?:

  1. Empathise
  2. Define
  3. Ideate
  4. Prototype
  5. Test

Let’s have a closer look at each and expand further on what is involved in the different phases of design thinking:

Empathise

In the opening phase of the process, the goal is to understand better who is at the heart of the problem or issue. A range of design research techniques is used to understand the problem area, including interviews, mapping and user surveys.

We might be speaking to students and families in the education context, observing and working with different community groups. Anything that helps us listen to the stakeholders at the heart of the issue we explore.

Define

The goal of the Define phase is to synthesise information and write a clearly framed problem statement. You might be thinking, ‘do we not start with the problem?’ This is a valid question and is one of the critical ideas to explore with design thinking.

I often say that the process of design thinking helps us start from further back. The empathy phase challenges us to listen and understand the needs of people involved before we fixate on a specific problem or solution.

Ideate

This is where design thinking diverges from the norm. We are no longer trying to find a single solution or ‘fix’ to an identified problem. The design process prompts us to consider many ideas and solutions, even if they are potential future options.

The structured process of idea generation helps us develop a range of alternative solutions. Once we have a range of ideas to explore, we can filter and analyse the proposed solutions before identifying something to invest in further and prototype.

Prototype

After much creative work, it’s time to prototype your ideas into something tangible that can be tested with people involved in the project. You might reconnect with the school community groups that you spoke with in the empathise phase.

A key benefit of design thinking is its ability to test early and often through prototyping. Prototyping and testing are part of the same tight feedback loop. The reason we prototype is to gain feedback.

Prototypes should be designed to ask a question and get some data about something you’re interested in. Good prototypes isolate one aspect of a problem and design an experience that allows you to “try out” some version of a potentially interesting future.

Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans

Test

As ideas are tested, the design thinker will learn more about what works well in practice and refocus efforts accordingly. Any feedback or insight is used in the creative process to inform the next iteration of the solution.

In education, this prototyping and testing often get overlooked for a Pilot programme, and it is worth dwelling on the difference for a moment.

Pilot studies or programmes tend to be more advanced real-world solutions with more significant investment. A prototype test is generally on a much smaller experimental scale.

Is design thinking a linear process?

Design thinking is often referred to as a linear process, and while the design thinker will understand the value of each step and be applying them in order, there can be some ambiguity.

Search for a diagram of the design thinking process, and it looks orderly, linear and structured. However, in practice, the design thinking process is flexible and can be extended or iterated based on feedback from testing. Prototyping and testing is the design thinker’s key feedback loop.

As with any creative process, design thinking is an iterative design, research, creativity, and testing process. It is common for teachers and leaders to return to the initial phases to explore other opportunities or possibilities with different stakeholders.

The design thinking process is flexible enough to move around within it, returning to previous steps while also seeking new forms of inspiration and insight. It’s not about finding ‘the answer’ – design thinkers are mindful that there is rarely just one perfect solution.

They know that through design thinking, they can explore many ideas in parallel without siloing their efforts into one project at a time.

IMG 20191003 102916
Architects and designers working together

When is design thinking relevant?

To answer this question, let’s return to design thinking’s roots in design, which is about creating successful outcomes through innovation, research and prototyping. Everything begins with design.

Designers identify a problem or opportunity to design something better for people who will use it. Design thinking is relevant when working on creative solutions that need to be user-centred and grounded in empathy research.

Design thinking can be used by educators, school leaders, and teachers to grapple with complex community problems. The sort of challenges that seem connected to many aspects of the educational experience and need collaboration to understand.

Design thinking is not relevant for specific operational challenges or urgent matters impacting the school.

How design thinking helps

There is a range of benefits to teachers and education leaders for using design thinking. These include:

  • Strengthening critical and creative thinking.
  • Solution-based approach to address complex problem-solving.
  • Design thinking provides a framework to design creative solutions.
  • Design thinking helps with a better understanding of what is happening on the ground, close to home. Real issues that affect the school community.
  • Design solutions that are more innovative, creative and engaging.
  • Design thinking help to design future possibilities for students.
  • New insights into how people learn, what they need and where design can make a difference.
  • A collaborative approach to design, research and prototyping.
  • Facilitates a deeper understanding of school community challenges that could lead to more innovative, creative or engaging design solutions.
Working with PNG secondary teachers to use design thinking in curriculum planning.
Design thinking with curriculum planning in PNG

How to get started with design thinking in education?

The best way to get started with design thinking is to experience it with your team. Explore design thinking as a school or district. You may even want to design something yourself.

Start with the design thinking process described above and commit it to paper for your team to discuss together. Where could you apply design thinking in your practice? How might design thinking help make a difference at your school?

Remember to explore issues in your school community that are complex and human-centred. Here are some general themes and areas to consider:

  • Assessment and reporting
  • Community engagement
  • Curriculum design and development
  • Teaching and learning (onsite and offsite)
  • Student voice and agency
  • Community wellbeing

You may also enjoy diving deeper into design thinking with my self-paced course, ideal for building your skills or learning with your team. Find out more about my online course below.

Articles for further reading

Conclusion and Summary

Design thinking is a design-centred, user-focused process that can help educators and school leaders to design creative solutions for complex challenges.

Design thinkers use design, research and prototyping as they work on problems in education communities. With design thinking, you’ll be able to strengthen your critical and creative thinking skills. While also addressing complex problem solving through solution-based approaches or more innovative ideas.

You will get better insights into what’s happening close to home by seeking out new forms of inspiration and understanding rather than finding the answer right away.


Unlock Your Creative Potential

Join me and take your first steps with Design Thinking. Drawn from a decade of facilitation and experience, my course is fully loaded with the essential strategies, resources and tips to support your successful first step. Let’s get to work!

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Provocations To Be More Empathic

Piece Together Moments of Truth

The word derives from Greek empatheia (from em- ‘in’+ pathos ‘feeling’)

Key Ideas

  • A moment of empathy
  • How to define empathy?
  • Children’s books on empathy
  • An alternative view to challenge your thinking.
  • Empathy is an aggregate of personal stories and emotions.
  • The perspective from Daniel Goleman, the author of Emotional Intelligence.

Empathy: An Aggregate of Personal Truths

“our capacity for empathy is as much the result of our experience and practice as it is of our genetic makeup.” ~ Alisa Del Tufo

I typically share a simple question:

Is empathy a skill?

A closed question, so a simple one right?

Maybe this question breaks those rules. It is simple in structure and yet beguilingly complex to ponder.

Del Tufo answers it pretty well in my opinion. Our ability to empathise with others can be practised, the skill can be refined through the use of various tools and thinking frameworks to help us.

However, there is still something at a deeper level we rely upon.

During a school workshop, we discussed this very same question. Through our dialogue, we explored the concept that we could never completely understand what the experience and perspective are of someone else.

Walking in someone else’s shoes is as elusive as someone walking in our own.

With only a partial understanding realistically within our grasp, we explored how empathy is perhaps more about forming an understanding that is closer to someone else’s truth.

However, the truth we create ourselves is likely to be an aggregate of our own experiences, thoughts and emotions. Our own truths.

Empathy is an aggregate of our truths.

Del Tufo explains that we learn empathy when we experience connectedness and surface shared values.

I think this occurs in small aggregated pieces, rarely do we have exactly the same experience to draw from, the complexity of our bias (and life) prohibits this in many ways.

Image by 愚木混株 Cdd20

It is more a mosaic of experience we build that helps us connect with others, find common ground and shared values.

Against Empathy

How can we really claim to “know” what another truly feels?

Do you think empathy is a skill? Is empathy something that can be taught? Can we design an empathy rich curriculum?

Let’s explore an outlier’s view. Paul Bloom explains in his book ‘Against Empathy’ that “kindness motivated by empathy often has bad effects.

“good parenting involves coping with the short-term suffering of your child”. An over-identification with one’s child’s unhappiness can be disabling to both parent and child.

In the link below Salley Vickers explores the book further explaining that Paul Bloom:

pins his colours to the mast of rational compassion rather than empathy, and it is a central tenet of the book’s argument — I think a correct one — that there exists confusion in people’s minds about the meaning of the two terms.

Please use the article as a provocation to your understanding of compassion, empathy and sympathy.

A review of these two books by Salley Vickers. Well worth your time to explore these opposing views to the usual rhetoric about empathy in education.

Against Empathy by Paul Bloom; The Empathy Instinct by Peter Bazalgette – review

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Image by 愚木混株 Cdd20

Empathic Concern

Daniel Goleman, the author of Emotional Intelligence, offers some clarity here to navigate the confusion. He explains that there are three aspects of empathy:

The first kind, cognitive empathy, allows me to see the world through your eyes: to take your perspective and understand the mental models that make up your lens on events. The second kind, emotional empathy, means I feel what you are feel; this empathy gives us an instant felt sense of the other person’s emotions.

It’s the third kind, empathic concern, that leads us to care about the other person’s welfare, to want to help them if they are in need. Empathic concern forms a basis for compassion.

In order to feel someone else’s pain, I have to connect with memories and experiences I have had.

Goleman explains that this might mean we choose not to help others because if your suffering makes me suffer, I can feel better by tuning out…When we think of empathy as a spur to prosocial acts, it’s empathic concern we have in mind.

In this short read, Daniel Goleman responds to the question: What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?

Children’s Books on Empathy

Stories have the potential to be perspective portals.

Stories have the power to transport us into another world and another worldview. The list of children’s books below is a good starting point for talking about empathy with young children.

The list author is Tinybop, a US, Brooklyn-based studio creating educational products. Although I have not come across some of these books before, I like the sound of this one:

Just Because by Amber Housey. Part of the series Flip Side Stories, which aim to teach children to see another point of view, Just Because teaches children about the value of giving, being thankful, and having empathy for others.

A great little collection of books aimed at primary age children that you might use as a starting point for dialogue about how we feel with others.

13 kids books to spark conversations about empathy

Moments of Empathy

Design Thinking has a phase called empathy. But this is not something we switch on and off. It is certainly not something that is just a tick-a-box.

A deeper connection with people at the heart of a problem will likely yield a stronger commitment to figuring things out.

During a Design Thinking online workshop, I encouraged teachers to share a story. A story of a time when they felt out of place and challenged by a language or cultural barrier. These memories helped us to connect on a deeper level, with the experiences of students at the heart of their inquiry.

It shifted the dialogue and our motivation to advocate.

We made meaning by connecting with our own experiences, memories and stories. This put us in a position to connect in a more meaningful way and understand more.

It was a privilege to be part of that moment, so pure and clear, and to help a little in getting there. It is rare to share such a discrete moment of empathy that I can recount.

Hold the Space

I stumbled on this quote from Brené Brown. Not sure why it had passed me by over the years, but my practice is better for this powerful articulation of what empathy is.

Empathy has no script. There is no right way or wrong way to do it. It’s simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of ‘You’re not alone.’

https://edte.ch/media/bc65af111a833cc48c137addeeaf1b7b

I had the chance to put it into practice straight away and wondered if I was overthinking how we “do it”.


Thanks for exploring these ideas with me.

Your Talking Points

  • Do we narrow our attention too much on our quest for ‘more empathy”?
  • Reflect on the clearest moment of empathy you have witnessed?
  • Reread Brown’s quote. How might you apply the ideas in your own practice?
  • What will you do to withhold judgment or simply listen?

This is a snippet of my Dialogic Learning Weekly. ⚡A weekly email designed to build your cognitive toolkit and enhance your practice. It saves you time and provokes your thinking.

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How You Can Stick With A Tough Problem – Key Lessons From Cognitive Science

David Badre shares some ideas about working on complex and challenging projects

David Badre is a professor of cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and author of On Task: How Our Brain Gets Things Done.

I have edited some of the authors’ critical points about practising problem-solving habits and added some keyword labels in bold.

In general, we can get better at structuring hard problems with experience. This is one reason that practice makes us more efficient and successful at hard tasks and that experts outperform novices. Finding work habits that encourage this process helps us to stay focused.

  • Stay with it. Finding the right structure often takes time. [Persist, Stamina, Effort]
  • Be open to reconceptualising problem structure. [Disposition, Curiosity, Perspective]
  • Take breaks. It’s not helpful to insist on trying to get everything done at once if it just isn’t working. [Pace, Time, Incubate]
  • Interact with others. Just like taking a break, interacting with others can help us conceptualise a problem in new ways. [Collaborate, Share, Connect]

I find the idea of being open to reconceptualise problem structures one that resonates with my current facilitation.

I am paying attention to moments when I shift perspective. This is often during group design and development sessions.

For example, during a recent curriculum design workshop, I asked a group of teachers:

If some of your students were here with us, what might they share about the ideas we have developed so far?

This is a deliberate facilitation move to change the perspective.

The problem structure [learning + curriculum design] was shifted [from curriculum] and seen from a different vantage point [student].

This propelled us in a different direction and led to some new ideas.

Feedback Is Oxygen For Your Ideas — Start With A Minimum Verbal Prototype

Drafting or prototyping is one of the later stages of the design process. Our approach and mindset have the potential to influence anything we create.

The key to success: share your ideas early and often.

Activate the feedback loop as early as you can — Photo by ThisIsEngineering

Minimum Verbal Prototype

One of the simplest prototypes you can create is to describe your idea to someone else.

  • What if we
  • Why don’t we
  • Imagine that we

Your Minimum Verbal Prototype or MVP is a more rounded description of your idea — not just one of many ideas on a list. Your verbal outline creates the first impression and helps someone understand your initial intent.

The MVP is the kick to begin representing your idea in a more tangible way.

The Word prototype is from Greek prōtotypon “a first or primitive form,” from prōtos “first” + typos ‘impression, mould, pattern.”

Prototyping is not the goal. Feedback is.

A different way to approach prototyping is:

To engineer as many opportunities for feedback as you can.

Feedback is the main reason we share drafts. Rough and ready versions give us the chance to test and think about what works and what doesn’t.

And to truly understand how bad our ideas are.

Feedback is oxygen for your ideas.

When you share a First Verbal Prototype, you activate a feedback loop to develop your creative ideas.

Remember, the only thing worse than a bad idea is to isolate an idea from feedback for too long.

Feedback is oxygen for your ideas. It will help them grow and get stronger, starved of it, and your ideas weaken.


This is a snippet of my Dialogic Learning Weekly. ⚡A weekly email designed to build your cognitive toolkit and enhance your practice. It saves you time and provokes your thinking.

Exactly the nourishment I need on a weekly basis.

⚡️ Subscribe now and get started this week.

How To Improve With The Start Stop Continue Retrospective

The Start Stop Continue routine has been around for decades. It is commonly used as a ‘retrospective’ activity in Agile development and Scrum meetings.

Our development toolkit is filled with templates, activities and protocols for reflection, but often the simplest tool can be the most effective.

In this post, I explore the fundamental components of the reflection, how you can use it and the benefits. I also share an extended version that gives you some new options to try in your next review session.

Before you finish make sure you grab a copy of the editable PDF resource for the Start Stop Continue extended version. You can use it in your next meeting.

Start Stop Continue

In its simplest form, the protocol explores the three actions of its namesake. When you are reviewing the development of your project or even your own teaching practice, ask these three simple questions.

  • What should I stop doing?
  • What should I keep doing?
  • What should I start doing?

What are the benefits?

  • Provides a clear and comprehensive structure for agreeing on and setting actions.
  • Helps teams explore different types of improvements, using three different triggers.
  • Makes it easier for individuals to talk about what is not working and clarify issues.
  • Simple and memorable enough to be conducted quickly with little preparation.
  • Flexible enough to be valuable for individuals or large teams.

How do I facilitate the Start Stop Continue?

The first thing to do is grab a copy of the editable PDF resource for the Start Stop Continue. All of the sample questions below are included in the download.

This retrospective model will help you and your team explore what is working, what is not effective and what might be useful to try.

To support this and make it easier for participants, use some of the example questions below:

Start

  • What practices do you need to START doing?
  • Outline some of the new ideas that you want to start?
  • What are the habits you want to start?

Stop

  • What negative practices do you need to STOP?
  • What are the low-impact processes which need to stop?
  • What do you need to stop investing in?

Continue

  • What established practices do you need to CONTINUE doing?
  • Which aspects of your work need to be maintained?
  • What needs continued investment to maintain the impact you want to see?

A useful hack from Sarah Beldo, Head of Content and Communications at Miro, is to switch the order a little:

I’ve found that people find it easier to think about what already exists – both the good (“continue”) and the bad (“stop”), before venturing into uncharted territory (“start”).

Sarah Beldo, 7 retrospective templates we love and use at Miro

Start Stop Continue

Extend Your Reflection

Beyond the core Start Stop Continue routine, we can extend the reflection protocol in a few different directions. I think these provocations offer some much-needed nuance to the activity.

For example, the option to Pause, and not just Stop, is a useful distinction. The addition of shifting the thinking frame forward and back in time helps us to consider some important strategic modes of reflection.

I have developed the following additional provocations to complement the core trio and help you facilitate a comprehensive reflection.

Improve

  • What aspects of your practice can you IMPROVE?
  • Which parts of your project have room for growth?
  • What changes can you make to increase the impact?

Pause

  • Which elements of our work need to be PAUSED to allow resources to shift elsewhere?
  • Which projects would benefit from a short developmental hiatus?
  • Which projects are a priority and would benefit from other elements being PAUSED?

Fast Forward

  • Which aspects of this project would benefit from an increase in pace?
  • How might we increase the speed of development?
  • In the future what might be a block or challenge to the success of this?

Rewind

  • What have we learned from the story of development so far?
  • If we returned to the beginning of this project what would we start with?
  • What can we learn from how this problem was handled in the past?

Challenge

  • Which assumptions do we need to CHALLENGE?
  • What bias do you need to talk about and better understand?
  • What will you do to disrupt and challenge the status quo?

Download your editable PDF

If you are interested in this extended version of the model you can download an editable PDF. Just subscribe to my weekly newsletter and I will send you a copy.


Potential Uses and Applications

  • You have reached the end of a teaching placement, and you want to capture your reflections.
  • Your team is making progress with the implementation of a new programme prototype and you want to refine the approach.
  • You want a simple structure to use with your coach to reflect on the past few weeks.
  • During a weekly catchup with one of your team, you want to implement a simple structure for personal/professional mentorship.
  • At the beginning of the term, you want a framework for some collective reflection for your class.
  • You have moved into new learning spaces and need a tool to review what is working and what needs changing.

Further Reading and Resources

7 retrospective templates we love and use at Miro – MiroBlog | A blog by Miro. (2020)

Start, Stop, Continue Tutorial by Say, M. | Forbes. (2021)

The Stop, Start, Continue Approach To Feedback | The World of Work Project. (2019)

Start Stop Continue Template & Start Stop Continue Retrospective | Miro Template Library. (2021)