Design Thinking in Schools: Building a Generation of Innovators

by Rafiq Elmansy · 03/10/2016

Observing today’s world can tell us much about tomorrow and what human beings need to meet future challenges. Along with the increasing challenges that we face everyday from economical challenges and climate change to extremism and the increasing language of hate between nations, we should raise a generation that is able to meet these challenges and find innovative solutions for tomorrow’s problems. In a previous article, Can we Apply Design Thinking in Education, we discussed how the current education systems still depend on the some core education pedagogy since decades. Although there is a sustaining innovation in some education systems, these future challenges seek a disruptive innovative that can contribute to building a generation programmed to solve problems rather than dealing with them.
When investigating the different routes to achieve this goal, one route seems to be appealing, as it aims to change how we thinking, which aligns with Albert Einstein’s quote: “You cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it.” This route is based on design thinking, a methodology that aims to solve problems with a creative approach while putting the user in the center of the process to achieve a user-centered approach. Design thinking processes are not only applied to design business but extend to become a method that can be applied in daily life situation in order to solve our everyday problems or make our lives easier through innovation and creativity.

Why Do We Need Design Thinking?

So, how can this methodology contribute to changing our education system to become more innovation and creativity-biased? While there are different design thinking models—two of which will be discussed later in this article—most of them share the same characteristics while changing the steps and the how the process flows. Some of the characteristics include the following.
Highlight problems and curiosity: In the core of the design thinking there is a question to answer or problem to solve. All the design process start with a question that need to be addressed and reaching this question requires an open-mind that is fueled with curiosity to address problems that may not be addressed before.
Collaborative: The process is based on collaborating and sharing ideas and effort among a design thinking team either inside a company or a classroom.
Constructive and holistic: The design process is based on thinking about old ideas with a new approach in order to achieve innovation. Also, it targets a holistic perception for the situation and focuses on the whole system rather than individual elements, similar to systems thinking theory.
Empathic: In order to put the user in the heart of the process, empathy aims to put the team in the shoes of the user of the product or the service. Therefore, they tend to understand their problems, needs, and aims strategies to solve it.
Iterative: The design thinking process depends on appreciating iteration and ongoing improvement through the different steps of the process and even after delivering the final solution.
Nonjudgmental: Developing ideas during the design thinking process depends on a non-judgmental approach. The team freely develops ideas, seeking criticism in order to unleash creativity especially in the ideation and brainstorming phases.
Universal: The design thinking process doesn’t only apply to design; it can be adopted to solve issues in daily life or problems facing any industry.

Design Thinking Models for Education

Although the design thinking process was initially developed for organizations, the above characteristics promote it to become a successful educational method to teach students on different levels about how to think in problems differently and build innovative solutions through chasing their ordinary thinking matrix. Over the course of targeting the education system, two main models were introduced in association with the IDEO, Stanford d.school, and Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. These processes were developed along with local schools and teachers in order to be presented in a form of educational strategy including the process itself, and a number of these activities and tools can be used in school classes.

Stanford d.school Design Thinking

The Stanford d.school design thinking for education model aims to put teachers and students together in hands-on design challenges that focus on building their skills through different design thinking processes. This model depends on the following steps:
Empathy: This stage aims to discover the gaps between what people say and do, which will present the question or the opportunity to provide the solution. In this stage, students start by investigating a specific situation or place and how people interact with it.
Define: At this stage, students transform their findings into a description for the situation. This description is the target that needs to be addressed in the following steps.
Ideate: In this stage, students intend to arrive at a solution using any of the design thinking methods such as brainstorming and mind mapping.
Prototype: Students start to build a prototype for the suggested solution. This visual prototype allows them to evaluate the idea and determine whether it meets with the target.
Test: This is the first iteration stage, where the prototype is tested by the students and receives feedback to improve the product to reach a better results.
Iterate: Even after the product is delivered, there should be a process to learn about the current and future experience with the product and to develop the future version of the product.

The Stanford design thinking model (Source: d.school Stanford)

Note that the above model suggests a continuous iteration process between different stages in order to improve the final product. So, the process may not flow in a linear line, as the iteration process may lead to jumping between processes. Another model was provided with different names for the process: understand, observe, point of view, ideate, prototype, and test.

IDEO Design Thinking for Educators

The IDEO mode is introduced on a dedicated website about Design Thinking for Educators, where their toolkit can be downloaded and adopted in classrooms. Similar to the d.school model, this model is based on a process that presents a workflow for educators. It supports a number of in-class activities and tools that help them achieve the target of the design thinking process in education. IDEO model for education is based on five phases.

IDEO design thinking for educators (Source: IDEO Design Thinking for Educators).

Discovery: This investigation phase intends to build a deep understanding of what is needed and what needs to be solved. This phase gives an understanding to the proposed design challenge.
Interpretation: This phase transforms the collected data or observation into a design opportunity, combining thoughts to form a direction for the ideation phase.
Ideation: This phase is similar to the d.school model. It tends to generate ideas and thinking in different ideas without judgment, criticism, or any constrains.
Experimentation: This phase presents the prototype. Ideas are visualized and turned into a prototype product that can be tested and evaluated.
Evolution: This phase presents the iteration nature of the process, including planning for further development and improving the ideas.

Resources for Design Thinking Educators and References

Design thinking for education resources are available online in different domains that can help educators and school administrators to directly put this approach into action. The following are some resources that can be downloaded and used in class or to build a class system based on design thinking:

• IDEO Design Thinking for Educators website
• Stanford Educator Guide to Design Thinking
• Taking Design Thinking to Schools
• Introduction to Design Thinking
• IDEO Design Thinking Kit
• Change by Design, a book by Tim Brown
• Make Space: How to Set the Stage for Creative Collaboration, a book by Scott Doorley, Scott Witthoft, Hassor Plattner Institute of Design, and Stanford University

In the current and future challenges that face our world, we should raise a generation with a high ability to solve problems and innovate new solutions for problems. This can be achieved through adopting new ways of thinking, and one of the highlights of these suggested methods is design thinking—a method that intend to build problem-solving skills through creativity and the adoption of a user-centered approach.
Using design thinking as a teaching method helps our students to become more empathic, collaborative, and open-minded. They can solve problems regardless of the industry they will work in when they join the workforce. While there are different design thinking methods, the Stanford d.school and IDEO design thinking methods were introduced along with a set of tools and activities that educators can implement directly into their classes. This approach can help schools directly adopt a creative thinking model, which may change students’ thinking to a more creative and innovative approach, resulting in a new generation geared toward solving world problems instead of making them.

5 Steps to Turn Your Creativity into a Successful Design Business

by Rafiq Elmansy · 02/23/2016

In today’s challenging economy, it’s harder to get a job as a designer in a company. Therefore, I tell my students to open their minds to different business models that they can conquer using their talent and education in design, such as working as a freelance designer or establishing design start-ups. Many of today’s big companies, such as Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, IKEA, and Lego, started as start-ups or individual businesses. However, the majority of design schools lack the education of design business and how to think in design from a business and managerial perspective, which reflects on the students’ acquired skills. Many designers who attempted to start their own businesses failed due to business-related factors rather than design or creative-related factors.
Navigate through design websites such as Coroflot, Behance, and others. There are thousands of prototypes and creative ideas that never leave the studio to transform into a real product. Many factors involve a design failure or an inability to see the light as a product that drive profits for their owners. Observing these experiments and projects, we can highlight five points that can contribute to converting design talent—or even a hobby—into a successful business as described below.

Step 1: Think of it as a Business

The moment you start to think about building your own design business as a freelancer or a start-up, you are taking yourself from being a designer and putting yourself in the shoes of a businessman or a manager analyzing your business. At this point, the ideas you fall in love with while doing your creative art of design project will be seen from a totally different perspective. You will start to judge the ideas from a pure business and innovation point of view to determine if they if they are marketable or not.
You need to analyze the market, observe other competitors or potential competitors, and learn about their products, branding, and how they sell these products to their consumers. Ask yourself questions. Is it a good product? Is it easy to use? This will let you build empathic understanding for the similar product. Then, you need to put together ideas about the characteristics of your business. While many designers don’t have business education as highlighted earlier, there are handy tools that allow you to visualize your business, such as the Business Canvas Model we highlighted in a previous article, Download Our Free Business Model Canvas Template.

The business model canvas template

This tool allows you to analyze your business or build its characteristics based on the target consumer segment, proposed value, marketing channels, communication with the consumer, suggested revenue stream, cost structure, and others.

Step 2: Brand Your Business

Once you build a business plan for your design business, this plan should reflect on the product or the business identity through a unique and representative brand. While many design schools teach branding, this can be a strong point for designers if they can implement it to support their business. The brand reflects not only on the visual elements, such as logos and business identity, but it also determines the characteristics of the marketing plan used to advertise and promote the business through the suggested channel in the business canvas above.
At this stage, your design skills merge with your understanding of the market and the business in order to form a brand that can stand out of the crowd and describe your business to consumers.

Step 3: Choose a Design Process to Follow

In order to market a successful product, consumers should be placed in the heart of the development process. This can’t be achieved without a design process that ensures that consumers are targeted during every stage of the development process, starting from initiating the idea, building the prototype, and moving to delivering the product and collecting feedback from the consumer. Companies like Apple, IBM, IKEA, and others tend to adopt design thinking process models to achieve this goal. The good news is that these models can be deployed in different sized companies, including your own start-up.

The Design Council double diamond process (Source: Design Council)

There are many design thinking process models to use in your business, including the Stanford d.School design thinking model, Design Council double diamond model, and recently, IBM stablished their very easy to learn and adopt model that we covered here: IBM Design Thinking Model: A Shift Toward Big Enterprises. Most design process models follow general characteristics to organize the flow of the development process around consumer needs and expectations. You need to choose the model that suits your business scale and plan.

Step 4: Find Funding for Your Business

One of the major challenging barriers facing designers when they start thinking about their own business is how they are going to fund it and cover the costs related to production, marketing, and HR. In recent years, many funding models have been presented as solutions for start-ups and small companies to fund their innovative projects, such as crowd-funding websites like Kickstarter, angel investment, business incubators, venture capital, and others. You can find details about each funding model in 8 Tips to Finance Your Design Business.
During business model development, designers need to determine the funding resources for their business. Each resource may fit a specific business rather than the other. Some models are easier to afford, such as Kickstarter crowd-funding and loans, while it may be hard to find a local investor or build a successful partnership.

Step 5: Build a Reliable Team

In competing markets, it is no longer an option to work alone unless you have the business qualifications, including assets, experience, and talent. Many designers may lack the talent to manage a business themselves or to do specific tasks such as marketing and business relationships. You can easily fulfill this need by hiring the right team in your start-up. The team may work based on a preset salary or as part of a partnership. However, it is important to find the right team members to join your league.
You can search between your friends, local communities, or even through online freelance websites to build a team that can help you fulfill the experience required to start a successful business. For example, if you are a good designer with no experience in coding, you can easily hire a developer to handle this part of the development instead of wasting your time trying to learn coding from scratch.

In sum, it isn’t easy to find a design job in this current economy, but you can start your own business as a freelance designer or run a design company if you know the right tools for building a successful business. While most design schools lack the education of the business side of design, observing both successful and failed companies teaches us lessons and inspires us to take steps to creating a design business. These steps include building a business plan, building a business band, relaying on a design process, finding project funding, and depending on a reliable team. Achieving these steps can contribute to leading your business to success, even if you don’t have previous business experience or education.

10 Tips to Achieve Creativity and Innovation in Education

10 Tips to Achieve Creativity and Innovation in Education

by Rafiq Elmansy · 04/16/2015
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Our current world is evolving more rapidly than the capacity of any existing education system. The challenge of learning is getting even harder for the next generations. We do not have a prediction of how tomorrow will look like, but we know that flexible process models are able to face the changes comparing with fixed-style models; we know that the ability to adapt helped our ancestors to survive on this planet for about six million years.

This leads us to the question; what is the most important skill to teach our kids in schools? The answer:  How to build creative and innovative minds that can adapt and face future unpredictable challenges. Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page provide successful examples of how adopting innovation in education can help in building creativity and better abilities in order  to solve problems.

Many governments adopt the policy of free basic education, a large base of students are privileged by this policy to learn. These policies have very wide range of standards, quality and infrastructure. Therefore, a focus strategy on the essential skills should be implemented. These skills include the following:

    Think creatively in order to compete in the market
    Find innovative solutions for existing and future problems
    The ability to evaluate current status and find better alternatives if needed

innovation in education

Design thinking for kids at ZURB Command Center (Source: ZURB)

In order to achieve the above, we need to apply creative and innovative strategies in education with a particular focus on the basic kid’s education. While education systems are varying in their capability to implement creative teaching methods and curricula, a teacher can easily adapt their teaching methods towards more creative thinking through the following tips:
Encourage children to find the answer

It is also called the Pestalozzi method. Unlike the ordinary models of giving the direct answers for questions, this method aims to encourage students to find the answers on their own. It helps the students to learn how to observe, imagine, judge and reasoning. One of the successful examples of applying this method is Albert Einstein.
Children learn, teachers observe

The current educational system depends on teacher-driven lessons, where the teacher leads the class leaving no space for students to self-develop their skills and capabilities to innovate. The Montessori method aims to give a space of students to self-learning while the teachers observe the progress. One of the successful examples of using this method is Google founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

CIRI-CIRI ANAK CERDAS
 

Setiap orangtua selalu ingin mempunyai anak yang cerdas. Banyak orangtua melakukan berbagai macam usaha demi membuat anaknya menjadi lebih cerdas. Pada dasarnya perkembangan intelektual atau kognitif adalah aspek perkembangan pikiran. Bagian ini berperan penting terhadap pembentukan mental, pengambilan keputusan, penyelesaian masalah, bahasa, dan ingatan seorang anak. Perkembangan intelektual inilah yang kerap kali dihubungkan dengan kecerdasan anak.

Biasanya seorang anak baru bisa dikatakan cerdas ketika mereka telah memasuki usia sekolah. Meskipun demikian, ada beberapa ciri yang dapat anda ketahui apakah anak anda termasuk anak yang cerdas. Berikut ini adalah ciri-ciri anak cerdas

CARA DAFTAR / REGISTRASI ANGGOTA BARU PGRI VIA ONLINE, UPDATE / EDIT DATA KEANGGOTAAN SERTA MUTASI BAGI YANG SUDAH TERDAFTAR

Alhamdulillaah…, bagi Rekan-rekan guru yang belum terdaftar di PGRI (Persatuan Guru Republik Indonesia), mulai saat ini, pada laman web PGRI telah dapat dilakukan registrasi / pendaftaran anggota baru bagi seluruh guru di Indonesia yang belum terdaftar ataupun belum memiliki NPA (Nomor Pokok Anggota) PGRI secara online via internet.

Untuk langkah pertama, silahkan kunjungi laman www.pgri.or.id, dan untuk selanjutnya pilih pada tab menu “Registrasi” dan atau dapat juga klik pada gambar terkait “Registrasi Online Anggota PGRI”, setelah itu akan muncul beberapa tombol baik untuk pendaftaran baru, update / edit data keanggotaan (bagi yang sudah terdaftar), serta mutasi tempat tugas.