Design Thinking in the Adolescent Curriculum

Purpose Creativity as an outcome of our thoughts and actions is a controversial concept that has been discussed by many disciplines in different ways. In the light of cognitive research on creativity, this study aims to deal with the components of the idea generation process specific to interior design education. Based on the study conducted in the interior design studio, this paper introduces the infographic model of design thinking. the main purpose of the model is to summarize how design students initiate the design process, create their own design ideas, and also how they lead design thinking for a spatial solution. Design/Methodology/Approach The cross-disciplinary research paper within the context of the psychological studies on creative cognition consists of a detailed analysis of the design process in the design studio. A case study was conducted in the second-year undergraduate interior design studio at Hacettepe University in order to observe the students’ experiences during one semester. In the wake of this qualitative research, the data obtained from 15 design students selected have been analyzed gradually and a design thinking model has been generated with the findings. Findings In addition to the interpretation of the creativity models from the literature, initial analyses showed that design thinking can be explained in three main stages as preparation, conceptualization, and spatialization that underlie the internal and external process of design thinking in the design studio. With subsequent analyses, these stages have been divided into different strategical layers according to students’ experiences. As a result, the infographic model of the design thinking process is structured based on the evaluations of these components and the design approaches identified. Research Limitations/Implications The data acquired from the case study undertaken by the author were compared so as to identify the similarities and diversities of these processes. More research on different stages of the design process can shed more light on design thinking. In addition to this, qualitative data are based on a small group of students to get detailed information about the process. The proposed model can be adapted for different studies in the context of the design studio with more participants. Practical/Social Implications The proposed model in the research is intended to be used as a content map that shows the alternative ways of thinking in design ideation, and also an analysis method of the design process for future studies. In other words, the paper shows the two-way implications of the design thinking model on design education. One of which is a guide for practical use for design students and the other is an analytical tool for studio instructors or researchers. Originality/Value This study brings to focus on conceptualization and spatialization for creative idea generation in design studio education. On the basis of drawn from creativity models, the paper introduces a new process model that provides an original interpretation of existing models in design. The proposed model differs from previous cognitive studies, as it expands the ideation process with both internal and external operations.

With the development of science and technology, the change of major social contradictions and the requirements of dance education in the new era, the integration of STEM education and SEL is considered as an important direction of dance education reform in primary schools. As a method to cultivate learners' creative problem solving, design thinking can promote the deep integration of STEM education and SEL. This study discusses the characteristics, similarities and differences of STEM education and SEL in detail through concept elaboration and case study, and analyzes the problems existing in the process of school promotion and the needs of integration. This study puts forward the application of design thinking as an innovative thinking method to connect and promote the effective integration of STEM education and SEL. At the same time, the deep integration model of design thinking is constructed, which is illustrated by practical cases, and some application methods and strategies are further put forward, which provides ideas for schools at all levels to design and implement dance education courses in primary schools.

<em>The Design Thinking approach as a method of problem solving and product innovation is well known in business, management and entrepreneurship. However, various design thinking models created by individual researcher and corporations often confuse users about which model to use. This research was conducted with the aim of observing the suitability of five selected design thinking models to support the development of startups in a business incubator. The research applies qualitative descriptive method using a case study of PT. Jiwa Gelora Juara (PT-JGJ) startup development at the Bakrie University’s UBpreneur business incubator. It observes the design thinking process in the pre-incubation, incubation and post incubation stages. The research findings show that each design thinking model has its own strengths and weaknesses in a certain situation, but most of the models are more suitable implemented in the new product/process development phase. To support the startup’s growth stage, other management tools are needed.</em>

Currently, the interest in design thinking in the world has made it possible to add many techniques and visual schemes that can solve various kinds of problems, including for building a strategy to achieve the company’s goals, its corporate spirit and the development of creative skills of its employees. Already today, it is possible to call the merit of design thinking the shift of emphasis in corporate goals to customer orientation, to the mobilization of collective intelligence to solve problems, to understanding the importance of empathy, creativity and entrepreneurship. A comparative analysis of existing design thinking frameworks is given, including from researchers of companies and design centers such as Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University (d.school), The HPI-Stanford Design Thinking Research Program, Stanford d.school’s Design Thinking framework (IDEO), Google, Intel. Frameworks structure the process of design thinking in 5-6 phases: from empathy, when the needs and requests of consumers are studied, to testing an innovative product or service being created. The place of “design thinking” approach in the general concept of human-centered design is shown. The task of design thinking, the development of innovative products or services focused on human needs, is to provide a solution to a specific problem of a certain target audience. The paper outlines the principles of designing a digital innovative product. The five steps of designing a new product are described and the features of using various visualization techniques are given. The study uses such tools as the “Persona” model, Job Stories and User Stories frameworks. The creating process features of an innovative product based on the integration of design thinking, Lean Startup methodology and the theory of Jobs to Be Done are described. The life cycle of the innovation development “Creation – Evaluation – Training” is presented which is based on the process of validated learning. Changes in the outline of the business model in the lean startup methodology are presented. New segments have been added to the Lean Canvas business model – “Key Partners”, “Key Activities”, “Key Resources”, “Consumer Relations”.

Background Power asymmetries between global health actors based in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) and those based in High-Income Countries persist. Often actors in low-resource settings are seen solely as implementers of projects designed in High-Income Countries and are often not involved in the decision-making. To tackle the problem of power imbalances, a human-centered framework of design thinking was used for inclusive strategy development. This paper discusses how design thinking was used as a framework for the co-creation of Operation Smile Malawi’s (OSM) long-term strategy in a collaborative environment with in-country and international partners. Methods The strategic planning process included a situation analysis, priority setting workshop and participant feedback. A four-question design thinking framework was used to frame the three-day priority setting sessions; ‘what is’, ‘what if’, ‘what wows’, and ‘what works’. Design thinking tools that were used during the priority setting workshop included; visualization, journey mapping, mind mapping, brainstorming and concept development. At the end of the priority-setting sessions, an e-survey was used to assess the participants’ understanding and perception of the use of design thinking for strategic planning. Results The product of the process was a long-term strategy with goals, activities and strategies that were understood and agreed upon by all stakeholders. The post-workshop e-survey revealed that all participants responded that the design thinking process fostered team spirit during the entire process. The design thinking process also made the strategic planning workshop more productive and enabled participants to incorporate their own ideas into the five-year strategy. Furthermore, participants reported learning something outside their area of expertise. Conclusions As global health organizations increasingly recognize the need for equitable partnerships in the design and implementation of global health programs, the human-centred approach of design thinking can be used to create open and collaborative program design.

Background: Design thinking is a human-centered, systematic method for problem-solving. To address gaps in curricula for design thinking and curriculum development for medical students, we created a Design Thinking Workshop in an existing students-as-teachers course. Our intervention aimed to teach learners two things: 1) how to apply design thinking to creatively problem solve; and 2) how to utilize design thinking as a curriculum design framework. The central aim of this innovation was to support this outcome: for learners to design curricula that meets an identified need of their learners during the students-as-teachers course. Methods: This workshop introduced the framework of design thinking and how to use design thinking tools to create curricula. Seventeen students participated and created educational projects using a design thinking approach. We evaluated the workshop using a pre/post student survey and structured rating of projects. Results: After completing the curriculum, students were more confident in identifying gaps in existing curricula and designing educational projects. After the workshop, the student curriculum projects were more likely to address a specific curricular need when compared with the student projects created during the previous year. Discussion: We found that participating in the workshop increased students’ confidence in each step of curriculum development and that, after completing the workshop, more students could design high quality educational projects by addressing a specific learner need. Despite the intervention, many students’ projects were still not “high quality”, and based on this team’s experience, more faculty support as well as near-peer mentorship can increase the quality of projects.

Design thinking, recognised as a human-centred approach to problem-solving, has garnered attention as a pedagogical framework across various disciplines, including higher education, for its potential to cultivate innovation, creativity, and problem-solving skills. In chemical engineering education, integrating design thinking methodologies holds promise for enhancing students' problem-solving skills and innovation capabilities. However, despite its potential benefits, its specific application and impact within chemical engineering education have not been extensively explored. Hence, this critical review paper aims to comprehensively analyse the application of design thinking pedagogy in chemical engineering education within higher education settings. This study contributes a systematic review and a case study from DUT, demonstrating the integration of design thinking pedagogy in chemical engineering education. The methodology involved in this review encompassed systematically searching academic databases, selecting relevant studies based on specific criteria, extracting data, synthesising findings, and reporting adapted from Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. The overarching question that guided this investigation was: How could the integration of design thinking pedagogy in chemical engineering education enhance student learning outcomes and prepare them for the challenges of the engineering profession? Integrating design thinking pedagogy in chemical engineering education aims to improve student learning outcomes by fostering a holistic approach to problem-solving, emphasising empathy, creativity, and collaboration. By incorporating design thinking principles into the curriculum, educators seek to cultivate a mindset of innovation and critical thinking among students, preparing them to tackle complex engineering challenges in a dynamic and rapidly evolving global context, such as the shift towards ‘green engineering’. Design thinking pedagogy could potentially bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application of engineering principles, concurrent with developing essential soft skills such as communication, teamwork, and adaptability, which are crucial for success in the engineering profession. Through active learning, interdisciplinary collaboration, and realworld application of engineering principles, design thinking in engineering education could equip students with the skills and mindset to become creative problem solvers, effective communicators, and ethical leaders. It is evident that design thinking offers a promising avenue to concurrently enhance student engagement, develop conceptual learning, critical thinking skills, promote interdisciplinary collaboration, and prepare students for the demands of the chemical engineering profession. The findings highlight the importance of integrating design thinking principles in chemical engineering education to cultivate a culture of innovation, creativity, and adaptability among students. Moving forward, further research is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of design thinking pedagogy in enhancing student learning outcomes and to identify best practices for its implementation in chemical engineering education. Furthermore, researchers are encouraged to conduct empirical studies to assess the impact of design thinking pedagogy on student learning outcomes, engagement, and professional development in chemical engineering education.

Despite the importance of science in our everyday life, a decline in students’ academic performances and interest towards Biology have been empirically publicized by several researchers. Though multifactorial, misconception remains one of the key factors affecting students’ understanding of concepts, exam grades and interest. Consequently, the literature is gauged with empirical research focusing on the appropriateness of different methods and strategies used to identify and clear students’ misconceptions in Biology. This case study uses a mixed epistemological stance to study the appropriateness of using the DTSICM (Design Thinking Strategy to Identify and Clear Misconceptions) model, underpinned by the Stanford’s design thinking framework, in identifying and clearing the misconception of twelve low-performing students in Biology. The findings revealed that (i) the use of design thinking-based DTSICM approach is efficient in clearing students’ misconceptions, with statistical significance at 5% level ( p>0.05), and (ii) the design thinking approach provide teachers with a formalised, context-driven, needs-based and adaptable pathway to identify and clear misconceptions of students, by engaging through the five decisive stages of the design thinking framework, namely ‘emphasize’, ‘define’, ‘ideate’, ‘prototype’ and test’.

As design and design thinking become increasingly important competencies for a modern workforce, the burden of assessing these fuzzy skills creates a scalability bottleneck. Toward addressing this need, this paper presents an exploratory study into a scalable computational approach for design thinking assessment. In this study, student responses to a variety of contextualized design questions – gathered both before and after participation in a design thinking training course – are analyzed. Specifically, a variety of text features are engineered, tested, and interpreted within a design thinking framework in order to identify specific markers of design thinking skill acquisition. Key findings of this work include identification of text features that may enable scalable measurement of (1) user-centric language and (2) design thinking concept acquisition. These results contribute toward the creation of computational tools to ease the burden of providing feedback about design thinking skills to a wide audience.

Design thinking has become a paradigm that is considered to be useful in solving many problems in different areas: both in development of design projects and outside of traditional design practice. It raises the question - is design thinking understood as a universal methodology in all cases? How it is interpreted in design education? The analysis of theoretical and design related literature indicates different basic and contextual challenges facing design today: increasing scale of social, economic and industrial borders; complexity of environment and systems; requirements in all levels. As specialists and researchers in the field of design have concluded, here are multiple disconnects betweenwhat the graduate design schools are teaching at the level of methods and what skills is already needed. The problems have been found also in interdisciplinary cooperation and research. In the context of design thinking models and problem solving methods, the analysis shows that design education implementers in public higher education institutions in Latvia are ready for local and global challenges.

In helping creative students and professionals find nearby spaces that are conducive to them working on their projects and crafts, I have shown how the Stanford Design Thinking model can be used to help empathize, design, ideate and prototype a mobile application. This design thinking model has been applied to solve a set of common problems for creatives, which are finding adequate workspaces, while creating and maintaining connections with others in their field. This paper will allow readers insight to the design thinking process and will attempt to contribute to a greater understanding of the methodology while attempting to create a solution that best fits the needs of the creative community. Keywords: creative, design thinking, studiogo, creative workspaces, crowdsourcing, user interface design

The article focuses on a thinking and doing mode of designers, called design thinking, that might be adopted by managers in order to free organizational creativity and innovation. It is assumed that cross-disciplinary approach helps to uncover customer needs and preferences and so it can lead to better business solutions and offerings. The effectiveness of the approach is guaranteed by the fact that design innovation arises at the intersection of technological input (which guarantees feasibility of options being reworked on), business requirements (which speak for viability), and human values (which add usability and desirability component here). As such it has strategic value. The article investigates what makes design thinking a concept worth considering by managers. In order to find the answer to that research question, key building blocks of this philosophy are identified. The findings come from desk research (literature review) and observations drawn from author’s job shadowing experiences in one American and two European business schools that teach design thinking. What results from the study is that design thinking is not that far from business as it may seem. If perceived as a holistic approach towards problem solving and generating innovations, it underlines links among various fields of organizational operations. It can be further concluded that adopting design thinking framework facilitates combining processes already existing within a company and taking them to a new level by enforcing customer-centric focus, by making the company rely on identifying many options and experimenting with few of them and by building understanding for early failures and for value of playing with concepts that seem unrelated to the core operations.

Innovation is fuel for the sustainability and competitive advantage of an organization. Practitioners have proposed several tools to promote innovation in an organization. The design thinking framework is one approach for problem-solving that can lead to innovations. Some industries have already matured in practicing the design thinking approach, while others are in the nascent stage and still exploring the benefits of creating more innovations. This article puts forwards a systematic literature review followed by a bibliometric analysis on adoption of a design thinking approach for fueling innovation and solving complex problems in different domains. The present study also gives an overview of the penetration of the design thinking approach in various industries and domains. The literature review reveals that design thinking is practiced in almost all industry segments, with more evidence in education and healthcare and an upward trend in user-centered design and complex problem-solving.

Design thinking has received considerable global attention in the education community given its focus on creative problem solving, human-centered design, and empathetic understanding. In response to the need for exemplary practices for teacher educators, we designed and implemented a design thinking module in a college-level learning technologies course offered in the teacher preparation program. Preservice teachers were asked to solve educational design challenges using learning technologies within specific problem spaces. We examined preservice teachers’ (n = 19) perceptions of design thinking mindsets and processes as well as perceived changes in their understanding of “teachers as designers.” A qualitative analysis of weekly student reflections and final reflection reports revealed that design thinking processes contributed to preservice teachers’ understanding of the design thinking role in education, its challenges, and design mindsets. A thematic analysis of their reflections revealed that their conceptualizations of teachers’ capacities for design had shifted. Subsequent to participating in the design thinking module, they perceived teachers as design thinkers, innovators and change agents. The implications of design thinking for preservice teacher education are discussed.

Background: Students with intellectual disabilities often experience difficulties in learning mathematics due to limitations in working memory, challenges in processing abstract symbols, and the limited availability of adaptive learning media in special education settings. In many special schools, mathematics instruction still relies on static physical manipulatives that provide limited opportunities to connect abstract mathematical ideas with meaningful learning experiences. Aims: This study aims to propose a conceptual design framework called School ARventure, a gamified Augmented Reality mathematics learning environment integrated with a three-dimensional school model to support contextual mathematics learning for students with intellectual disabilities. Method: This research employed a qualitative design guided by the Design Thinking framework, focusing on the stages of Empathize, Define, and Ideate. Data were collected through classroom observations, questionnaires, and semi structured interviews involving teachers and students from three special education schools. The instruments were validated by experts, and the data were analyzed using thematic analysis to identify learning barriers, user needs, and design requirements. Results: The study produced an initial design framework addressing three main needs: concrete visualization of numerical quantities, reduced motor demands in measurement activities, and simplified representation of mathematical word problems. Three AR based features were conceptualized: AR Counting Adventure, AR Length Virtual Ruler, and Animated Story Quest, integrated with a physical school model as a contextual anchor. Conclusion: The findings present School ARventure as a Design Thinking based framework for gamified Augmented Reality mathematics learning for students with intellectual disabilities and provide a foundation for future prototype development and empirical evaluation.