Prologue:

80% of college students will change majors multiple times. 57% of college students now take six years to earn a bachelor’s degree. 75% of college grads don’t know positions that fit them. 55% of college grads still do not use their degree ten years after earning it.

A recent survey on career option awareness among Indian students has revealed that 93% of students aged 14 to 21 were aware of just seven career options in India.

These statistics reveal the situation of students today. There are plenty of reasons behind this – social influence, parental guidance, teacher-student relationships, institutional movements, etc. But, can the students make a difference and make improvements in the stats? Absolutely.

According to National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020), Design Thinking is one of the most sought-after skills for students in the upcoming years. Design Thinking is a human-centric approach to problem-solving and innovation. It allows one to be more creative, and iterative while looking at various perspectives in problem-solving. Design Thinking is not limited to product innovators, fashion designers, and organisational behaviour change, it could be applied contextually to solve various complex problems across various domains, industries and even personally to some extent. Design Thinking could become part of our lives as well when applied properly.

Design Thinking focuses on the emotions, feelings, and perceptions of people towards a product or a service.

In this case, students become primary users of a service i.e. the learning environment and resources. In a typical classroom, students use materials, books, and other sources to learn. Students are involved with other students to participate and cultivate their social skills. Students are involved in their own time to balance other priorities, upskill, and gain knowledge. Could resources, social circle, and time be more useful for the student?

This blog would explore Design Thinking for students, that they could apply to leverage the above aspects to his/her maximum potential, effectively and efficiently.

Find your career using visualization

Visualization is a tool that allows the student to imagine a specific future. It creates a mental image in the mind of the future of where he/she would want to be. It programs the brain to perceive more and recognize the resources needed to achieve the future. This helps in navigating the career to some extent and would build a pathway to achieve that desired career in life. The goals in visualization should instill some amount of fear to drive the student toward the goal. The idea of attaining the impossible by starting today, to make it possible would incite a thought to improve every day until that is attained. It is possible that goals can change due time, but the ambition remains strong in the mind. 

(Student imagining, with a cloud) 

The power of Persona

Students are vulnerable to uncertainties in their journey. To navigate those uncertain doubts and fears, Persona as a tool of Design thinking would allow the student to list down his/her fears, challenges, aims, and background. This would enable one to understand his/herself better. Persona also helps in understanding their friends, family, teachers, and social circle better. By attempting persona, students become more self-aware of their journey and themselves. Self-awareness helps in identifying interests, and skill sets, and using those to solve difficult circumstances. Persona also attempts to know about their emotions and their causes. Attempting a persona on someone who seems to be difficult to handle would become not so difficult anymore after understanding them.
(uplifting someone who has fallen)

Classifying Homework properly

Another universal problem is that students find it difficult to cope with the volume of various subjects and tasks that have been assigned to them. To navigate these situations, the Theory of Prioritization would help students segregate tasks according to their weightage of importance to them. The theory suggests that tasks are to be bucketed in grams, 10gm, 100gm, and 1000gms. This would provide a clear distinction of weightage with each task that is being provided to the student.
One other similar tool is a 2 by 2 matrix which is the urgent-important matrix. Four grids are classified as, urgent and important, non-urgent and important, urgent and not important, and not urgent and not important. These grids would allow the students to classify their work brackets and give importance to those that matter.
(a student arranging sticky notes on a desk)

The art of storytelling for memory retention

Regardless of work prioritization and completing assignments on time, the real stress begins during or right before an exam season. Retention of study material could be a problem for students. Rote memorization is only theoretical and it may not help in the application of content. The storytelling of the study material would increase the retention level as well as connect with the concept at a deeper level. Understanding becomes easy when the content is delivered with a storytelling approach. With storytelling as a method, The student could pick up a fictional story to his/her liking to connect the dots between concepts to be remembered.
(lecturer taking a seminar without any material, just talking to the class)

Failures are opportunities to learn

A student’s mindset should be cultivated as a designer’s mindset. The mindset of always learning, and not giving up despite failures in attempts. Similarly, the difference between a normal student and a student who has applied Design Thinking is that the latter keeps trying to achieve his target. So failing in a test is allowed in Design Thinking. Failing multiple times to achieve in the end is also very important. Students who have struggled in a subject, later might even fall in love with the same subject after realizing that the process had only made them understand more about it. The drive to pass the subject at the end would eventually become a skill that could be used elsewhere in life. This is called prototyping. Prototyping in this context is to build a resilient mindset that would aid students in facing any such challenge with confidence.

The wheel for balancing ambitions

Students may have multiple ambitions and would want to upskill themselves as much as they can. They would want to create and expand their chances in the competitive world today. The struggle here is to balance these ambitions. Wheel of life, a tool in Design Thinking,  helps in guiding a student on what he or she would want to achieve. The tool also displays the level at which the student is on that particular goal or ambition. The levels would determine the effort taken by the student to achieve that goal.

Say, for example, one would want to win a medal in track and field, one component of the wheel of life would suggest ‘achieve a medal in track and field’ the level at which he would have reached is 4. The ranking from 1 to 10, 10 being having achieved and 1 being not achieved would determine the progress of the goal.

Leveraging Design Thinking from the start

Students from grade 1- grade 6, have the highest, most expandable cognitive ability to receive and learn as much as they can. The introduction of design concepts through varied forms of learning through interactions could improve the intellectual strength of the student. To be able to empathize at a young age is one of the most appreciated skills for creative thinking. Students at this age tend to be more visual and imaginative in their approach, as ‘art and craft’ becomes a part of their subject curriculum. When combined with Design Thinking, having thought the basics of understanding the problem, and learning subjects the non-conventional way, students would gain exposure and hands-on with innovation.

Innovative ideas sprout when STEM projects start after Grade 6. With the projects students partake in and the problem statements students face, tutors only mentor and do not reveal the entire solution for the group to think about.

Usually, school-level projects have a problem to start with.  A sample statement could be: ‘What could be done to manage plastic waste, could there be a way to segregate them?’ The ideas that the students generate could be complex in the beginning and the outcome could be mundane – the usual. With Design Thinking, students take a 5 step Design Process –  feel, define, diverge, converge, and communicate. Students become more sensible about who uses the project, and how the user is using it. This thought would enable students to spend more time on the problem and come up with user-friendly solutions.

As students go higher in their academics, Design Thinking would become more of a mindset rather than a step-by-step approach. The mindset shift would allow students to apply Design Thinking in their everyday lives as well as in academic learning. The mind is attuned to be more creative, observant, and resilient to failures. Losses and mishaps become opportunities and catalysts for the enablement of new ideas.

With Design Thinking, the impact is greater than conventional thinking today. Students could leverage Design thinking in the ways mentioned above. Design Thinking would become an integral part of their lives and in shaping the future. 

Design Thinking is a sought-after skill in many industries

As students and curriculum are being exposed to Design Thinking as a method of approach to problem-solving, organisations are increasingly in demand of Design Thinking as a skill for candidates. Organizations are grappling with rapid change and uncertainty. As customer lifestyles change quickly over time, requirements change as well. To capture customer requirements effectively, and to empathize with the user, Design Thinking becomes an integral skill for everyone in an organization today.

Customers’ expectations have gone up in the past decade due to technological advancements. Simple places hold more significance for people, e.g., the ambience of a restaurant. Customers strive for uniqueness and customization in their products or services. Customers expect that they are ‘designed’ in such a way that they provide a ‘good’ experience as they use them.

Hence Design Thinking for students becomes essential for them to adapt to the fast-growing environment.