What is Design Thinking?

Since I've become a member of the Design Thinking team at school, I've been reading about what it is and how it can be used in education.  Here are some initial thoughts:

• It is an intentional process to get to new solutions
• It's a mindset - you see challenges as opportunities for design
• It starts with the needs of people
• It's collaborative and pulls from multiple perspectives
• It involves creating change
• It's experimental - it encourages you to try and fail and learn from your mistakes
• It's having the confidence to know that you can do things in a better way

Although there are probably many different ways of designing, here is one process that I've found (this is taken from Design Thinking for Educators which can be downloaded from here):

1. Discovery- understanding the challenge/research
2. Interpretation - observe and learn
3. Ideation - generate ideas/brainstorm
4. Experimentation - building prototypes
5. Evolution - refine your ideas, develop the concept

As I dig deeper into Design Thinking there will be lots more thinking and lots more posts.  Stay tuned!

Photo Credit: Samyra Serin via Compfight cc