Creative thinking Archives

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.

Those in power working in isolation rarely get the right problem or 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.

Using Design Thinking to engage a community in problem solving makes a significant difference.

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.

The Double Diamond

Working through the Double Diamond leads you through two sets of divergent thinking to dream big – before using two sets of convergent thinking to bring back towards the issue at hand. This avoids the tendency for projects to identify one solution and fudge it until it works. Thinking through the Double Diamond puts people first, allowing a human-centred approach to design. The first diamond works towards identifying a design brief, while the second diamond develops and pilots solutions that eventually support an outcome. It can be argued that this is the heart of the design process.

These Double Diamonds of divergent and convergent thinking represent the four stages of design: discovery, define, develop and then deliver. These Double Diamonds sit between the challenge and the solution, leading teams from the problem to the outcome.

Discover

Discover focuses on questioning the problem or challenge. This focuses on dreaming big with the use of divergent thinking. Here, ideas can absolutely run wild – often, the crazier, the better. In our own project, one team developed a substantial monorail system to link the University to local communities. While we’re not going to build a monorail – it is a fantastic synonym of a wider problem. This all leads to the next stage: define.

Define

The second phase takes the findings of the discover phase and uses convergent thinking to synthesise and make sense of them. The end goal is a design brief that summarises and defines the problem. This clearly identifies the challenges and is used in the second diamond to work towards solutions. Using the monorail example led to a cohesive and condensed design brief that identified a challenge with connection and transport.

This phase can also identify further challenges that may link back to further discovery phases.

Develop

The third phase takes the design briefs and develops multiple solutions for them. This is another phase of divergent thinking, allowing that big-dreaming – but within the scope of the brief. At this phase, the different solutions will be prototyped and tested. This doesn’t have to be a real-world trial – but can involve mapping the solution and testing it with colleagues and service users.

Deliver

The final phase of the double diamond works to deliver the outcome. This phase uses convergent thinking to take one of the solutions forwards. This will eventually become the launched solution to whatever problems, issues or challenges have been identified.

This phase can identify the need for alternative solutions that link back to further phases of development. It can also redirect back to the very start if it identifies other challenges that require the full process again. As such, the Double Diamond can be cyclical, re-directing back to earlier phases where required.

Conclusion: Using The Double Diamond in Higher Education

The Double Diamond processes worked perfectly for our project. This was something that was largely linked to our digital and physical estate – but I am interested to see how this can be used elsewhere in our institution. These processes put people first – and there is significant potential for expanding this. I’m particularly interested in how this could support curriculum design. Our institution uses some excellent curriculum design frameworks, but this often misses that broader discovery phase. Programme teams may look at similar programmes of study, but we rarely go beyond. For me, the crux of the potential is this:

How often do we ask ‘What does an excellent educational experience look like?’ – thinking beyond the confines of Higher Education or our existing programmes of study.

This would allow us to look to schools, colleges, apprenticeships, coaches, training companies, MOOC providers and all other forms of education to learn from them. As a school governor, I often see excellent things happening in Primary and Secondary education that we could learn from. These experiences are had by our students in their early forms of education – and I often think HE isn’t ready to meet the expectations these set. Part of the problem is that programme teams are not responsible for the broader educational facilities and experiences that require development to meet some of these challenges. This would require a different mode of whole-university support for programme design, requiring different management forms, development and financial accounting.