About Design Thinking
If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.
8 min.
What is design thinking?
Design thinking is a process for doing design. It is the answer to the question: “How to design?” Let us explore that question with an example: Imagine that you are the head librarian at a children’s library, and you have obtained the funding to refurbish your library. It’s an opportunity to re-imagine the workings of your library. You have a few months to come up with a detailed proposal. Together with a consulting interior designer, you make up the design team. So, how do you design a great library that will transform the lives of its young users?- Even though you are an experienced librarian, you decide to learn more. You read about the latest library technologies and publishing trends. You survey children and parents for their opinions. You observe the children in your library to better understand how they use the facility, and notice their postures while they’re reading. You chat to parents for insights. Furthermore, you search for inspiration and find wonderful examples of libraries from around the world. In summary, you collect as much information about the design task as you can, while placing foremost the needs of the children and parents, librarians, and other users. Designers call this the empathise phase.
- Thus, you conclude that your library must become a haven for children and their parents, and a hive of activity. You realise that furniture comfort is very important for the young bodies. You also realise that the library reception desk can improve in many ways. Essentially, you have defined what you are designing, where you will direct your efforts — what is important, and what is less so.
- Next, you assemble a small team of volunteers consisting of children, parents, librarians, the interior designer, and yourself to brainstorm for ideas. You prepare a conference room with paper and pens, and some refreshments too. Everyone pitches in with ideas: “motorised shelves,” “telescoping chairs,” “robot book-picker,” “colouring books,” “lockers,” “tablet computers,” Their ideas are wide-ranging: “theatre,” “jungle gym,” “café bar,” “music listening stations,” and the ideas keep flowing, seemingly endlessly... Designers call this ideation (from ‘idea generation’).
- You pick out the best ideas, and together with the designer, you refine them and build full-size mock-ups of modular adjustable seats and tables for children; and the re-designed reception area. It is vital to build quick and cheap mock-ups at first, before committing to making the final thing. Designers call this prototyping.
- There is one more step to your design process: You install the prototypes and test the re-designed furniture and reception with your library users and staff to make sure that they work as planned. You get helpful feedback to improve some details. Now that the plans are ready, you are ready to commission production of the new furniture. You are excited about the changes in store for your library users and staff.
That is design thinking. It comprises five phases: empathise, define, ideate, prototype, and test. The process is straightforward, that is its beauty. Still, design thinking does not guarantee a successful outcome. No method does. However, following a process will help you to be thorough, and thus it will increase the likelihood of success.
Reward comes in creation and re-creation, not just in the consumption of the world around us. Active participation in the process of creation is our right and our privilege.
Why teach design thinking?
Design thinking tasks may be narrowly defined or open-ended. Yet, the benefits that school children will get from undertaking design challenges are considerable.
- Intellectual growth
Design challenges are opportunities for young minds to explore interrelated areas of knowledge around their design topic. Designing stimulates curiosity about the world. It involves gathering and making sense of data about people and culture, economics, and the environment. Young designers learn how stuff works, and they gain skills by constructing things physically or in the virtual world. Some design problems may involve the profit motive, where students must adopt a business mindset or work to a budget for the first time. - Creative problem-solving
Design is where creativity and self-expression are directed towards practical outcomes. Design thinking trains you to attentively observe people, to identify the problems they face, and then to creatively come up with solutions. The design thinking process is a generic way to solve problems and have an impact on the world. Designing combines applied knowledge with a pragmatic, trial-and-error approach. It involves practical doing. Design is not the search for an optimal solution; rather, it is about ‘making do’ based on your capabilities and the resources at your disposal. - Optimism, resourcefulness, and resilience
Taking on a design challenge demands the courage to step outside of your comfort zone, and the optimism to see the task to the end, while overcoming problems large and small. Courage and optimism are more easily summoned when a student is in command and feels responsible for the task — which is a feature of creative work. Yet, when things do go wrong, young designers learn that failure is part of the process. They learn not to despair in the face of setbacks, rather, they should be resourceful and persist. When, alas, no way forward can be found, young designers may have to change course or make tough decisions. Yet the rewards are inestimable — when you design, you learn that ‘you can change the world.’ - Communication and interpersonal skills
Young designers will learn to collaborate as they work in teams — after all, peer learning works! Teamwork engenders negotiation and compromise. Practising communication and interpersonal skills is a beneficial side effect of designing. Most design tasks require substantial reading to learn about a topic. Older students working on challenging design tasks will apply their maturing communication skills to seek information from experts and elicit insights from users. And finally, at the conclusion of a design project, students must present their proposals to persuade a sceptical audience and convincingly answer their questions.