Thanks for your feedback and resources so far, I am beginning to have a clearer idea of design thinking as a solution-based strategy.

Much appreciated,

Debra

Dear Debra, your is a very pertinent question. There are many types of "design theory", and most of them propose that design is mainly speculative, exploratory, on its way to the clarification of a form. It may become, in the end,  a final scheme for a building, among other structures. In industrial design, what the designer looks for is a sort or archetype from where a product may be devised along with the machine or mechanism to produce it "en masse", if that is to be the case. Both architectural design and industrial design have thrived because of speculation, whether or not such speculation eventually becomes a product.

I teach architecture history, criticism and theory mostly at the graduate level at a school of architecture, and what we try to do is to teach design as a tool, not as the end result addressed to a specific client. In this we are in agreement with figures like Palladio, Boullé, Violet Le Duc, Frank Lloyd Wright, Oscar Neumayer, Roberto Burle Marx, Luis Barragán, Bernard Tchumi, Zaha Hadid, Mario Shjetnan, Rafael Moneo, and so many others. To learn design is to learn to think spatially in order to use space inventively and productively, The final plans for a building are not design, just an instruction manual to build whatever is to be built. Students who are not invited to speculate will never invent, will never entertain a critical thought or be able to make a difference. In fact, the medium for design is "drawing", and people as different as Jean-Luc Nancy, Julia Krisketa, Richard Serra, and, yes, Leonardo da Vinci always used or still use drawing and design to allow their minds to wander. 

After many years of AutoCAD and other similar computer programs, we are going back to hands-on drawing and design and handwriting. IN the end, they are required to become proficient in both systems, hands on and computing. While the hand-brain relationship is enhanced when the body actually does the drawing or writing (which is one of the important discussions we are having right now), computer programs allow for easier touch-up and big changes in the projects. Computer programs do not have infinite possibilities and most students use it as a shortcut to get clean results fast, but learning to draw or design with a computer is not learning to design nor to draw. 

If students in other disciplines are to be trained in design only using computers, not only will they be chained to what the program can do or by the limitations of the program, but they will not understand the educational benefits of speculation and critical thought. 

An example will come in handy: New Zealand architect and computer genius Mark Burry visited my school in 2012 to talk about his design of a specific computer program in order to visualize in 3D Antoni Gaudí's drawings for ceiling ornamentation an the Sagrada Familia Basilica in Barcelona. In his faculty lectures and talks with students he explained the challenges he had faced in order to devise a program that could second-guess Gaudí's idea and complex sketches of ornament as they would actually materialize. One of the things he insisted upon was that the best part of 3D comercial programs is not using it as it comes, but tweaking them to produce effects not included in the program because, in real life, these programs are too limited to manage the present pubic expectations of architecture. So, computer programs devised to help students do their work became, in our minds, not a tool but a handicap, a retaining wall against creativity.

Burry — a genial and talkative and very approachable person— was very generous in explaining the whole process of reassembling commercial programs to do their job until he realized that he would have to design the program himself. That was the lesson we learned right from the master's mouth. He showed us his own drawings and the drawings he had made with commercial programs to show us that his were closer to Gaudí's intent, but in order to make tridimensional models fast, he needed a computer program and he finally created the program himself. His last word was that, in architecture, commercial programs are always overrated and seldom satisfying. Careful hand drawing would always better. Hand sketching would always give the architects ideas for improving their concepts, designs and eventually, building plans. We were delighted to have Burry among us for a week. It was an honor and a big step towards a better understanding of drawing and design in architecture. In brief, computers go so far, but never far enough for creativity. Students must learn to think out of the box, and, better yet outside the commercial program. That is the whole point of a good education.

Here a link to a brief note on Mark Burry's computer work for the Sagrada Familia:

http://makecalgary.com/wp-content/upload/Author-and-Authority.pdf

Best Regards, Lilliana

In Management 

Design thinking encourages people to spend a lot of time asking the right questions and exploring the problem

http://carey.jhu.edu/about/news/design-leadership-mba-ma-students-get-creative-to-find-business-innovations/

Hi Debra,

A very interesting question, but not with an easy answer. You can have a look at the work of Alexander Osterwalder that use design thinking in construction of business models. You can find him here - http://alexosterwalder.com/ 

In his own words: "Business Model Generation will teach you powerful and practical innovation techniques used today by leading companies worldwide. You will learn how to systematically understand, design and implement a new business model – or analyze and renovate an old one."

Hope you can look at it as a starting place for further work in design thinking.

Ps here is also some specific work on Design Thinking - 

Regards,

Servaas

http://alexosterwalder.com/

Hi Debra, great to see that you've raised this topic.

I am a former design educator who took 'designerly thinking' into business school education in the 90s and ended up leading the UK's Quality Assurance Guidance on Enterprise and Entrepreneurship - where there are many crossovers. Four areas of our research may interest you.

1. I have jointly supervised one Stanford / Ljubljana PhD on using design thinking in school education, and we currently have another that is evaluating how design educators do it in in comparison to how non designers teach, which is quite insightful it terms of what is assumed by newcomers.

2. If you look at the UK's Quality Guidance for Enterprise and Entrepreneurship (The Creativity and Innovation side), especially the thematic discussion on page 17 onwards, it is effectively an alternative interpretation of some approaches to design thinking. http://www.qaa.ac.uk/en/Publications/Documents/enterprise-entrepreneurship-guidance.pdf This document is multi disciplinary and can be used by any subject or discipline.

3. Some of our papers have been looking at how new understandings in Cognitive Neurology can inform teaching and Learning. Much of this aligns well with Design thinking but the biggest issues that arise seem to be around assessment of student performance, especially if the educator has a limited understanding of the process. We were recently commissioned by the OECD and the European Commission to offer guidance for policy makers and school leaders, and came up with the idea of creating the 'Two I' approach.

This asks, are we assessing students on 'Implementation', effectively doing as their told against clear predetermined goals, or ask we assessing student performance in 'innovation'? The latter requires the student to develop new ideas that the educator may not have foreseen. There is a detailed discussion in our OECD paper on page 19 under the title 'Assess to assist'. Table 5 also has an example list. http://www.oecd.org/cfe/leed/Entrepreneurial-Education-Practice-pt2.pdf

The 'Two I' has already informed teacher education in the Balkan's region by the way, and my colleagues and I have trained 2,500+ teachers in FRO Macedonia on these designerly approaches.

4. Finally, the European Commission are about to launch 'EntreComp', 'A sense of initiative and entrepreneurship. This too borrows heavily on design thinking. It will be citizen's framework for the whole of Europe, and one part of the framework will be guidance on writing learning outcomes. Work in the public domain is available here as a draft. 

https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/sites/default/files/EntreComp_Conceptual_Framework_draft.pdf

Hello,

this is a very interesting question. I have  not considered it myself, but it should be used I think. The ssytem will then be much better.

An e-lerning system should include Design knowledge.

Regrds

Terje

My research into reading taught me that the design of texts has an emotional as well as an intellectual effect on readers. If a text looks dense or dull, or lacks colour and white space, readers react badly to it, even before they've read it. In the use of foreign language texts, there is no such thing as an 'authentic' text when it's used in the classroom, since it's not being used for its original purpose, its target audience or for those for whom it was designed (cultures vary in the way that they design texts). So it's fine to  redesign the text to to make it more acceptable for the student of the foreign language. Having simplified and/or modified the text, you can later give the student the original text in its native format. This also helps with differentiation in your classroom. Trainee teachers thus need some training in the principles of design. I recommend Lidwell, Holden and Butler - Universal Principles of Design. Beverley, MA: Rockport Publishers. ISBN-13: 978-1-59253-007-6 and 10: 1-59253-007-9.

hello,

take a look at my paper in Agent Technologies  IGI Publishing Vol. 2 2015,  how to build a Distributed Intelligent e-Learning systems

It could be a great challenge to use Design Theory and Practice do do such a system.

We may get fund for such a Project within Innovation if peaople are interested. .

Regards

Terje

Starting up as taught , forwarding development of your taught you need looking into directions of dicipline and schooling to grow knowledge for your project

Design is present in all scientific presentation and in the contents of study. Be loving with our work is a clear sign of respect to other hearers and readers of our contributions.

Design thinking: Why business leaders need to think like designers

Design thinking is about applying the principles of design to solutions for business, moving into more abstract uses of design like designing customer experience or designing organisational structures.

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2010-12-24/news/27627350_1_design-ideo-business-strategy

Perhaps worthy of mention is that all of the above seem to make interpretation as to what designers do and how they think, but all too often it is not the designers themselves who promote design thinking. Moreover, designers often take what they do fore granted, and don't necessarily understand some of the nuances themselves. Hence, as my PhD student is demonstrating through her research on educators from different disciplines attempting this, a lot is down to the teacher and their ability to be flexible and adaptable in changing circumstances, which in turn assumes an appropriate learning environment. Please don't overlook this. No-one is really going to do well if the end result is singular, or worse still part of an examination or test.

I believe design thinking approach can be used to teach various disciplines..My reasoning is based on cultivating a culture where learners become mastery oriented and hence have ability to re-orient and provide solutions to societal problems..If this approach is given emphasis it will demistify the performance orientation system that our kenyan curriculumn propagates where 90% of kenyans are exam oriented

Hi Debra, 

I've been practicing design thinking (aka human-centred design, user experience design, user-centred design) for 20+ years, and in the last 5 years, I've been teaching others how to apply design thinking to their projects. In terms of an example that might be useful, the papers attached explain how we used design thinking to redesign a public library, including the physical space, the digital systems, and the human interactions. Hopefully these give you some ideas about how a similar approach could be applied to designing systems and processes within organisations. 

Conference Paper When You Can't Talk to Customers: Using Storyboards and Narr...

Article DESIGNING FOR A PERVASIVE INFORMATION ENVIRONMENT: THE IMPOR...

Recently we used design thinking methods_ as a tool for generating knowledge_ in smart clothing design field.