What+is+Design+Thinking?

What is Design Thinking?
As a style of thinking, design thinking is generally considered to be the ability to provide creative solutions for problems by looking at the needs of the user (empathy), the generation of insights and rationality to analyze possible solutions to a specific context. While design thinking has become part of the popular lexicon, its broader use in describing a particular style of creative thinking-in-action is having an increasing influence on twenty-first century education across disciplines. Indeed, it is a great tool for teaching 21st century skills, as participants must solve problems by finding and sorting through information, collaborating with others, and iterating their solutions based on real world, authentic experience and feedback. [1]

Design thinking provides a path to greater creativity. By using the design thinking process students and teachers grow in their ability to be creative and to innovate on a regular basis. The process, if used, can transform difficult challenges into opportunities. In many classrooms, there is an underlying expectation that students must strive for perfection, that they may not make mistakes that they should always strive to be flawless. This kind of expectation makes it hard to take risks. It limits the possibili­ties to create more radical change. Design Thinking gives you permission to fail and to learn from your mistakes, because you come up with new ideas, get feedback on them, then iterate. It is always in progress. But educators need to experiment, too, and Design Thinking is all about learning by doing. In short, Design Thinking is the confidence that new, better things are possible and that you can make them happen. And that kind of opti­mism is well needed in education.

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//Created and maintained by Steven Will//

[1] Ray, B (2012). Design Thinking: Lessons for the Classroom. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/design-thinking-betty-ray

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