Joelie Dmitruk is a Media Designer with Tsukino Studies in Toronto ON. Joel's background is in children's online media and he was previously Coordinator of Family and School Programs with the Toronto International Film Festival.
David Carey is Co-Executive Director of The Bentway, an arts and culture startup reinvigorating the space underneath the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto. His past professional roles include ten years with the Toronto Film Festival and he was a 2018-19 Fellow in the Toronto Arts Council's Cultural Leaders Lab. Dave's extensive network also includes connections from his volunteer positions with organizations such as East End Arts, Heritage Toronto and Pride Toronto.
Design Thinking (DT) has been hailed as an important 21st century skill, able to help prepare students for “careers that don’t exist yet”. In a previous post we highlighted a collaboration on Design Thinking education between post-secondary and workplace partners
Leading educators in the K-12 space are also experimenting with DT practices in their work, and some forward-thinking institutions are beginning to integrate DT as a fundamental pillar in their curricula. In this post we’ll review three exemplars of DT in K-12 education, including classroom work and ongoing research. We can learn a lot from what others are doing, what choices they’re making, what questions they’re asking, and how they’re answering them.
Project: Interaction was a 10-week after school program that “[taught] high schoolers to use design to change their communities”. Co-founders Carmen Dukes and Katie Koch used the city itself as a canvas, encouraging a DT mindset for students to solve urban problems.
Students started their curriculum by exploring public spaces in NYC and visiting design studios to better understand how designers complete their work. Next, participants explored user-centred design, brainstorming techniques, observation skills, and creative problem-solving.
In a final project, students were split into teams and challenged to design a solution for “a problem they have observed or experienced in New York City”. Suggested topics included: crowded public transportation, commuting to work, graffiti control, access to fresh produce, and way-finding.
We love how the Interaction team sent students “into the wild”, inviting them to tackle real-world issues. Big problems tend to be complex, however, so they chose to encourage students to reference their own experiences rather than connect with real-world users for their input. There is also a huge focus on brainstorming here, and less on prototyping and multi-stage ideation / re-invention. We’re big fans of this ambitious and amazing program!
CityX Project uses a fictional, sci-fi story delivered by audio snippet and printed materials to deliver a DT exercise to 8-12 year-old students. It offers a free downloaded workshop.
Each student is given an “identity card” with a main user and problem (e.g. name: Milo; problem: sunscreen isn’t working on this planet). Next, students consult a list of feeling words (happy/sad/frustrated/etc.), analyze facial cues for their character, and delve deeper into their problem. Students draw out a proposed solution and are encouraged to explore “wild ideas”. They then work on an individual design exercise to build a prototype out of clay, and share their prototype with a simple 3D model.
The essential steps of DT are all here: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test. Many other resources omit a final step, “share”, which CityX embraces. Students are also put in pairs to share feedback, with a focus on: “good things” you like about the invention; questions about what you don’t understand; and ideas for making the invention better. Interestingly, they do their designing and prototyping alone.
The CityX team has focused on fictional users, of course, with only high-level profile information and much detail on users’ daily life or needs. CityX demonstrates a slightly simplified DT process, one that feels right for the age group. This is likely about as much complexity as an 8 year-old can feasibly absorb over 3 two-hour sessions!
Philadelphia’s Compete 360 trains teachers and facilitates student-led projects (grades k-12) using the Design Thinking method. They work with under-resourced public to encourage inquiry-driven learning, bringing new practices into the classroom with a hefty weekly program that can run for an entire term.
360 divides their curriculum into four different divisions (K-G2, G3-5, G6-8, High school) with a thorough ‘Playbook’ giving facilitators clear stage-by-stage templates including appendices, terms, definitions, even a schedule with relevant due dates. Real and relevant local problems are addressed to help students empathize (with age-appropriate complexity). For instance, the youngest groups focus on issues like school cleanliness, bullying, and fixing broken classroom materials, while slightly older students explore improving their school’s image, making recess more engaging, or solid waste management and composting. By high school, the students are considering more complex social challenges like mentorship for under-served youth, support for teenage mothers, and healthier eating habits.
Compete 360 also hosts the DT Philly Challenge, giving older students the invaluable opportunity to present their work to designers, business professionals, and peers. The top three teams in the high and middle school divisions can earn grants to realize their projects. Younger students also submit projects for feedback from the professionals as well! 360’s website has a comprehensive review of several previous years’ top projects and details the different divisions progress and some of the problems they sought to conquer. Cheers to that!
How can higher education – and professional work – build on these experiences?
Our work on developing Design Thinking in higher education usually assumes that our students have no prior experience on which we can build. As more K-12 educators introduce age-appropriate versions of Design Thinking, how we can we build on this past learning (and avoid the need to ‘unlearn’)? That’s the focus of our next post.