1.0 – Design Thinking Module Overview

Introduction

This first module’s goal is to provide you an introduction into design thinking and get you thinking about how you can use design thinking in your professional context. In addition, you will be exposed to different types of edtech along the way, both in this module and across the later modules, so you can leverage the edtech for your own purposes! I hope you engage and learn from both the activities and content as well as our classmates’ ideas! Remember, learning is not an isolated activity, even if you’re learning asynchronously online!

Design Thinking Objective

Students will be able to explain what wicked problems are and share a wicked problem that impacts their professional practice by engaging a Digital Gallery Walk activity.

EdTech Integration Objective

Students will be able to use edtech to share their thinking about design thinking and wicked problems by posting to the Design Thinking Padlet and responding to a classmate’s Digital Gallery Walk post.

Module 1 Activities

• • 1.1 – Complete a FlipGrid post and record a response to at least one classmate

  • 1.2 – Read “Design Thinking” by Tim Brown (2008)

  • 1.3 – Post an entry to the “Design Thinking” case Padlet

  • 1.4 – Share a “wicked” problem that impacts your professional practice as part of a Digital Gallery Walk

1.1 – Start with a Wicked Problem

Directions:

Design thinking continues to gain popularity, and it is being widely adopted as an interdisciplinary approach for engaging “wicked problems” in a systematic manner. Before we dive into the design thinking process, we are first going to focus on wicked problems because they are the phenomenon that are the focus of the design thinking process. For this FlipGrid, please state your definition of what a “wicked problem” is and name a wicked problem that is of particular interest to you.

Access:

Direct link to this FlipGrid

1.2 – Design Thinking Examples

Directions:

Design thinking continues to gain popularity with educators, designers, innovators, problem solvers, and more! This seminal article by Tim Brown provides an overview of design thinking along with a diagram that illustrates it as an iterative process. Please read the article and consider the parts of design thinking that you support while noting questions you have about it. When ready, add a comment below that shares one idea you learned from this article!

Access:

Direct link to Tim Brown’s article on Design Thinking.

1.3 – Explain a “Design Thinking” Case

Directions:

After reading Brown’s (2008) article, it is now time for you to apply design thinking to the products, devices, apps, services, and/or websites that you use! For this activity, you will need to navigate to this Padlet and add an entry in response to the following prompt:

In Brown’s (2008) article, he summarizes three innovation cases – Kaiser Permanente, Shimano, and Aravind – to demonstrate the application of design thinking across industries. To complete this Padlet, you are asked to work backwards! First, identify an entity’s product – app, website, service, device, etc. – that you think was developed out of design thinking. Next, speculate on these three questions: 1. What was the original “problem” that the entity addressed? 2. What population(s) do you think was impacted by the entity’s problem? 3. Did the entity’s product adequately respond to the problem? Please explain why or why not. Finally, add an entry to this Padlet that includes a one-sentence description of the product, an image that represents the product, and your response to each of the questions. There is a 200-word limit on this assignment. You will need to click the pink “+” button on the bottom right of the Padlet to begin a new entry.

Access:

Direct link to the Reverse Engineering Design Thinking Padlet

1.4 – Google Slides: Digital Gallery Walk – What’s Your Problem?

Directions:

Rittel and Weber (1973) describe 10 characteristics of wicked problems, and they explain that wicked problems are social problem that “are never solved. At best they are only re-solved–over and over again” (p. 160).

For this Digital Gallery Walk, you are to first identify a “wicked problem” that impacts your professional practice in some way and then fashion a slide from this presentation that explains how that wicked problem impacts your professional practice. To complete this assignment, you will need to describe your wicked problem in about 100 words, add an image that represents your problem, and include a caption that explains how the image represents your problem. When finished, please choose a colleague’s slide and provide feedback about his/her/their slide in the speaker notes. Specifically, please comment on what stood out to you about our colleague’s wicked problem and what questions you have about it. (Make sure to include your name in the speaker notes, so you get credit!)

Please note, you will be working with this wicked problem for the rest of these design thinking modules, so please choose wisely 🙂

Access:

Direct link to the Digital Gallery Walk Google Slides activity.