Design Thinking and How to Use it

Most, if not all, companies are well acquainted with market research. You want to make sure that your services take clients or end-users into consideration. What if there was a technique that took the end-user focus up a notch? Design thinking does exactly this and more, revolutionising how we approach instructional design. We're going to dive into the particulars of design thinking and how you can use it to create learner-centred courses.

What is design thinking?

Design thinking can be seen as a mindset, approach, methodology or principle that has humans and their experiences at the centre of your products. There are many resources that will outline different steps for design thinking, such as Rikke Friis Dam and Teo Yu Siang’s article that suggests these five steps:

1. Empathise
2. Define
3. Ideate
4. Prototype
5. Test

Regardless of the specific steps you take, the idea behind design thinking is that you first immerse yourself into the end-user’s experience to better understand their preferences and needs. Imagine yourself as the individual who will ultimately use your product or service. What might they need from it? What are the possible gaps in your service or product?

Once you’ve understood what the end-user experiences, you can turn to the creative solutions. What do you need to solve? What innovative concepts could be applied to the process? Ideally, people from every level of the company should be involved in this process because a CEO will have a different perspective to someone on the sales team or a developer. There are a lot of opportunities for collaboration and collective brainstorming to produce as many ideas as possible.

The general ending to this process is to create prototypes and test the solutions. This allows you to rapidly learn from each action and fine tune it until there is a resounding agreement that you’ve succeeded. 

It is important to keep in mind that this isn’t necessarily a single or linear process. Design thinking is described as iterative and non-linear, with the understanding that you may need to repeat some of the steps or jump between them. This is a creative process and, although structure can help set you on your way, you shouldn’t get too bogged down on the details. 

Considering our industry, you may be looking for some EdTech-specific inspiration. So, how does design thinking relate to EdTech?

Where EdTech and design thinking meet

A lot of the language used so far has referred to end-users and products or services. In EdTech, the end-users are simply the learners. While we consider the educational institution’s preferences, the learners are ultimately the ones who need to benefit from your product or service. Depending on your particular student base, they’ll have preferences and needs. When we talk about the immersive step in design thinking, it will involve understanding who the students are, what they like or dislike, how their schedules are typically structured, and how learning can be engaging for them. 

As for the products or services, they’re your courses and methodologies. Just as a consumer goods company would base their products on what consumers need, we must consider how our students will use the learning material. What mediums help them retain information? What pedagogies enhance their ability to recall that information? Basing eLearning courses on these concepts will ultimately benefit your students more.

According to Vanessa Svihla’s book on design thinking in EdTech, it’s clear that this focus on the student experience “should also draw our attention to inclusivity, diversity, and participant safety.” If you empathise with what your student base needs and centre your instructional design around that, learners will have an overall better learning experience. Svihla also states that design thinking should encourage us to analyse “how we use precedent to fill in gaps as we design.”

To iron out how you can use design thinking in your courses, we’ve created our own set of steps for instructional design.

Creating learner-centred courses

First off, you’ll need to have a detailed understanding of what the project entails. Who is the target student base? Since this process hinges on the learners, the first pitstop is determining who exactly they are, as well as what their preferences and needs are. Perhaps the typical learner who this course will reach is a part-time student that is also working, or a full-time student whose time is solely dedicated to tertiary education. What does this mean for their needs? 

Once you’ve determined this and consulted with the subject matter experts, you can explore the course content. What is the format of the content? Is it comprehensive? This phase will also include an analysis of the processes that will make the content more engaging. You wouldn’t want your students to be passive in the learning experience with content that they simply view. There needs to be an opportunity for experiential learning where learners can engage with different activities to incorporate them in their studies. 

Now, you need to consider the mediums. Content is just words on a page – the medium translates it into something the learner can benefit and learn from. This will largely depend on the type of content you’re working with, but there are several mediums for you to consider. Which content calls for videos or interactive boards? How frequent should quizzes be for students to have ongoing practice with recalling the information?

At the end of the process, the three factors need to be in harmony. The content needs to be presented to students in a medium that works best for them. 

Final thoughts

As a concept, design thinking promotes quality and results. Since we are in the business of learning, having a learner-centred design process makes perfect sense. EdTech is an innovative industry in itself, so let’s help innovation breed innovation as we form new and better approaches that make a difference in the lives of learners.

References

Dam, R.F. and Siang, T.Y. (2021). What is Design Thinking and Why Is It So Popular? [online]. [accessed 12 May 2022].

Svihla, V. (2021). Design Thinking [online]. EdTech Books. [accessed 12 May 2022].