Design thinking is a collection of skills and mindsets that can help students and educators identify and develop approaches to challenges, nurture a strong culture, and lead innovation in their school, workplace, and community. While the specifics may differ, these related habits can drive and focus the interactions of a school's students and educators (list inspired by Stanford's design school):
- Focus on the learner.
- When in doubt, try it out.
- Prototype early and often.
- Work together.
- Embrace ambiguity.
- Be mindful throughout.
- Think and work visibly.
Over the past 10 years, we've worked with our Henry Ford Academies (HFAs) in Michigan and Texas, and with hundreds of educators across the globe, to integrate design thinking into their dynamic learning environments. It's not easy, but it's absolutely worth the effort. And, while not everyone in a school has the capacity to lead the transformation of their culture, all can and should contribute. By using tools and strategies that involve cycles of observation, feedback, and iteration, we've articulated a theory of action for engagement in design thinking in which everyone—maintenance and front-desk staff, teachers, parents and more—can play a role.
Figure: Henry Ford Learning Institute's Design Thinking Model
Figure note: Henry Ford Learning Institute's design thinking model intentionally does not include the word "test" because "test" can have a very negative connotationwith many learners.
As you integrate design thinking in your school or district, consider combining three levels of engagement to build related skills and mindsets, and thereby create an "orientation of innovation."
Level 1: Reinforce Design-Oriented Behaviors and Mindsets
Start by knowing what design thinking looks like when it's part of daily activities and interactions. Take time to call out positive examples, explicitly reinforcing what you observe. With a grounding in the mindsets and behaviors of design thinkers, any member of the school community—teacher, principal, parent, student, or hall monitor—can do this. Such empowerment and inclusiveness can also dramatically change their perception of their role in the learning community in a positive way.
What might that look like? Imagine that you see a normally dominant student taking time to listen to what another is saying and asking questions. You can praise that student for embodying human-centered design principles and seeking to understand. You might connect with a colleague who is a visual thinker by sketching rather than explaining a complex idea. Teachers working with students directly to frame end-of-course projects (collaboration with others), counselors experimenting with a new system to track positive behavior (prototyping), and parents actively joining student-led conferences (learning by doing) are all opportunities for you to recognize and reinforce behaviors and mindsets inherent in an Orientation of Innovation.
Level 2: Reframe Learning Tasks with a Design Lens
Go further by reframing current class projects or units with a design thinking lens. This allows you and your students to view design thinking not as something separate, but integral to a stronger learning experience.
Math teachers might have students construct tangible models (prototype) to demonstrate ratio and proportion relationships. Social studies students can interview guest experts on a community issue to clarify their understanding of an issue and explore new perspectives (gain empathy, frame the challenge). Young scientists testing their experiment designs, gathering and analyzing data, and revising that approach demonstrate much of the approach (feedback, iterate). ELA educators might have students build an empathy map as they conduct a deep character analysis of the protagonist of a novel.
Rick Kreinbring at Avondale High School in Auburn Hills, Michigan asked each student in his advanced placement language class to select and read a nonfiction text as a primary source. Students then identified six additional secondary sources and developed a thesis or claim. Rather than asking students to argue their claim in a paper, Rick had students brainstorm all of the possible audiences who would best benefit from seeing their claim, narrow it down to the audience they wanted to identify as their user, and develop a profile of the user's characteristics. As the project advanced, students revised their claim and created a way to make their claim visible. Anna, a talented art student, developed the claim that responsibilities can be converted to passion. She made it visible by using her biology notes to construct a piece of artwork in the form of a 3D dress. Anna was able to gather feedback on the strength of her argument as she presented the dress to her audience of high school peers who were conflicted about choosing between their passion for art and a desire to have a more traditional job.
Level 3: Facilitate Signature Experiences
Expand your school community's learning in, with, and through design thinking by incorporating programs and events that are highly visible and extend beyond individual classes or projects. Encourage and support teachers in implementing a grade-level challenge, with student teams working on a common community issue. Host an evening exhibition to share the various recommendations from those teams with stakeholders and the larger community. Build expectations for students to use design thinking tools and strategies into a senior internship program or capstone project. Have students use a design thinking process to redesign school assemblies.
Since 2001, the Signature Mastery Program (SMP) has been a rigorous career exploration program and graduation requirement at all Henry Ford Academies. Students complete a 100+ hour internship in a career area of personal interest, write a senior thesis based on research and on-site experiences, and publicly present their research and personal growth findings to an evaluative committee. Thanks to student demand and a commitment to provide students like Kennedy, a senior at Henry Ford Academy in Detroit, with the structured experiences they need for postsecondary success, SMP learning now goes even deeper, generating more thoughtful student work products, because students undergo their experience with a design thinking lens.
As they engage in their internships they explore human-centered design questions and know that they will need to use the full process to develop a related prototype to present in their senior defense. Kennedy identified a need to amplify content diversity in journalism during the course of her internship experience with a local newspaper. She developed "Diversity Learning Experience," a college-level syllabus and learning approach that helps journalism students bring different voices and storylines into their writing and reporting.
Developing a school and students with a strong orientation of innovation takes an intentional approach, incorporates the contributions of many, and honors work and learning done at every level of student engagement. The three levels shared here provide a way to identify current opportunities to activate design thinking within your school, as well as suggestions about how you might expand or deepen that implementation. Regardless of where you start, empowering your community to try it out and learn by doing is the most important first step.