Design Thinking Educational Technology Questions Answered

Hello everyone. In December, Claire Louise, the founder of Design and Technology Book Club, told me that my book Design Thinking in the Classroom was selected by her book club members to be featured for their upcoming January meeting. Usually, they have the author featured in the meeting answering questions that members might have. but due to the UK and Singapore time difference, we decided that record the answers to the questions. Here are my responses. This is great question. don't think the vision has changed too much. still believe that it's powerful tool, human methodology, human-centered methodology of mindsets and practices that are valuable to all of us who live in this world of constant change. however, what realized is that design thinking is only as effective and helpful, or even ineffective and harmful, as the person or the group of people using it. As the designer Jennifer Daniel pointed out in her speech, design is not good unto itself. Design is, in fact, neutral. The results of using design thinking depends on how we use it. And this is what I've noticed when using design thinking in my own life and work. truly believe design thinking can help solve impactful problems. However, there are some dangers when there isn't self-reflection and personal awareness. So, first is the power dynamics between the design thinker and the people they are helping. So, design thinkers are sometimes placed onto pedestal, which ultimately creates savior savior complex that inflates their sense of self-importance. Second is bias and assumptions, and how they can be source of errors and misconceptions when trying to understand the context of the problem and the people you are helping helping and partnering up with. So, what personally learned is that we need to constantly go through the process of self-reflection and practice personal awareness, so that we become more aware of the power dynamics and the privilege associated with design thinking, as well as the biases we have and the assumptions that we make that can be counterproductive to the quest in bringing positive change. What found most effective is actually modeling the process of reflection for my students and thinking out loud when am reflecting. So, usually when I'm when students are involved in problem-based projects, go through the design thinking process with them, modeling the different design thinking practices and mindsets. As model, am demonstrating these practices and also drawing attention to my thinking and the techniques that I'm using. So, for reflection, I'm demonstrating how personally reflect on my learning within the context of the problem-based project, showing students my thinking process when reflecting. The more you model and have students see it as just part of the process, they will see it as an expectation, almost as routine, something that's essential to learning and creative problem-solving. One thing to try is when you see great example of students identifying new learning through their own reflection, bring attention to it to the class and demonstrate how that new learning can help the student progress in completing their problem-based project. It becomes tangible. It helps students see the benefits of reflecting on their learning. and the more and more you show them, the more they will see it as just part of learning. It's really about changing the culture of thinking in your classroom. book recommend reading is Creating Cultures of Thinking by Ron Ritchhart, that focuses on eight culture shappers, one of which is modeling. Before we move on to the next question, just want to let you know that am planning to create digital learning experience for educators who want to take deeper dive into design thinking. they will get to meaningfully experience the methodology itself and learn how to design authentic learning experiences that are optimal for design thinking integration. So, if you would like to learn more about this, please check out the description of this video. think in general, it is important to place emphasis on all the design thinking practices and mindsets because each one is truly crucial to creative problem-solving and creating that innovative innovation-friendly culture. However, it's very important that we place emphasis on what makes design thinking special. So, lot of the practices and phases that we've discussed in design thinking stems from the work of Alex Osborn and Sidney Parnes, who both developed the creative problem-solving methodology in the 1950s. Alex Osborn is actually the person who coined the creativity technique brainstorming. Design thinking is an extension of their work. However, what makes design thinking unique is its emphasis in human-centered design and empathy, and rapid iteration, and innovation-friendly mindsets. So, these are the things that educators need to intentionally plan mini lessons for and make sure that students have the time and opportunity to be human-centered, perform empathy work, and have time to iterate their work, having multiple opportunities to elicit feedback and improve on their prototypes. And finally, having short mini lessons about different design thinking mindsets anchored by inspiring case studies that show the power of these mindsets. However, if you're starting out in integrating design thinking within current unit project, recommend focusing on one or few of the design thinking phases and mindsets. So, maybe starting with the ideate phase and its principles and its mindsets, and then adding additional opportunities for like empathy work in the following year. think this is what is great about project-based learning. So, according to PBL Works, it's an approach where students are actively engaging in real-world and personally meaningful projects. So, it all starts with your school's content standards and using those to design an authentic real-world project. So, ask yourself, what profession requires these content standards? What project does this professional do this that requires these content standards? So, in this way, we are providing students with real-world context that requires them to gain deeper understanding of the content knowledge, context that provokes them to ask questions and answer questions through investigations, and then use their new learning to come up with more sophisticated ideas. So, project-based learning is exposing students to new real-world experiences. It is very difficult to be creative or creative problem-solve when you don't have context. So, imagine if you're asked to design something without any context. we would all probably come up with superficial designs. Yes, still believe in the same six mindsets, but also came across this one from Michael Luchs that really like, which is holistic and integrative. What this means is that as design thinkers, we are looking at design challenge holistically, seeing how different concepts within the context are interconnected with one another. So, it's mindset where you're seeing things and untangling what seems to be unrelated ideas to make sense of the complexity of the design challenge. This mindset is essential because most problems are not linear and structured, but are dynamic and integrated. great way to encourage self-awareness and social emotional awareness during the design thinking process is to incorporate two phases of liberatory design, the notice phase and the reflect phase. In my book, mentioned liberatory design. it's an adaptation of design thinking that helps us think about how we can make the creative problem-solving process more inclusive and equitable, and co-create with our stakeholders. The notice phase helps students develop social emotional awareness before entering any context. The reflect phase helps students reflect on their own actions to see whether or not they are or were being inclusive and equitable. recommend checking out the liberatory design's card deck PDF because it contains not only key questions for these two phases, but also key questions for each phase of design thinking. So, for example, during the empathize phase, students can ask themselves, how do maintain awareness of my biases and challenge them in order to see this community more authentically? So, this PDF also includes the mindsets, like recognize oppression and practice self-awareness, and shows why these mindsets are so important for equitable and inclusive design, and how to develop these mindsets through questioning. But even before having students start the process of being aware of biases and assumptions, they will need to start with themselves, with their own social and personal identities. So, encourage checking out learningforjustice.org where they have standards specifically for the domain of identity. they also have lesson that helps students describe their own various group identities, help them understand that everyone has multiple identities, and people's identities are similar similar in some ways and different in others. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you, Claire and the Design and Technology Book Club for making all of this possible. Again, if you want to learn more about the digital learning experience that I'm planning to create, please check the description below. The goal is to move away from the shallow, diluted experiences and instead create an experience that will give educators opportunity to dive deeper into design thinking and actually have the time to use the method methodology in meaningful way. And of course, help educators go through the process of designing authentic, engaging learning experiences that provide them with meaningful and relevant opportunities for empathy work, creative problem-solving, and innovative thinking. So, until next time, stay perpetually in beta, and I'll see you on the next one. Peace.