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, 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.
Thomas Carey is co-Principal Catalyst for WINCan and Executive-in-Residence in the British Columbia Association of Institutes and Universities and the Monash University Faculty of Arts .
In a previous post in this series, we explored how exemplary K-12 educators are integrating Design Thinking (DT) into their learning environments . But even the most thoughtful educators have had to make a series of choices to make DT functional for them in context.
As we look to effectively integrate Design Thinking into secondary-level education, we need to carefully balance feasibility, adaptations, and the immediate benefits to students against the longer-term impacts on their working lives and careers.
In this post we’ll analyze a leading-edge professional model to identify the similarities and differences with approaches in secondary schools outlined in our previous post. Where have teachers had to make trade-offs? What lessons can we draw about DT in secondary schools as scaffolds toward exemplary professional Design Thinking? (In another past post, we highlighted a recent pilot study in post-secondary education to consider a similar set of issues.)
What’s working for DT in high schools?
As we noted previously, secondary school teachers are embracing DT for all the right reasons:
A shift from teaching informational knowledge to creative/critical thinking skills
Exercises may seem fun and new; may lead to increased student engagement
Preparing students for 21st century careers
Students coming to understand the basics steps of design thinking
What’s different about a professional, scaled-up Design Thinking environment?
A professional environment needs techniques to manage several concurrent and interconnected issues, teams, and processes. One student in our post-secondary pilot study noted that:
In this class we were encouraged to be creative in our own process and not be constrained by a ‘right way of doing it’. In the IBM case study, we learned the benefits of some measure of standardization to allow teams to quickly establish working patterns and roles.
For example, the IBM Enterprise Design Thinking model is standardized around three anchor points: Shared values, a common process framework and collaboration enablers. We’ll go over the role of each of these elements below and highlight how even exemplary secondary school approaches to DT could be enhanced.
Shared values: The Principles for Enterprise Design Thinking, emphasize the following:
Focus on user outcomes
Plan for Restless Reinvention
Foster diverse, empowered teams
Here are some of the trade-off’s teachers are making in their secondary school context:
A condensed timeline: Students may approach DT as a one-off exercise, rather than as an enduring mindset. This may leave insufficient time for reflection and feedback.
Options to consider: what about coming back to the same challenge monthly for a year? Or annually for several years? Understanding can grow over time.
Less focus on collaboration: Students often work alone or in pairs, rather than in larger teams. The importance of team diversity won’t be apparent.
Options to consider: Provide opportunities for DT in diverse groups; ensure that students understand that their various perspectives (and disagreements) will produce better work
Process framework: The Loop aspect in IBM Enterprise Design Thinking includes:
Observe: Immerse yourself in the real world
Reflect: Come together and look within
Make: Give concrete form to abstract ideas
Trade-offs teachers are making:
Limited task complexity: How to get a student to understand a “big problem” and all its many facets? Students may have a narrow understanding of the world, and haven’t yet been exposed to truly complex problems with multiple stakeholders
Options to consider: Do you start in a familiar environment – e.g. the cafeteria – and slowly introduce elements the kids may not yet recognize? (e.g. cleaning supplies, buying the food, scheduling the workers, etc.)
Enabling connection and collaboration: IBM’s Keys “align our teams to great user outcomes”:
Hills: a way to clearly define statements of intent based on meaningful user outcomes
Playbacks: stay aligned by exchanging high-quality feedback
Sponsor Users: engage users as partners in all phases of the work
Trade-offs teachers are making:
Fictional users and/or fictional scenarios: DT should put users first, and to do that well surely you need access to real users (or at least realistic user stories). A fictional scenario can’t have a meaningful outcome
Options to consider: Use real-life scenarios OR at least a more layered character based on a real person; students need to ‘learn to be surprised’ as they dig more deeply into user perspectives.
What we haven’t talked about: scaffolding cognitive development
We’ve explored how teachers have simplified DT for their students in order to meet the logistical constrains of their contexts: feasibility, age appropriateness, availability of resources, etc. But if students’ experiences with Design Thinking are necessarily limited by these factors, how do we scaffold upwards towards a more sophisticated DT mindset, to prepare them for later success in post-secondary, and in their careers? Will they have to ‘unlearn’ some of the simplifications imposed by the secondary context to be effective contributors – Co-Creators in IBM’s terminology – in future professional settings?
We see the development of a multi-year Design Thinking curriculum “ladder” as an exciting area worth exploring. Keep watching this space!