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Design Thinking: Developing Innovative
Solutions to Make a Difference
By Amie Cieminski
Design thinking is a structured approach to generating innovative solutions to challenges within
organizations. Design thinking can help leaders, teachers, and students devise creative, user-
based solutions to complex problems. In this article, the author explains the phases of design
thinking and then describes how she used Liberatory Design Thinking as a pedagogy in an
educational leadership preparation program. The author designed a unit to help aspiring school
leaders consider strategies for leading schools in which more equitable outcomes might be
realized.
esign thinking is a collaborative and iterative process in which the designers
D“seek to understand the user, challenge assumptions, and redefine problems in an
attempt to identify alternative strategies” (Design Interaction Foundation, n.d.). Design
thinking has been used in private companies, K–12 classrooms and schools, higher
educational institutions, and community organizations to devise creative, human-
centered solutions to complex problems. In classrooms, design thinking can bridge
the gap between theory and practice; support student outcomes such as empathy,
reflection, and creativity; and encourage risk-taking and community engagement.
Design thinking is a mindset and a process. As a mindset, design thinking promotes
creativity and the belief that people can create change and make a difference through
their efforts. Design thinking is about possibilities, experimentation, and risk-taking.
Although most educators like to get an A on every assignment, in design thinking,
everyone must embrace ambiguity, suspend judgment, and step out of his or her
comfort zone for learning to occur. Designers embody the spirit of ingenuity through
the iterative process. They can follow in the footsteps of Thomas Edison, who said,
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work” (Edison, n.d.).
Varied models are associated with the design-thinking process. Some common
models used in educational settings include those from the Design School at
Stanford (d.school; Shanks, 2010) and IDEO’s design-thinking toolkit (2012). Both
models have five phases that describe a similar thinking process. The d.school model
contains empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test, while IDEO labels their
phases discovery, interpretation, ideation, experimentation, and evolution.
Many of the activities and ways of thinking in design thinking will seem familiar
and natural for educators because such professionals are constantly looking for more
effective ways to teach, manage materials, implement programs, redesign space,
and achieve better outcomes for students. However, the design-thinking process is
a structured approach to generating and evolving ideas that helps designers be more
collaborative and intentional as they design new solutions. Designers use divergent
thinking to understand the challenge and users and to create solutions, and they
use convergent thinking to focus their thinking and to prototype feasible solutions.
Design thinking is not about fixing things but about rethinking and redesigning.
Design thinking is purposefully iterative. Accordingly, two principles of design
thinking help frame the process. First, systems produce the results that they were
designed to produce, and second, any system that was designed can be redesigned.
6 The Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin: International Journal for Professional Educators