Structured design thinking strategy in a collaborative context

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’.

Purpose Small business capabilities and customer interactions are particularly susceptible to market disruptions. Small businesses must pivot quickly to build or grow their capabilities and manage diverse strategies to deal with crises. This ability to quickly adapt and formulate strategies is necessary to help small businesses maintain sales and continue to engage with their clients, especially in light of disruption and crises. This work uses design thinking strategies to provide insight into how businesses can navigate such disruptions. Design/methodology/approach This research investigates how design thinking can help small businesses address crises. The focus is on leveraging design thinking strategies such as empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping and testing (EDIPT), divergence/convergence and customer journey mapping design thinking tools. Findings The authors provide propositions and strategies to help firms adapt their strategies to the demands of clients during crises. Originality/value This piece provides an accessible introduction to three design thinking strategies (general EDIPT model, convergence/divergence and consumer journey mapping). The authors present this in the context of disruption, especially the recent pandemic, specifically focusing on small businesses.

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”.

This study aimed at investigating the English Language Teachers' perspectives toward design thinking and to examine the effect of experience, gender, and qualification factors on their perspectives. The study sample consisted of 135 teachers (64 females, 33 male) from Amman 1 Educational Directorate. The researcher developed a design thinking scale, its validity and reliability were approved. The results indicated that English Language teachers had a high degree of knowledge and practice about design thinking (mean= 4.10, S. D= 0.37) and there were no statistically significant differences in the design thinking means attributed to gender, teachers’ experience, or qualification. The study recommends conducting more research on design thinking, including different samples of teachers from disciplines other than English, and conducting qualitative research to observe the degree to which teachers apply design thinking strategies.

Design Thinking embraces challenges, and re-frames problems into opportunities for positive change. Design thinking is interdisciplinary and can be applied to a myriad of situations. There are multiple models of Design Thinking but one of the more popular ones has come out of the d.school at Stanford University (Costa, 2017). This thesis uses Qualitative data which has been collected through multiple research projects. Through exploratory means, I will evaluate the data that is presented in the research studies already conducted to help understand the issue of Design Thinking within education, as it stands today. I will be looking for similarities in findings through the different studies, as well as working to create an educated hypothesis to help propose future data collection and form a curriculum which supports design thinking as a learning aid. Design Thinking can be compared to the scientific method, however it is tailored to the design field and interdisciplinary practices. It is a methodology which helps designers identify the correct problem, ideate creative solutions and prototype and test these new ideas. This system can be learned and adapted by educators into their curriculums to help reach the 21st century student, and prepare them for the jobs of the future. Inter-disciplinary design and group collaboration has become essential in large companies and successful businesses. Which is why in a rapidly changing world it is important to fluidly remodel our approach to education. This thesis proposes that by teaching the Design Thinking framework in a "designerly" manner young students will more likely become well rounded human centered innovators. And more importantly, go on to work collaboratively with positive global change in mind. Teaching this framework to an age group that is rapidly cognitively developing (adolescence) it may help with their problem solving and problem framing abilities. Adolescence is a developmental phase when the brain is changing the way a person thinks and relates to themselves in direct correlation to their environment and their peers. According to brain research and MRI studies, the frontal cortex and amygdala both responsible for decision making and emotional responses are developing at a very fast rate during adolescence. For this reason, there is inherent justification for teaching effective and creative problem solving in a time when they are forming their decision making skills and are most at risk for problem behaviors. Through making courses available that encourage innovation and surveying student responses to Design Thinking and how it impacts their decision making, we can begin to understand the positive change. A few studies on this subject have already been done, however more research is needed to evaluate how design thinking can be applied across the curriculum, and a rigorous inquiry into how we think and why design can help. I will explore the existing research studies that have been conducted around the topic of how Design Thinking can affect the learner. The purpose is to propose the positive impact that teaching design problem solving to adolescents can have. In the studies presented there has been quantitative data that exhibits positive growth and development as a result of students being involved with creative thinking processes. Through using control groups and surveying student responses to Design Thinking and how it impacts their decision making, we can begin to understand the whether or not there are legitimate correlations.

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.

Due to the wide application of digital tools and the improvement in interactive technologies, design thinking might change in digital world comparing to that in traditional design process. This study aims to explore the difference of design thinking between three kinds of sketching tools, i.e. hand-sketch, tablet, and pen-input display, by means of conducting 27 sessions of design trials. Totally, nine industrial design students as the participants were recruited to develop the concept sketches. Each participant has to undertake three sessions, and use one of the three kinds of sketching tool in one session for about 40 min. With a retrospective interview survey to all the participants followed by a protocol analysis to the transcriptions of the interview, a coding framework including six visual think behavior codes (i.e. transform, manipulate, concretize, abstract, modify and timescan) and four visual thinking strategy codes (thinking, feeling watching/listening, and other) were developed, and used to analyze the difference of occurrence frequency of the visual thinking behaviors and strategies. Furthermore, a one-way ANOVA and stepwise regression analysis were applied to inspect the correlation of behaviors and strategies of design visual thinking. The results show the different roles of sketching tools in affecting the occurrences frequency of various visual thinking behaviors and strategies, and the correlation between visual thinking strategies and behaviors. The conclusion was made by proposing the approach facilitating the design concept development in design education within digital world as well as the suggestion to future research work.

Failure to use the appropriate methods to identify and clear misconceptions remains a major hurdle in students' understanding of scientific concepts and the transformation of the lay public into informed citizens with the appropriate scientific knowledge, skills and attitudes required to face current and future challenges such as climate change, emergence of new epidemics, food shortages, and energy crisis. This has been expounded by the lack of a proper umbrella strategy that provides a structured, formalized, and adaptable pathway which allow teachers to select and use the most appropriate contextdriven methods to identify and clear misconceptions. This study therefore showcases the development of a new context-driven adjustable model, termed the 'Design Thinking Strategy to Identify and Clear Misconceptions' (DTSICM), which is based on the 5-staged Stanford model of 'design thinking'. The model, centered around evidence-based decision making, provides teachers with an adjustable pathway that allow selection of methods that are context-appropriate and fit the needs of students. Underpinned by mixed methodology, the study showcased the efficiency of the DTSICM model by revealing a net reduction in the percentage prevalence of misconceptions held by the sampled students on the scientific concept of photosynthesis.

This chapter focuses on the potential contribution of academic practices to the training of young people for civic action in the periphery of an Amazonian metropolis.The text presents an account of the Data Firme project, carried out from 2018 to 2020 by a partnership of professors, technicians, and students from the Federal University of Par.Data Firme used Design Thinking strategies to co-create media practices that disrupted the mainstream narrative, giving visibility to the area's cultural, social, and economic life and fostering civic movements with the support of digital media; such efforts form a central component of citizenship-building.This organized action resulted in social innovations being introduced in the relationship between community, media, and government.

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.

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.

This study explores how a small language-learning business in Indonesia can overcome growth stagnation by implementing a human-centred approach to innovation. Adopting the Design Thinking framework as the primary methodological lens, the research explores learner expectations, challenges and preferred learning formats, with the objective of improving products and business models. Data were collected through focus group discussions (FGDs) involving six learner groups that were identified during the early exploratory phase. Braun and Clarke’s thematic analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data and uncover recurrent needs related to motivation, confidence, learning structure, flexibility and the role of human support. These insights were then used to create two core personas representing the two main learner types. These personas then guided the development of five 'How Might We' (HMW) questions, which acted as drivers for the ideation process. The study resulted in three integrated low-fidelity prototypes: (1) modular learning pathways, (2) an adaptive weekly roadmap, and (3) a simple confidence progress tracker. These elements form a coherent learning ecosystem, designed to improve learner engagement and strengthen business sustainability by offering clearer value, better retention and more structured products. The findings indicate that designing products to align with learner expectations can support the long-term sustainability of small EdTech startups. The study recommends conducting future quantitative tests on the proposed prototypes to evaluate their expected usefulness and acceptance among a wider range of learners.

Background: Student interest in entrepreneurial pursuits remains low, despite the significant contributions of entrepreneurship to economic growth. Purpose: This study investigates the factors influencing IPB students' interest in adopting AI-based entrepreneurship learning through the lens of design thinking, emphasizing the role of communication methods and their impact on motivation and attitudes. Methods: This study adopts a mixed-method design, combining quantitative and qualitative approaches. Quantitative data were collected via an online survey from 173 IPB students, with 166 valid responses after data cleaning. Quantitative analysis was conducted using descriptive statistics (SPSS 25) and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The qualitative aspect involved a SCAMPER analysis within the design thinking framework to explore AI integration in entrepreneurship education. The PICOS framework was applied to explore the factors influencing AI adoption in higher education comprehensively. This mixed-method approach provides a holistic understanding of AI adoption in educational contexts. Findings: Results indicate that learning motivation significantly affects students' intentions to engage with AI-based systems, positively impacting attitudes toward AI. Perceived ease of use also positively influences learning motivation and perceived usefulness, although perceived usefulness does not directly impact learning motivation. Additionally, interpersonal interactions and mass media positively influence attitudes and perceived usefulness, while awareness does not have a significant effect. Conclusion: Expanding AI adoption in entrepreneurship education requires strategic communication, mainly focusing on Design Thinking’s empathize phase to understand student challenges. By iteratively proposing AI tools through the prototype phase, institutions can develop user-friendly, engaging solutions tailored to student needs, fostering higher adoption and engagement in entrepreneurship learning. Research implication: These insights suggest that targeted communication strategies, including design thinking principles, can support broader AI adoption, enhance students’ entrepreneurial learning experiences, and foster a new generation of tech-savvy entrepreneurs.

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.