DESIGN THINKING AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
Design Thinking is a creative and collaborative process that is rooted in empathy and leads to rapid prototyping, testing, and refining.
Students discover and define authentic local, community, and global problems and apply a variety of tools, technology, and skills to take risks, learn from feedback, and improve designs.
WHAT IS DESIGN THINKING?
From the d. School at Stanford
Design can be applied to all kinds of problems. But, just like humans, problems are often messy and complex—and need to be tackled with some serious creative thinking.
EIGHT CORE ABILITIES
From the d.School at Stanford
1. NAVIGATE AMBIGUITY
Students identify and persist in the face and discomfort of not knowing the answer to questions and problems, and develop skills and tactics to overcome ambiguity.
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Tactics include being present in the moment, re-framing problems, and finding patterns in information. Students faced with ambiguity emerge from situations with the resilience and confidence to confront any design challenge.
2. LEARN FROM OTHERS (PEOPLE AND CONTEXTS)
Empathy is the core of the Design Thinking Process. Students embrace diverse viewpoints, collaborate with others, and practice critiquing and accepting feedback.
Students improve designs and ideas by considering their stakeholders needs and observing, researching, and learning from new situations and environments.
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3. SYNTHESIZE INFORMATION
Students seek multiple forms data and make sense of information by using internal insight and consulting diverse perspectives.
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Students advance skills in ​developing frameworks, maps, and abductive thinking. It is interlinked with navigating ambiguity.
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4. EXPERIEMENT RAPIDLY
Rapid iteration is being able to generate ideas quickly.
This enables students to take risks and begin prototyping much more quickly rather than getting caught up in the design phase, which can at times be paralyzing if students get caught up in things being perfect. Being able to iterate quickly, even if the design is not quite "just right" can lead to incredible innovation, and the improvements can come during the refining and testing phase.
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Rapid Iteration is a component of developing a healthy growth mindset and confidence in creation and design.
5. MOVE BETWEEN CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT
Students discover how to define the purpose and needs of stakeholders to refine the features of design and products.
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Abstraction (Ray and Charles Eames) is necessary to explore meaning, goals, and principals, in synthesis with precision to define features and details.
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6. BUILD AND CRAFT INTENTIONALLY
Students craft and construct thoughtfully, producing work at an appropriate level of resolution for feedback and audience/stakeholders.
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Human-centered design is a key component of the Design Thinking Process, and grounded throughout the process is the ability for students to remain aware of the tools (including digital if appropriate) needed to created meaningful work.
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7. COMMUNICATE DELIBERATELY
Forming, presenting, relating, and capturing stories, ideas and concepts is an essential objective in the Design Thinking Process.
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Students learn how to showcase their learning and designs in a variety of formats appropriate to their level, designs, and domains including forms of communications that include reflection, critique, presentation, and storytelling.
DESIGN YOUR DESIGN WORK
This is a meta ability to recognizing a project as a design problem and then determining the people, tools, techniques, and processes essential to prototype viable solutions to it.
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Some skills related to this core ability is the development of intuition, adapting old tools to new contexts, and developing original techniques to challenges.
"Human-centered design is a creative approach to problem solving that starts with the people you’re designing for and ends with new solutions. [It] is all about building a deep empathy with the people you’re designing for; generating tons of ideas; building a bunch of prototypes; sharing what you’ve made with the people you’re designing for; and eventually putting your innovative new solution out in the world."