Design Thinking & basic skills provision
What is ‘Design Thinking Approach’ about?
An increasing number of professions began to apply the so-called Design Thinking concept for their fields of operation and there has been a rich gallery of online courses addressing the fundamental elements of Design Thinking for a wide range of professionals from creative, design, customer experience, engineering, innovation, product, R&D, strategy, and UX, etc.
"Design Thinking is an iterative process in which we seek to understand the user, Challenge Assumptions, and redefine problems in an attempt to identify alternative strategies and solutions that might not be instantly apparent with our initial level of understanding. At the same time, Design Thinking provides a solution-based approach to solving problems. It is a way of thinking and working as well as a collection of hands-on methods."
Source: Interaction Design Foundation
The different stages of Design Thinking were first described by Nobel Prize laureate Herbert Simon in The Sciences of the Artificial in 1969. Later, several other institutions, experts have developed their own take of these stages. In the framework of this course, we are using IDEO’s Design Thinking for Educators as they have applied a specific focus on education. IDEO published a toolkit and a workbook containing practical, hands-on activities for schools, teaching communities and educators to plan curriculum, design the physical environment for learning, develop tools and processes for staff and systemic solutions to education institutions. In their concept, the five stages are presented as follows:
Discovery
It is about understanding the challenges that one faces, gathering information about the problem through research and collecting sources of inspirations through looking at analogous initiatives.
Interpretation
This phase encompasses the creative and contemplative processes that help us find the meaning and turn insights into practical opportunities through story-telling and other hands-on activities.
Ideation
This stage is dedicated to the development of new ideas that can help designers overcome the challenge(s) at hand. The phase is divided into 2 main phases: generating ideas and refining ideas.
Experimentation
This is the step where the refined and evaluated ideas are turned into practice by developing a prototype. This is a stage that is widely shared with others in the design team to come up with the most authentic and efficient prototype that is based on the preliminary research, needs analysis and ideation process. Important to this stage is the feedback collected by the designers to test assumptions and refine the prototype.
Evolution
Evolution implies monitoring our prototype on the long run i.e. planning further design steps, if necessary, communicating with an even wider circle of stakeholders and documenting progress. In conclusion, this is about making our design as sustainable and efficient as possible by continuous monitoring.
In the framework for the current online course, the 5 stages are discussed through the course’s duration.
How does Design Thinking relate to basic skills provision?
The question may arise: Why do we need Design Thinking in developing and implementing basic skills programs for adults? The main reason behind connecting the two notions is that developing basic skills with adult learners is a rather complex process that requires a strong focus on individual learning needs, flexible learning options implemented in a context that is familiar to the learners (e.g., at work, at home etc) and quite often successful basic skills programs are those that involve adult learners in the process of planning their learning path. These characteristics of adult basic skills programs tend not to be optional choices for designers, but rather very influential success factors.
Design Thinking represents a well-structured approach that allows for sharing the planning process with co-instructors and educators. It puts a strong emphasis on problem-based solutions, in other words, it sets out from the challenge(s) and designs the solution around issues that are identified at the start.
What to expect in this course?
In the framework of this course, participants will be introduced to the concept of Design Thinking and its stages (based on IDEO’s toolkits) to reflect on the planning process through which institutions offering training for adults come up with basic skills programs.
These design steps will then be discussed by introducing relevant case studies that can all enhance the resilience of adults with basic skills needs. Having sufficient basic skills seems to be a strong pre-requisite for socially inclusive and innovating societies. The stake seems especially high when considering the current global processes (environmental and health crisis, digitalisation) that all transform our everyday lives immensely. This transformation, however, does not affect everyone to the same extent. Those adults who lack the necessary skills to read and write, calculate and to use digital solutions are becoming more and more exposed to marginalisation, and social exclusion. The term ‘resilience’ is often used to express the capacity of adults with low qualifications and basic skills challenges to adapt to these innovation- or crisis-led changes.
You can learn more about the link between adult basic skills provision and enhancing citizens’ resilience by listening to the following podcast by EBSN on EPALE. EBSN member Learning and Work Institute, the National Adult Literacy Agency and the German Adult Education Association (DVV) presents their activities and experiences that impact may resilience of adults.
Without the intention to represent the Design Thinking stages explicitly in the content of this course, chapter 1 is dedicated to Discovery and Interpretation; chapter 2 is for Ideation and Experimentation; chapter 3 will be about Evolution.
The selection of case studies and references to Design Thinking is based on experts’ observations and experiences who work in the fields. This does nonetheless not mean that our approach to applying Design Thinking to developing basic skills would be the only viable approach. This course presents one potential perspective to planning.