Anyone who has spoken with me about my work these last few months, there is a strong chance I’ve talked about Design Thinking. I think Design Thinking has immense potential to drive forward participatory action for real challenges, both inside and outside of education. My first introduction to Design Thinking came via Nous, who coached me through a project I was undertaking at my institution. Through this, I learned about The Design Council’s Double Diamond. I used this model to frame student- and staff-led journeys and to show how we could improve their everyday experiences. This was only the start for my journey into Design Thinking.
I’ve implemented Design Thinking in curriculum design, partnering with Dr Ann Kaegi to engage our students in programme transformation. In a teaching studies module, I’ve worked with Dr Kelly Dockerty to integrate Design Thinking as a frame for real-world problem-solving. Finally, I’ve just seen The Transformative Potential of Design Thinking in Learning Development published in the last few weeks. I worked on this article with Catherine Turton (Southampton Solent) to frame the possibilities we see for Design Thinking. It feels like there is no end to the potential of Design Thinking!
Academically, I’ve been very inspired by the work of IDEO and Stanford’s d.school. One of my favourite books is Design for Social Change, which has inspired me to further reflect on how we can empower our students to take action via Design Thinking to challenge the status quo. It’s exciting stuff. There is also a raft of additional works from d.school, supporting design for belonging, crafting convictions with a ‘you need a manifesto‘ and the magic of telling visual stories with data. It should be no surprise that I’m keen to unleash this potential across teaching as well.
Design Thinking as a toolkit for students in education
Each trimester, we host an enhancement week, which provides us with an opportunity to do something a little different with our students. This can break the normal moulds of teaching, and this year we tried something quite different. On the Monday of enhancement week, we enjoyed a trip to Densholme Farm, where we showcased alternative educational approaches to our students. For Thursday, a large team of us envisioned an event to bring the whole school together. We decided to focus on a core disadvantaged group: care experienced, adopted, child-looked-after and unaccompanied children. From this start, we designed an event to promote working relationally with children, young people, and adults who have such experiences.
As you can tell, I made the case for design thinking.
The thing is, there are just so many systemic problems related to supporting these vulnerable groups. But there is also a lot of potential to do things better. My main contribution sat in the middle of the day. We kicked off with some expert talks from some of our recent graduates now working with such children and young adults. I then took over to look at how we could meet some of these challenges with real solutions. This gave me just over an hour for a crash course in Design Thinking.
Design Thinking in an hour (and a bit)
I started with a simple message. Too often, solutions are designed without truly understanding the problem (or even identifying the right problem), leading to ineffective outcomes. It is those who are in power that define the problem and define the solution.
No wonder they often get it wrong. With the input of those it impacts, solutions usually fail to be iterative, collaborative and creative. Above all, they fundamentally start on the wrong track, as user needs are not understood. However, with design thinking, it can be different.
Starting with empathy to understand individuals’ needs and experiences helps frame the whole question/project the right way. Then, using all those people to work on the solutions employs more brains for the task at hand. More people involved generally leads to much better solutions, especially when it includes those directly involved.
Getting practical with Design Thinking
So! I got them to start mapping the challenges. The issues came from many sources: their placements, personal experience, news and television, relational experience and, of course, our guest speakers. We started out by just mapping this all down. ALL the issues we had seen so far:
I asked one person per table to stand up and hold their sheets up.
With 10 groups, a LOT of issues were identified. Too many. Too overwhelming.
So we picked one per table. Just one for each group to focus on, developing this into a problem statement. For example:
How might we support adopted and care-experienced children to reach their academic potential?
(Despite disrupted schooling, inconsistent support and the challenge of navigating multiple care placements)
From problem statement to ideas
From this position, it is then possible to ideate. I asked all students to fold an A3 sheet in half three times. This gave them a sheet with eight boxes to work with. In box one, they had to write their problem statement and their name. I then gave them a short pitch on blue skies thinking, prompting them to DREAM BIG. A common issue is that we are often limited by the very systems and structures that bind us (or are the problem in the first place). We can truly develop innovative solutions by breaking free from ‘what is’ by pushing towards ‘what can be’. That foundation laid, I then asked them to use box 2 to develop one solution to their problem statement.
The true joy of Design Thinking is about using all of the brains available. There is no point in keeping those sheets in front of the person who framed the problem. I wanted to make the most of the people in the room. So, as soon as everyone finished penning their first idea into box 2, I asked them all to trade their sheet with someone from another table. Now, everyone had someone else’s problem statement in front of them. So, in box 3, they developed an idea to solve that problem. This pattern was repeated, passing the sheets on and on to different tables until boxes 2 through 7 were filled with various potential solutions or ideas for the presented problem.
The results: Wrapping the activity up
With 10 tables, we had 10 problems in the room (with everyone on that table taking a shared problem forward). Passing those individual sheets around meant that 71 sheets were launched into the room, and by the end of the session, each one of those sheets was filled with six ideas. This gave us a total of 426 ideas to address some of these problems in the room. All this was achieved by utilising everyone present, giving everyone a voice, and getting everyone involved. Most importantly, the whole session started with empathy by listening to those expert voices, reflecting on lived experience, and drawing upon what was seen on placements.
The final task for the session was to return those sheets to their owners. This was a little chaotic as 71 people (who didn’t necessarily know each other) worked to find the owner of the problem statement. Once all sheets returned, I then invited students to reflect on the ideas presented, and consider how they might take one of these ideas forward into a prototype. While developing and prototyping is a significant aspect of Design Thinking, only so much can be done in an hour! Closing the session this way at least encouraged them to think through the next stages to take it to action.
Design really is a team sport, and Design Thinking gets everyone involved. While this was an artificial scenario, I hope the students learned much from this session. We centre participatory research at the heart of what we do, and Design Thinking provides a framework through which this can be operationalised. Taking it outside the context of research and into practice is also very useful for their future careers – where they are likely to be doing stuff, as opposed to taking a more academic research approach.