Think Differently

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Child building a robot
Photograph by Amy Susan/AP for LEGO Systems
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Hello Everyone:

Children have wonderful imaginations.  Give a child some empty boxes, art supplies, minimal instructions, and watch magic happen.  Children have an innate sense of design but can it be harnessed into lessons on critical thinking and solving problems?  The ability to thoroughly analyze a problem and come up with a logical solution is a necessary skill both in school and in the workplace.    This is the question that Jessica Lahey asks in her CityLab article, "What Kids Can Learn From Urban Planning?"  In some schools, "design thinking" has become the key phrase for teaching those skills.  Ms. Lahey looks at the way teachers are incorporating lessons from urban planning into their lesson plans to teach students the value of critical thinking and solving problems.

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At a recent teachers's conference in Richmond, Virginia, there was a  session dedicated to "design thinking" in education.  The session drew a capacity crowd who marveled at the way two middle-school used the concept to plan and implement an urban-design project "...in which students were asked to develop a hypothetical city or town given factors such as population, geography, the environment, and financial resources."

The teachers in attendance were fascinated by the details of the projects as were the students who participated in the lesson.  The facilitating teachers were bubbling with enthusiasm for what they believed to be the potential inherent in design thinking lessons.

Child in the City
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Many of the teachers at the session were completely confused.  One woman was overheard  remarking to another "...that while the urban design-design project looked like something she'd like to try in her own classroom,"
... I think I missed something.  I still don't understand  what design thinking is.  Do you?

Her colleague replied, equally baffled,

I think it's a curriculum, but I'm not really sure.

"Confusion around the precise definition of design thinking is understandable," according Neil Stevenson, the executive portfolio director of IDEO Chicago, a leader in design thinking.  Mr. Stevenson told Ms. Lahey in a phone interview,

Design thinking isn't one thing,...but a bundle of mindsets and philosophies all wrapped up in one term, which obviously has the potential to ambiguity.

Children planned a city
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Mr. Stevenson's roundabout explanation is not a precise definition for the concept.  Jessica Lahey admitted that he spent a good deal of time explaining mindsets, what creativity is, and the evolution of design.  Even Mr. Stevenson had difficulty giving a brief definition.  Finally, Mr. Stevenson outlined, what he believes, are the foundational aspects of design thinking as it related to teachers:

First, he stressed that design thinking begins with empathy.  Designing something intended to be used by another person, the designer must understand the needs of the person (end-user in design speak).  In the case of urban design projects, students cannot simply design pretty buildings, they have to take into account the needs of the people who will used it as well as the available resources, budget, and the affect the building will have on the surround landscape.  Neil Stevenson explained,

The design-thinking philosophy requires the designer to put his or her ego to the side and seek to meet the unmet needs, both rational and emotional, of the user.

What children can learn from urban planning
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The process begins with the student designers gathering and organizing reach, then make some sense of it all.  The information gathering process includes: interviews and reach of the needs of their city's future inhabitants.  The students must decide how best to use the information, based on residents's needs.  For example, if the future residents's highest priorities are affordability and opulence, the student designer will have to find a way to meet these conflicting needs.

Last, design thinking requires the designers come up with a lot of ideas and create prototypes.  In order for this process to work, both student and teacher must accept failure as part of the process.  This is especially frustrating for students programmed to succeed.  Mr. Stevenson said,

People tend to come up with an idea early on, and know that this idea is it, the perfect idea and get emotionally invested in that one thing.  Then, when their perfect idea fails, they fall apart.

The design process is mostly trying and failing until that proverbial lightbulb moment.

Learning urban planning through arts and crafts
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Naturally there will be ample time for brainstorming.  Once the ideas have been developed into prototypes and tested, the student begin working toward one, effective, final solution-a product that can be evaluated, present, displayed, or utilized in the classroom or community.  Supporters say, "The beauty of the design process,.., is that the value of the experience does not lie solely in the end product."  Learning takes places during the process, from the research process to the final presentation.  The benefit is it allows both students and teachers to focus on process, rather than the product.

Apollo 13: the movie
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Jessica Lahey uses a scene from the movie Apollo 13 to illustrate the design-thinking process.  After the lunar module is crippled by an explosion, the astronaut are stranded in space.  The air filters in the vehicle are failing, thus the NASA engineers must device a square air filter that will into a round hole using the material available to the astronauts.  The engineers employed design thinking: "by understanding the needs and resources of the astronauts, organizing the resources available on the lunar module, then working together to develop and prototype many ideas."  The final solution was not pretty, but it did work.  The astronauts's lives were saved and they returned home.

This step-by-step methodical approach to creative problem solving was not just something the writers of the movie used to move the story along.  This "revolutionary and counterintuitive" strategy was first developed in response to the launch of Sputnik in 1957.  When Russia (then the Soviet Union) jumped ahead of the world in the space race, the United States needed to respond with a fast and speedy acceleration in technological innovation.  Out of this need, the process of design thinking emerge as a way to encourage all scientists to be bold, daring, and novel in the the way they solve problems.

Steve Jobs creative quote
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Creativity is an elusive thing-someone touched by the muses.  Something you cannot summon or teach to the mentality rigid, unimaginative, or muse-less populace.  "Design thinking upends that perceptions and assumes that anyone can be creative problem-solver."

At best, design thinking includes "proven-effective teaching techniques such as self-directed inquiry and collaborative problem-solving, and dovetail nicely with social-emotional leaning curricula that emphasize interpersonal sills such as collaboration and empathy."  The final result of a design-thinking project is frequently tangible product, like a model, a robot, or a better mousetrap.  Therefore, it is not a big surprise that many teachers and administrators are anxious to adopt design thinking into the curricula  and as way to help students learn through finding solutions for real world problems.

Dr. Seuss creative quote
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The popularity of design thinking could be the reason why there confusion surrounding it.  What took place at the teachers's conference, according to Neil Stevenson,

It's been extremely gratifying for all of us practicing design to see the ideas taken by so many people.  There's a downside, though, which is that when something becomes popular, now suddenly everyone wants to learn it and lots and lots of people will spring up and teach it.  For the sake of communication, we tend to define design thing as A followed by B followed by C, but in doing this, we are guilty of oversimplifying.

Rarely does the design process follow a linear pat

George Bernard Shaw creative quote
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Jessica Lahey reports, "As teachers seek to learn more about design thinking and its application in their classrooms, conference sessions and certificate programs have emerged to accommodate demand."  Stanford's D-School and IDEO offer two in-demand courses, however design thinking comes in many different brands, enough for teachers to pick and choose from.

In essence, the lack of a precise definition makes explaining, evaluating, as studying design thinking a real challenge.Some of the teachers at the conference, including Ms. Lahey who was in attendance, were skeptical, and went to the design thinking sessions to get a better grasp on whether or not this concept is an effective learning methodology or just another trend got viral with little data regarding its efficacy.

Virginia Woolfe creative quote
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When put into practice with a clear understanding as a strategy for fostering empathy, creativity, and innovation, design thinking can be a powerful mechanism for learning and change.  If teachers put it into practice quickly and without any real understanding, it will result in a waste of precious class time and energy.

The best way to understand design thinking is to put into context.  Ms. Lahey cites Carol Dweck's research on fixed and growth mindsets and Angela Duckworth's study on grit as "complex and nuanced approach to learning rather than a checklist of executable tasks."  Ms. Dweck was very concerned about "the rampant oversimplification of fixed and growth mindsets," set forth in an article she wrote for Edutopia.  Ms. Dweck's work cannot be reduced down to a life hack and Ms. Duckworth's research is likely to be misunderstood when reduced to "listicle."  In short, design thinking fail as an educational instrument when reduced to a "Five Simple Steps."

Charles Mingus creative quote
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 Concepts like mindsets, grits, and design thinking have fallen victim to their own massive success, and the rush to incorporate them into current lesson plans, they sometimes become check list items.  Within the classroom milieu, instead of an action, "design thinking (as well as mindset and grit) may revolutionize the way teachers and students think about failure, creative problem-solving and teamwork."

The bottom line is design thinking is not a curriculum, opines education advocates like Neil Stevenson (are paying attention Betsy DeVos).  It is a process for problem solving, a methodology to bring forth creativity founded in empathy married with failure.  Jessica Lahey writes, "Teachers can use design thinking to create a classroom layout that conforms to the news of their student, they say, or to plan lesson that will work best for the students in a given school or classroom. At the macro-level, design thinking can be applied to whole school districts that create spaces and curricula centered on intellectual and emotion needs of their students.  Teachers also have a hand in helping their students implement design thinking in real world problems, like the urban planning projects at the Virginia conferences.

Rest in Peace
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There is not an ample body of scholarship to support any particular version of design thinking as an effective teaching or learning method.  The essential elements of design thinking will be familiar to any teacher well grounded in the basics of effective teaching: begin with empathy, push ego off tot he see, and support the students in the process of frequently failure often and early on the path to learning.