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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Articles for further reading

• Stanford d.school (n.d.). The Design Thinking Process | ReDesigning Theater.
• Barrett, T. (27 Oct. 2016.). 4 Ways to Apply Design Thinking in Your School.
• IDEO U (n.d.). IDEO U. – Design thinking. A good summary video, it has a business-related focus with slightly different language around the process.
• d.School (17 Jun. 2011.). An Introduction to Design Thinking: Process Guide.
• AITSL (12 Nov. 2014.). Learning Through Doing – Introduction to design thinking

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.

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