Perspectives On Design Thinking

Celebrating Design 2: When Educational Institutions Leverage Design Thinking

Increased student engagement leading to better academic outcomes has always been aspirational, but often easier said than done. How did one small school in a distant island manage to achieve this?

Testing times for the global educational scenario
The field of education is dynamic incorporating societal, cultural and political changes of the region across centuries. This holds good for all education systems across the world. While, on the one hand there is development in terms of heightening the scientific temper, on the other, systems are bogged down with legacy evaluation methods and standards that are not in sync with current and futuristic requirements. In some societies, education doesn’t seem to sum up as a leading priority thus leading to issues like closure of institutions, and lack of adequate funding for necessary accoutrements.

Some of the wicked problems that the field of education faces across the world include infrastructure and funding, poverty and inaccessibility, family and cultural issues, technological limitations for the institution and for the learner, in-campus issues like bullying and psychological problems, parental involvement and policy and administrative issues and so on.

To add to this galaxy of challenges is the novel Corona virus. Since early 2020, the entire world has been impacted by this virus, which has affected every single human endeavor sparing none. Education is amongst those most adversely impacted. While the initial thought has been to go online as an ad hoc solution, is this going to be the way forward for every course across subjects for every class/grade from primary school to university across the world?

Despite having gone almost completely digital in offering education, educators have difficulty in answering certain critical questions in areas such as student attendance, level of engagement, delivery of lessons and assessment of complex subjects, monitoring and coaching less-academic students. Fundamentally, the current situation warrants that teachers and students need to be technologically savvy, have devices to connect and the stable and dependable internet connectivity for seamless interaction. Is this possible in weaker sections of society in developing nations?

Also education is all about holistic development and not just the subjects for which the students write an exam. The school also inculcates discipline, hygiene; the school also nurtures any additional skill that the student may have like singing, drawing, sports etc., which would be completely ignored online.

Applying Design Thinking at school
Like all communities, East San Jose is comprised of a distinct set of family circumstance, cultures, beliefs and experiences. Before designing anything we needed to clearly understand out students’ and families’ needs within this context, not as we interpreted them, but as they did through their experiences.

John Glover & Will Eden
Founder & Principal
Alpha Cindy Avitia High School

The predominantly Latino community of San Jose, California wanted to improve the community’s secondary school. To achieve this, the parents, teachers, students, community members and education experts worked together for over two years to design Alpha Public Schools’ new charter high school in East San Jose.

Design Thinking provided the school an insightful understanding of the neighbourhood’s unique needs, assets, and challenges, yielding a school model with clear areas of focus. Leveraging this concept, the community was able to play a key role to refine the education process so that user-centered approach to design becomes a part of the school’s DNA, consistently designing solutions that serve students and families.

When Design Thinking is applied beyond the campus
Ekya School, in Bangalore, was in the news for all the right reasons. Students are taught to apply Design Thinking skills to solve problems. It is interesting to note that children of Grade 4 applied concepts of Design Thinking, such as empathy, ideation, prototyping and testing to solve a problem that even the local government found difficult to solve – the garbage problem in and around the school.

The students had consciously applied many Design Thinking steps when studying the issue. This included an empathetic approach in observing the environment, use of empathy maps, definition of the problem statement, ideation, prototyping the solution and user testing.

Designing a solution to solve a life-and-death problem
A leading engineering college in Chennai was interested to solve a real-life life-and death problem. Sunguvarchatram is a very busy road junction that connects the two metropolitan cities of Chennai and Bengaluru. Unfortunately, this hub is also the site of many fatal road accidents, typically involving two-wheelers. In conjunction with the regional transport office and the local police department, around 17 students of the college, having freshly completed a course in Design Thinking, wanted to apply the concept to solve this issue.

The college team collected relevant primary and secondary data and went to the junction (field visit) to observe the scenario. Observation provides context to the data. They also applied a popular tool called the Journey Map to observe the mindset of drivers. In addition, they leveraged tools such as Brainstorming and Stephen Covey’s quadrats to prioritize ideas. The students effectively presented their ideas to the authorities.

Industry-academia collaboration: Applying Design Thought to enhance traveller experience
SRM is a popular deemed university located in the southern suburbs of Chennai. The institution is a big believer in the concept of Design Thinking. The institute, in fact, partners with the School of Design Thinking to teach its students and other partner institutions the value of Design Thinking.

A senior student of the deemed university applied Design Thinking in his third year course project offered by UC Berkley on the topic of Entrepreneurship. This arrangement with UC Berkley was as per the Foreign Exchange University programme.

The project, titled ‘An Enhanced Shuttle Stand Experience’, was a study on the experience of commuters who await their shuttles (bus) at the shuttle stops. The purpose of the project was to improvise their overall experience during the time they spend at the shuttle waiting.

The student applied all critical elements of Design Thinking, such as Journey Map and Empathy, to study user patterns and understand what issues commuters faced. Based on this study, the working team came up with many interesting ideas to provide commuters a better experience, such as:

Smart Stands that will make the shuttle stops more interactive with entertainment facilities and choices for the commuters to enjoy a lively wait. It will also involve providing real-time information.
Bag Buddy to provide the service of taking care of expensive luggage.
An SOS facility to deal with any emergency at the stand.

The working team finally created a physical prototype of their smart shuttle stand named ‘SpaceFul: Enhanced Shuttle Stand Experience’. This was provided to the potential users for suggestions.

Coming back to the initial question…
So what did the school do to increase its student engagement for better academic results?
Leveraging Design Thinking, Castle High School & Design Thinking Hawaii conducted workshops to connect with and listen to the needs and interests of learners, teachers, families and the larger community. All relevant stakeholders were involved. During the workshops, new approaches to content and learning structures were brainstormed and the most effective plans that met the community’s priorities were shortlisted.

After prototyping and appropriate adjustments to the curriculum, modules and support system, they were rolled out by the school positively impacting the community while targeting existing systemic educational problems.

In a nutshell:

Testing times for the global educational scenario
Applying Design Thinking at school
When Design Thinking is applied beyond the campus
Designing a solution to solve a life-and-death problem
Industry-academia collaboration: Applying Design Thought to enhance traveller experience
Coming back to the initial question

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