Design Thinking in Various Sectors

I. Health sector
Applying Design Thinking to health care could enhance innovation, efficiency, and effectiveness
by increasing focus on patient and provider needs. The objective of this review is to determine
how Design Thinking has been used in health care and whether it is effective.

Health care systems require continuous innovation to meet the needs of patients and providers
(1,2). However, these stakeholders are not always considered when new interventions or system
processes are designed, which results in products that remain unused because they do not
account for human context, need, or fallibility (3, 4). This approach also likely contributes to the
decades-long gaps between intervention development and implementation (5). Design Thinking
offers a way to close that gap by helping investigators incorporate user needs and feedback
throughout the development process.
Design Thinking is an approach that prioritizes developing empathy for users, working in
collaborative multidisciplinary teams, and using “action-oriented rapid prototyping” of solutions
(2,6). It is an iterative process, with innovation emerging only after cycling through several
rounds of ideation, prototyping, and testing, which distinguishes it from the traditional linear and
often top-down approach to health intervention design (1,2,4). Design Thinking has been used
across sectors to solve complex problems, including the redesign of an elementary school
curriculum to enhance student engagement (7), and in domains such as aviation (8) that, like
health care, have high levels of risk. Design Thinking is similar to both “user-centered design”
and “human-centered design,” which are both referred to as “Design Thinking” in this article.

Over the past few years, design thinking has gained popularity for driving innovation for
the world’s leading businesses. The beauty of this methodology is that it’s empathy-
driven and intentionally cross-functional--tenets that are sorely needed in the siloed
healthcare industry.

Yet, healthcare is one of the last frontiers to embrace this human-centered approach to
defining and solving problems--which is where the Design Institute for Health comes in.
The first-of-its-kind institute was founded in 2015 as a unique collaboration between the
Dell Medical School and the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.
Led by senior execs formerly from IDEO, the Institute aspires to generate fresh systemic
approaches and large-scale transformation in healthcare through design.

We enjoyed an insightful conversation with Lucas Artusi, Systems Designer at the

Institute, to learn about the groundbreaking work that happens when a medical school
and fine arts college join forces with designers, makers, and thinkers...

Applying Design Thinking to Schizophrenia Care

With a deep expertise and passion for working with individuals with schizophrenia, Danielle
Schlosser wanted to change the way we think about schizophrenia treatment. While working
toward this goal at the University of California San Francisco, she became curious about the
design thinking approach and how IDEO may be able to help.

Shortly after meeting Silvia and her team at IDEO, Danielle was surprised by the types questions
they asked and the style of their approach. “The design researchers asked me so many questions
that made me think differently about a problem I’d been thinking about for a really long time. I
loved being challenged with new ideas in a space that I’d thought I was an expert already.”
An early insight came for Danielle when Silvia conducted her first interview of a schizophrenia
patient. “She didn’t use clinical terms during the interview and she connected so well with the
patient, putting him at ease and getting him to open up and express himself.” Danielle realized
that Silvia was anticipating talking to a person while she herself was anticipating talking to a
patient. “I realized that the providers in the clinical system itself are part of the problem because
I was not seeing my patient as a person first. This was tough for me to admit to myself.”

As a result of the work between UCSF and IDEO, Danielle and Silvia’s team created Prime—an
app that helps individuals with schizophrenia achieve goals and engage with others for support.
The aim is to improve quality of life and alleviate hard-to-treat symptoms within this population,
and so far the early trial results are promising.

Mindset Shifts in Healthcare

Danielle and Silvia mentioned three mindset shifts that are currently moving
healthcare in a more human-centered direction.

1. Shifts to Value-based Care

Healthcare is moving beyond the walls of hospitals and into communities and the
role of healthcare providers is shifting. We’re seeing new questions like, what do
we do about loneliness; as it turns out loneliness is as much of a killer as smoking
and diabetes. These types of questions lead to a better understanding of patients
and creating whole ecosystems of care.

Dahlia Campus in Denver is a great example of healthcare adapting to the needs of

the community. It’s an integrative health center in a neighborhood with limited
access to healthy food and resources. Before opening, Dahlia sought insight from
the community around what would help them improve their health. They've
focused on building around the needs of the community and thoughtfully
measuring the impact of their approach.

2. Shift from Being Reactive to Proactive

Everyone is empowered to get to know their bodies and their health before
anything is wrong with them. Health is becoming this process of self-exploration,
which creates entry points for people into healthcare offerings. We’re seeing a shift
from healthcare to consumer products that can help us better understand who we
are.
Examples of these consumer products include 23andMe, Color Genomics, and
uBiome.

3. Balance High Regulation with Experimentation

Privacy and risk committees often block tools out of security controls. But there’s
opportunity to invite people to be fully informed about the choices they make in
terms of the technology they use and give them the choice to opt into the tools. We
should have high standards of privacy and make sure our tools are secure, but
there’s still room to experiment and use informed consent to prototype tools that
may not be ready for primetime yet.

Apply Design Thinking to Your Healthcare Challenges

Start by defining the problem you’re trying to solve early. Before moving toward
solutions, spend time gaining a deeper understanding of the needs of the people
you’re serving. Find the pockets of creative work happening out in the field, go
out, and get inspired; get in context with people.

Once you have an understanding of the people you’re serving, start ideating.
Brainstorm, what might be some solutions; what might be some ways of
approaching this? With a long list of things to try, you’ll feel more comfortable
experimenting and failing, knowing that you have many more ideas. The idea isn’t
to succeed immediately but to learn as much as possible.

Applying design thinking to the healthcare-consumer experience

Many healthcare organizations are struggling to retain customers, given archaic

service designs and processes. Consumers have grown accustomed to the personal
attention and convenience they find in other industries, such as retail and
hospitality, and often lack a similar experience in healthcare.

How would a design-thinking approach help a health plan tackle the challenges of
managing customer experience? Let’s break it down through the four-pronged
approach:
Empathy. A major advantage of design thinking compared with other process-
improvement methodologies is that it removes assumptions from the equation by
incorporating perspectives and experiences from a diverse group of stakeholders. A
fundamental component of design thinking is empathy, the ability to understand
the feeling of others.

The key output of the “empathetic stage” is the crafting of a problem statement that
is based on a holistic view of the stated and the unstated needs — as well as the
asked and unasked questions — of the customer.

Consider population health programs, which are designed to solve for identified
care gaps as part of efforts to reduce costs and improve outcomes. These programs
traditionally apply economic and medical lenses and filters as part of the problem-
solving process. But from a user’s perspective, medical issues generally are less of
an impediment to a good outcome compared with living conditions and
socioeconomic barriers.

A good design-thinking approach thus starts with understanding actual user stories
from among a diverse population, rather than merely considering statistical data.

Multidisciplinary thinking. Design thinking depends on the diversity and quantity

of the ideas gathered from multiple ideation sessions involving people directly and
indirectly associated with the issue at hand. The perspective gleaned from each role
is one piece in a much larger puzzle.

The central output of the multidisciplinary-thinking stage is to establish the

framework for a broad solution design. This framework allows the designers to
push boundaries and embrace possibilities.

For example, a robust care management design should account for user examples
from patients/members. Likewise, by learning about regulatory compliance
requirements from experts in that field, a health plan’s care management teams and
third-party community partners can help in defining solutions that address key
sticking points and in determining and prioritizing “must haves” vs. “nice to
haves.”
Rapid solutions deployment. The first two prongs of design thinking are human-
centered, leveraging empathy and collective brainpower to dissect and solve for
complex problems. The third aspect entails quickly putting tailored solutions to
work.

To improve member service by addressing social determinants of health, for

example, a health plan’s priority, based on an assessment of social and economic
barriers, may be to initially make available Uber-style medical transportation
followed by home-based services such as cleaning and daycare support.

The critical component is rapid assessment with defined metrics. A well-designed

process should take no more than one quarter to assess effectiveness.

Continual improvement. Success with design thinking relies on continually

assessing progress and benchmarking results, while remaining agile to adjust for
unforeseen challenges. This final step is crucial to making improvements in
successive iterations based on stakeholder and consumer feedback.

To continue with the example of the population health initiative, the solution might
incorporate a predictive analytics model to help the health plan pinpoint patients
who need case management and outreach that extends beyond healthcare settings.
The solutions team should periodically update the analytics model based on the
latest research and evidence on treatment pathways.

Such rigor allows the model to be laser-focused on identifying and customizing

treatment plans, a key aspect of optimizing the customer experience.

How Design Thinking in Healthcare Can Improve Patient Experience

According to the American Hospital Association, an overwhelming majority of

hospital executives consider technological innovation a centerpiece of their long-
term organizational goals, particularly as it pertains to solving complex problems
and meeting the needs of consumers.

However, if you are a regular attendee of healthcare tradeshows, you may have
noticed that innovations come and go while the problems they were intended to
solve remain as intractable as ever. Despite a robust market for healthcare
innovation, concrete successes are astonishingly elusive. Studies vary, but health
IT failure-rate estimates range from 40% to more than 70%.

Clearly, there is a significant gap between the desired goals an organization places
on an innovation and actual outcomes. However, the cause of that gap is not due to
a lack of innovation, but a lack of perspective. Perhaps we are placing too much
emphasis on the technology or service, and not enough on how it should be applied
or what value users will get from it.

In short, we may need to rethink our approach to problem-solving in a way that

places a specific technology or services in a larger, multi-dimensional context.
Design thinking is one such approach.

The concept has been kicking around since the mid-1960s, but design thinking has
only recently emerged as an increasingly appealing approach for fueling
innovation. Industries as diverse as gaming, transportation, and consumer services
apply design-thinking strategies to organizational goals and problem-solving.
Healthcare can also benefit from design thinking, especially as the industry shifts
from volume- to value-based care and both payers and providers work to better
meet the evolving needs of consumers.

But before we discuss how design thinking can be applied in healthcare, it would
be useful to understand the concept itself.

Design Thinking, Defined

Design thinking is a process used to solve complex problems. However, unlike

other approaches, such as quality improvement or process analysis, design thinking
is multi-dimensional, iterative and human-centered. Whereas a quality
improvement initiative may be narrow in scope, focus, and outcomes, a design
thinking process will influence outcomes across an entire organization.

Design thinking accomplishes this with a three-pronged approach to problem-

solving: empathy, multi-disciplinary thinking and rapid, iterative solutions
deployment.
Let’s address each concept in detail, using customer experience management as an
example because it’s a common focus of both provider organizations and health
plans.

Design Thinking, Applied

Employers, hospitals and health plans are all struggling to retain customers with
archaic service technologies and processes. Nearly all of these consumers have
grown accustomed to the personal and intuitive attention brought to them by other
industries, such as retail, hospitality, travel, and finance, and yet find themselves
lacking a similar experience in the healthcare arena.

It’s not the lack of technological innovation as much as the ability to see beyond
the realm of possibilities to drive disruptive, customer-centric experience
management.

How would a design thinking approach tackle the complex challenges such as
managing customer experience? Let’s break it down through the three-pronged
approach:

1. Empathy. A major advantage design thinking has over other process

improvement methodologies is that is removed assumptions from the equation by
incorporating perspectives and experiences from a diverse group of stakeholders. A
fundamental ingredient of design thinking is ‘empathy,’ the ability to share and
understand the feeling of others. The ability to identify with the target audience
and be able to uncover needs that people have—whether or not they are aware of
those needs—can guide innovation efforts, identify the right users to design for and
discover the emotions that guide behaviors.

In this case, the design thinking approach will allow the designers to observe,
engage and immerse in the customers’ current and future needs that will help them
isolate their own emotions and be able to define the problem on behalf of the
audience.
The key output of the “empathetic stage” is to be able to articulate the problem
statement based on a holistic view of the stated and the unstated needs & the asked
and unasked questions.

2. Multi-disciplinary thinking. Let’s go back to that tradeshow exhibit hall. Pick

any solution displayed in any booth. The contents of the box you are holding in
your hands are the result of the input of dozens of experts in multiple disciplines,
including engineers, clinicians, marketers, designers, and countless others.
Applying design thinking is dependent on the diversity and quantity of the ideas
gathered from several ideation sessions, by people directly and indirectly
associated with that department.

In our example, think of the number of people linked to customer experience

management: patients/health plan members, call agents, brokers, clinicians, front-
desk administrators, back-office IT support and vendors, just to name a few. The
perspective gleaned from each role is one piece in a much larger puzzle. Every
input is a possible pain point understood, and understanding the entire experience
brings an organization closer to creating the desired outcomes.

The most important output of the multi-disciplinary thinking is to be able to define

the solution with a broad solution space. The allows the thinkers to push
boundaries and embrace the art of possibilities by straddling the realms of
regulatory barriers, current and future trends, behavioral and demographic shifts
and metrics and measures of success. For example, in this case, looking beyond the
current state of data exchange barriers to provide personalized healthcare across
channel partners through intelligent management technology to drive the “single
source of truth” will have a very significant impact on customer experience.

3. Rapid solutions deployment. The first two prongs of design thinking are very
human-centered, leveraging empathy and collective brainpower to dissect complex
problems, as well as identify the potential challenges of meeting organizational
goals. The third aspect of design thinking is quickly putting tailored solutions to
work, testing their efficacy and making necessary improvements in successive
iterations based on stakeholder and consumer feedback.
For example a prototype of a mobile app designed to improve healthcare
experience to an employee-driven through concierge solutions can be deployed in a
group of cohorts and the data from the initial deployment will then be used to
refine experience over a defined period of time The key outcome is to ‘fail fast”
and fix and learn even faster.

The right partner can bring design thinking expertise and offer best practices. As a
means to the design thinking end, the best service providers drive genuine
collaboration and new ideas. There is a solid foundation of partnership trust,
transparency, and accountability to work from.

By incorporating design thinking concepts, healthcare has an opportunity to not

disintegrate in the face of today’s disruption, and instead break archaic and legacy
thinking and move the bar on consumer experience.

Tensions when using Design Thinking in health care

In their text and through our analysis, the studies included in this review show
several challenges to consider when applying Design Thinking to health care. First,
there is the possibility of tension between what users want and what providers and
researchers believe to be beneficial based on research and expertise (49). Whereas
in industry, where an innovation designer may prioritize customers’ preferences to
maximize profits, in health care a balance must be struck between creating
interventions that are effective and sufficiently palatable and feasible so that they
will be used by providers and patients.

Second, tension may exist between the needs assessment, a fundamental step of
Design Thinking, and existing literature and evidence base for some conditions.
That is, given the evidence, intervention developers may not be willing or see it
necessary to conduct their own needs assessment using observation or interview
strategies or to brainstorm creative solutions. Indeed, 7 of the studies included in
this review reported literature reviews, and possibly expert consultation, as their
only needs assessment steps, and none reported brainstorming. One way to
overcome this tension is to view evidence as a set of design constraints in which
needs assessment, brainstorming, ideation, and prototyping should occur.
A third possible tension relates to balancing the Design Thinking approach of
understanding the narrative of outliers with traditional health research methods that
prioritize statistics on large samples to produce generalizable results. Conclusions
drawn from small user samples should be tested in broader populations to ensure
their applicability. Mixed-methods approaches that use both strategies may reduce
this tension. For example, a research team that uses a qualitative Design Thinking
approach early in the research process (eg, user observations, focus groups, and
usability tests with small groups of target users) may be able to generate insights
into the key needs of the target population. This approach may also find ways to
address these needs, and subsequent quantitative testing of the developed
interventions in broader samples will allow the group to evaluate whether their
assumptions generalize to the broader population, and the intervention will be
more effective as a result.

Fourth, there is inherent tension between a central philosophy of the prototyping

process in Design Thinking — to rapidly move through low-fidelity then high-
fidelity iterations to fail early and often to more quickly reach a better design (50)
— and the risk of serious negative outcomes due to health care failures (eg, death).
Many of the studies did not use low-fidelity prototyping or multiple rapid
iterations, perhaps because of this tension. However, although there may be some
reluctance to experiment with low-fidelity prototypes in health care where
morbidity and mortality are at stake, there are low-stakes approaches to low-
fidelity prototyping that may minimize risk and improve the pace of innovation
(eg, storyboards to illustrate a new clinic process).
 II. Finance sector

DESIGN THINKING: THE NEW DNA OF THE FINANCIAL SECTOR

 III. Design Thinking - Education Sector

One domain in which design thinking finds a huge application is the education
sector. These days, educators are using design thinking extensively to improve the
quality of education in schools, especially in the kindergarten classes. Design
thinking has been used in schools to upgrade the curriculum, or to redesign the
student spaces or to make the entire experience of the students worthwhile.
Design thinking helps the school administrators to solve institution-based
problems, helps in making the curriculum more valuable to the students and to
engender design thinking skills in students as well.
REDLab Group
Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education has a REDLab group which
conducts research on how to apply design thinking in kindergarten, 1st to
12th grade, secondary and post-secondary academic settings. The REDLab group
has teamed up with Hasso Plattner Institute to create Hasso Plattner Design
Thinking Research Program, which works for applying rigorous academic
methods to understand the reasons behind the success and failure of design
thinking programs.
In schools, students normally attempt exams in the form of question-answers based
test, fill in the blanks or match case type of questions. All these don’t prepare the
students for a society that is complex and has much more to it than plain facts.

Tools at Schools

The Tools at Schools group once conducted an activity with the 8th grade students
in The School at Columbia University. The activity included redesigning a locker,
chair or desk to suit the requirements of 21st century students. Design thinking was
applied in this activity and the results were displayed in International
Contemporary Furniture Fair. Design thinking also helps the pupils to learn how to
work collaboratively in a team.

Degrees and Certification in Design Thinking

Design thinking has become so popular in the education sector that Radford
University has begun offering a Master of Fine Arts degree in design thinking. It is
an online degree emphasizing of design principles and design methodologies.
The Victoria-Cedar Alliance in Singapore offers a six-year Imagineering Program.
This program offers an opportunity for the students to gain a deeper understanding
of social issues, develop empathy and work to improve the lives of fellow human
beings.

In education, design thinking helps the students to understand that they can create
their own future by borrowing frameworks from other areas. This enables them to
design their own experiences and participation.

Design thinking also helps in pedagogy. Teachers find it easy to find solutions by
learning from the experiences of others, rather than just reading contents of a book.
The collaborative activities help the teachers to teach the concepts in a better
fashion to the kids.

Design Thinking And Its Need In Contemporary Education

‘We are in a century where technology has seeped in all parts of our life. With
increased mobility, instant communication, easy access and the world-wide web,
we are often placed in unknown situations that require immediate analysis and
decision making. Traditional approaches often seem ineffective in the new context
and we require new tools and methods to solve a given problem’.

The above scenario holds true for every profession- be it science, research,
business, etc. The field of education is no different. Being a teacher myself and
having taught in a secondary school for a few years, I can easily say that teachers
face a lot of complex problems and challenges that need to be tackled differently
and more systematically. Be it with regards to curriculum designing, lesson
planning, or enabling independent learning environment, the teaching-learning
process requires a human-centered, problem – solving approach to develop
different skills and bring creativity and innovation in both students and teachers.
One approach that might seem useful in this context is ‘Design Thinking’.

I recently attended an experiential session facilitated by Pearson India that talked

about Design Thinking. The event was conducted in Delhi, and I got the
opportunity to attend it online and understand how it can be applied in various
professions. The session marked the presence of Vikas Singh, Managing Director
of Pearson India, Varun Dhamija, Vice President- Pearson Professional Programs
and Joseph A Hopper, who is trained in Design Thinking and is the head of
learning programs at the Pearson group.

Why Design Thinking in Education

Unlike the traditional approach to teaching and learning, design thinking

encourages learners to take an inquiry stance and think divergently. In contrast to a
purely analytical approach, this involves more structured steps like identifying and
understanding the challenges , collecting information, generating potential
solutions, experimenting and refining ideas, testing solutions and improving the
same through feedbacks. It is an iterative process, circular in nature. When applied
in pedagogy, such a method stimulates idea generation, enhances creativity and
leads to ‘out of the box’ thinking and innovation in students.

The design process is quite impactful and can be implemented while designing a
curriculum or course framework. Teachers can create teaching learning aids and
material based on the principles of design thinking. This may help them plan
innovative tasks that would develop problem-solving skills in student.

Since design thinking is a social process and involves interactions and discussions
among peers, it can enable highly collaborative activities in and outside the
classroom. Design-based projects allow students to work in groups and enhance
team working, communication and presentation skills. Students learn to express
their opinions and listen to other’s opinions, be receptive to untraditional ideas
thereby welcoming innovation. Such an approach equips students for life thereby
making them solve their everyday problems in a creative and innovative manner.

The field of education has to be modernized at every level and design thinking can
be proved as a very useful tool to develop the right skills in students as needed in
the twenty first century. It affirms experimentation, processing information by
taking into consideration the real world, people’s experiences and feedback and
applying creativity, critical thinking and communication. Such an approach
encourages curiosity, constructiveness and reflexivity in learners.
Related Approaches

To understand the place design thinking occupies in the scholarly community, it is

essential to map its interconnections to fields of inquiry and communities of
practice with similar methods, goals or areas of applications.

Participatory Design is an approach that involves the users of a product early on

in the development process. Related to the theoretical framework of activity
theory, participatory design techniques expose the intricate mix of activities users
engage in, reflecting the complexity, flexibility, and social nature of each activity
(Kaptelinin & Nardi, 2012). Instead of being a research subject, people are given
influence and room for informing, ideating, and conceptualizing in the early stages
of the design process (Sanders & Stappers, 2008). As design thinking typically
highlights user-centered design and empathy, the tradition of participatory design
plays a significant role in understanding design thinking, particularly as it applies
to HCI-related projects and the instructional design of educational technology (cf.
Panke, Allen, & McAvinchey, 2014; Panke, 2016; Fabri, Andrews, & Pukki,
2016).

Bricolage (sometimes referred to as tinkering) means to engage in a dialogue with

a heterogeneous collection of materials and tools, in which items are repurposed
and rearranged to solve a problem (Sharples et al., 2014). Bricolage comprises
tools and artifacts that were accumulated over time. This may include material that
was collected without any specific purpose, and picked up simply because it might
be useful someday; as well as outcomes, products or “leftovers” from other
projects. The typical bricolage setting is one of constant remix: Its tools and
artifacts are not limited to one single use, nor does the user need specialized
expertise to adapt and deploy them. Bricolage does not necessitate having a clear
end in sight. On the contrary, it requires the stakeholders to be open and start with
a vaguely defined idea. This characterization aligns with the open-ended nature of
design thinking, and indeed, the interconnectedness of both concepts has been
explored in the literature on designerly thinking (Louridas, 1999).

Making is characterized by a specific mindset geared towards tinkering with

confidence: Makers understand that it takes time and effort to build something, and
do not view a lack of success as a failure (Vaughn, 2018). “Design thinking, design
process, and the value of making things by hand have gained much popular interest
in recent years. The renewed interest in making is due in part to the DIY (do-
ityourself) movement and the Maker Faire phenomenon, which offer enthusiasts of
many stripes the opportunity to exercise their creative capacities” (Renard, 2014, p.
415). According to Brown (2018), the inclusivity of making is strongly
characteristic of its rise as a diverse movement of space and belonging. Maker-
culture in community and library spans the potential chasm between traditional
skills such as crafting and knitting, preserving and upcycling, adjacent
to technology and maker expos to learn coding, programming and robotics (Jordan
& Lande, 2016). Design thinking and making share elements of rapid prototyping
and testing a design, as well as iterating on a design across multiple revisions.
Despite these similarities, Vaughn (2018) stresses that they form two distinct
discourses. Design thinking and making are connected in multiple ways: First,
makerspaces are informal learning spaces in which design thinking activities can
be conducted. (2) Design thinking as a mindset is frequently conceptualized
similarly to the making mindset. (3) Design thinking and making share similar
processes. (4) Design thinking is often conceptualized as part of making: “The
hands-on, learning-by-doing experiences afforded by makerspaces implicitly
require a design approach to problem solving” (Bowler, 2014, p. 60). Jordan and
Lande (2016) describe this as “additive innovations”.

LEGO Serious Play (LSP) is a collaborative, creative method that uses LEGO
blocks and figures to develop scenarios for organizational development, conflict
resolution or web design (Cantoni, Marchiori, Faré, Botturi, & Bolchini, 2009).
The method aims at improving group problem solving, shared learning, listening
and collaborating by making and creating. In a typical serious play session,
participants start with a few warm-up exercises to learn how to stimulate different
types of imagination, by using LEGO constructions as metaphors for the real
world. The serious play process results in constructions of how individuals
perceive their entire organization, and ultimately, of how a particular strategic
challenge should be dealt with (Roos & Grey, 2004). A variety of design thinking
use cases involve LEGO bricks (cf. Jensen, Seager, & Cook-Davis, 2018; Panke et
al., 2014; Panke 2016). Beyond the physical objects, design thinking and LSP
share the creed that playful activities can have serious outcomes and inform
strategic decisions.
What is the potential of design thinking for education?

What are the traits and effects of design thinking that make it particularly fruitful
for education? In other words: Why are educators excited about design thinking in
the first place? This is a crucial question, because the debate about whether or not
design thinking is effective in education depends upon clarity as to what the goals
are. It is important to distinguish between breaking down the learning outcomes of
teaching design thinking and the outcomes of embedding design thinking in
educational settings. As Taheri et al. (2016) stated, “it is time to raise the question:
What people learn as a result of taking part in a design thinking training? What are
the expected learning outcomes of design thinking?” (Taheri et al., 2016, p. 2).
This literature review aims at capturing and clustering varied learning outcomes
beyond becoming a design thinker. I approached this goal by reviewing (1)
reflections of the nature/history/ scope of design thinking and “designerly
thinking”, (2) empirical studies of the design thinking process, (3) case studies of
design thinking in education. The results indicate clearly that various
characteristics of the design thinking process and mindset align with different
educational goals. There is no single rationale for using design thinking in
education. Instead, different settings will provide specific advantages.

Encouraging Tacit Experiences: Jacobs (2016) discussed how constructing of

physical analogues can be productive for strategy work by turning issues into
“embodied metaphors”. These concrete artifacts can then spark debate from a
variety of perspectives. Design thinking encourages participants to think with their
hands and bodies. As Jacobs (2016) put it: “if the hand is a window on to the mind,
how can we better involve manual practice in the development of strategy?”
(Jacobs 2016, p. 133). As Groth (2017) pointed out, design processes include
embodied knowledge even in the planning stage, since designers need to create
mental images of the physical objects they intend to create. Making may be seen as
a way of negotiating meaning through interaction between the embodied mind and
the material environment, thus affecting intrapersonal growth in educational
settings. Having a tangible representation allows teams to interact with it and
exchange views on it (Camacho, 2018). The shared stories and metaphors triggered
by models and artifacts facilitate the development of a shared vocabulary and
memorable learning experiences (Jacobs, 2016).
Increasing Empathy: Design thinking allows developers to embrace “the blurred
space of social ambiguity” with the purpose of making outcomes more innovative
(Lindberg, Meinel, & Wagner, 2011). Bross, Acar, Schilf, and Meinel (2009)
describe design thinking as “a human-centered systems thinking approach that
creates experiences for stakeholders by matching human factors with technological
feasibility and business viability” (p. 904). The interview study by Carlgren et al.
(2016) revealed that empathy is key to the user-focus of design thinking: “Empathy
was stressed as important and, in order to empathize, different principles/mindsets
were seen as crucial: being open, avoiding being judgmental and being
comfortable around people with different backgrounds and opinions” (Carlgren et
al., 2016, p. 46).

Reducing Cognitive Bias: Liedtka (2015) discussed design thinking as a method

to reduce cognitive bias. According to her analysis, design-thinking practices carry
the potential for improving innovation outcomes by mitigating an established set of
cognitive flaws: people often project their own world view onto others, limit the
options considered, and ignore disconfirming data. While the author analyzed nine
different types of cognitive bias in detail, she also offered three distinct general
categories of cognitive bias. In the context of inclusiveness, Liedtka’s first
category of biases that relate to decision-makers’ proclivity to become trapped in
their own world view is specifically meaningful. It comprises the following
tendencies: – Projection bias: People have a tendency to project their past
experiences and thus over-estimate the extent to which the future will resemble the
present. – Hot/cold gap: People’s emotional state, whether emotion-laden (hot) or
not (cold), unduly influences their assessment of the potential value of an idea. –
Egocentric empathy gap: People consistently overestimate the similarity between
what they value and what others value. – Focusing illusion: People tend to
overestimate the effect of one factor at the expense of others, overreacting to
specific stimuli, and ignoring others. According to Liedtka (2015), a remedy for
category 1 biases is to improve decision-makers’ ability to imagine the experience
of those other than themselves, even in the absence of first-hand data gathering.

Promoting Playful Learning: The 2019 Innovating Pedagogy report (Ferguson et

al., 2019) highlights playful learning as a trend, emphasizing the role of play
beyond K12 environments, at universities and in continuing education. Play should
remain a central component of teaching and learning throughout life. Playful
learning flourishes in spaces that are safe, foster exploration and support
productive failure, such as design thinking. Watson (2015) described student
reactions to design thinking in terms of playfulness, creative expression and joy: “I
hear them talking about using Design Thinking to make sense of ambiguity, to
empathize with others, to think creatively, to communicate ideas, to collaborate,
and to make people laugh” (Watson, 2015, p. 18).

Creating Flow / Verve: Primus and Sonnenburg (2018) conducted an empirical

study to investigate flow experience at the individual and group level during a one-
day design thinking exercise. Their findings showed that (a) the elements of
individual and group flow experience were prevalent and highly correlated in the
design thinking activities and (b) the nature of the design thinking task had an
impact on the flow experience. Design Thinking also enhances the motivation to
tackle difficult tasks and stay focused during the process. According to von
Thienen, Royalty, and Meinel (2017), students experience design thinking verve
when they are excited about their projects, work fast-paced, leave their comfort
zones, allow for productive failure, trust the process, and share amazement.

Fostering Inter/Meta-disciplinary Collaboration: Multidisciplinary teamwork is

a key requirement in the design thinking approach to innovation (Sonalkar,
Mabogunje, Pai, Krishnan, & Roth, 2016). The approach seeks to bring together
different areas of expertise and leverage concepts and tools sets from each domain
to analyze, synthesize, and generate insights and new ideas (Melles, Howard, &
Thompson-Whiteside, 2012). Functional teams are essential for design thinking’s
effectiveness, and design thinking methods are geared towards reinforcing the
significance of managing communication and emotion among team members
(Camacho, 2018). This allows for diverse teams to function productively, and to
break down boundaries: “One of the key characteristics of the project was the way
in which it actively sought to break down boundaries between design, academia,
and museums” (MacLeod et al., 2015, p. 338).

Inducing Productive Failure / Increasing Resilience: Design thinking

encourages participants to see constraints as opportunities. As such, design
thinking can create resilience in the face of failure and uncertainty (Micheli,
Wilner, Bhatti, Mura, & Beverland, 2018). As Leverenz (2014) stated: “We must
find a way to turn students’ fear of failure into excitement at the chance to
experiment” (Leverenz, 2014, p. 9). In the process of working out a solution design
thinking allows for many trials and many errors: “Failures are prized as highly
valuable resources: If only embraced and analyzed with an open mind, failures are
expected to aid learning, ultimately in the service of even greater creative
achievements” (von Thienen, Meinel, & Corazza, 2017, p. 5). Core mottos of
design thinking such as fail fast, fail early, favor action over inaction and embrace
experimentation reflect the emphasis on learning through trial-and-error (von
Thienen et al., 2014). Participants are encouraged to embrace failures, to learn
from them and iterate based on the results. This translates into the habit of giving
up ideas and readily changing approaches rather than defending the initial or
existing structure when, for example, users give negative feedback (von Thienen,
Meinel, & Corazza, 2017). Participants in design thinking activities acquire
transferable skills in dealing with uncertainty (Badwan, Bothara, Latijnhouwers,
Smithies, & Sandars, 2018).

Producing Surprising and Delightful Solutions: According to Elsbach and

Stigliani (2018) the use of design thinking tools can result in emotional responses
of surprise and delight. Stakeholders are excited about design thinking because its
results significantly differ from expected solutions: “Design is what it is because it
surprises us; and good designs surprise us by their ingenuity and their handling of
contingencies” (Louridas, 1999, p. 534). Goldman, Kabayadondo, Royalty,
Carroll, and Roth, (2014) described this as “the resolution of conflict between a
sticky problem and an elegant solution”, as team members negotiate what is known
and unknown, what end-users say and what they really mean, and what does and
doesn’t work for users (Goldman et al., 2014, p. 33).

Nurturing Creative Confidence: Creative confidence is nurtured when people

have the opportunity to think like a designer (Bowler, 2014). Design thinking
offers nondesigners the chance to act with creative confidence, and perceive
themselves as part of creating a more desirable future, with the ability to take
action when faced with a difficult challenge (Munyai, 2016). As Carroll et al.
(2010) observed: “design thinking fosters the ability to imagine without boundaries
and constraints. This is critical, as the development of creative confidence is an
essential part of learning” (Carroll et al., 2010, p. 52). Design thinking allows
students to acquire and experience creative mastery by providing a creative
problem solving process, creative work-spaces and collaboration in multi-
perspective teams (von Thienen, Royalty, & Meinel, 2017).

Summary: Tacit experiences, increased empathy, reduced cognitive bias, playful

learning, flow, collaboration, productive failure, surprising solutions and creative
confidence: The potential motives for integrating design thinking in educational
experiences are manifold. The multifaceted goals and outcomes associated with
design thinking are a key factor in the attractiveness: “It is this capacity of design
thinking to complement existing pedagogies and provide inspiration for change
and innovation” (Melles, Anderson, Barrett, & ThompsonWhiteside, 2015, p. 192).
For a field that is chiefly driven by case study research, it will enhance clarity if the
intended purposes as well as unintended outcomes are documented and discussed
in context. Design thinking outcomes can be measured along the different
dimensions identified in this review: Did learners experience flow? Did they
recognize play as part of learning? Were they able to overcome cognitive bias? The
answers will likely vary based on the methods, tools and techniques, as well as the
participants and settings. The themes identified in this review offer a systematic
template for describing the goals and evaluating the outcomes of design thinking.
 IV. Design Thinking for Infrastructure sector

The cry for a longer term focus on, and funding for, infrastructure is recurrent and
warrants attention, all the more so because it is a mundane yet critical contributor
to a nation's competitive advantage. An earlier posting suggested that the nation's
moribund physical infrastructure is ripe for design thinking - yet how does one
apply design thinking to something as essential, complex and yet ordinary and
under-valued as infrastructure?

Part of the challenge is of course understanding what exactly design thinking is.
Much discussed, there are few good definitions, although the following are quite
useful: Luke Wroblewski's article does a nice job of comparing business and
design approaches to problem solving; Tim Brown's blog overs the subject well
(albeit in a somewhat diffuse manner); and, David Burnley, Red Hat's VP of Brand
Communications and Design, provides a very good overview. In a generic sense,
design thinking is 1) about addressing challenges in ways unconstrained by
accepted wisdom, existing "solutions" and narrow parameters; 2) looking at
challenges as opportunities rather than problems; 3) looking at challenges
holistically, taking into account the user and other stakeholders, as well as
dimensions and considerations, etc., that would typically be considered beyond
those associated with the challenge at hand; and 4) looking at longer term
(innovative and value building) solutions rather than short term fixes. When
applied in the context of transformation design - which "seeks to create desirable
and sustainable changes in behavior and form ... of individuals, systems and
organizations" - there appears to be an opportunity for design thinking to suggest
innovation in infrastructure development and deployment.

So where does one start? In addition to the resources listed in an earlier blog, this
piece by Gregory Fenves, Dean of the Cockrell School of Engineering at the
University of Texas at Austin, entitled Innovating the 21st Century Physical
Infrastructure is incredibly useful. In it Fenves outlines some overarching themes
including sustainability, safety and security, economics and scalability, and then
goes on to identify key areas for what he calls "frontier research" including
materials, flexibility and adaptability, distributed sensing and control, modeling
and simulation and economic operation and risk management. He notes that
infrastructure systems are siloed and work to date has been largely on patching
what exists, while what is really needed is an interdisciplinary approach that
encompasses, inter alia, nano-engineering, the study of socio-economic systems
and cyber infrastructure, and one that puts an emphasis on innovation and
breakthrough opportunities.

It is hard to get excited about infrastructure, but it is crying out for a more holistic,
multi-disciplinary, innovative and longer-term perspective, one that can evolve and
meet our needs rather than the current band-aid approach that has resulted in a
crippled infrastructure not much evolved from the last great build period between
the 1940s and 1960s. What is missing is strategic innovation: consider, for
example, the impact of intermodal freight transport and how that revolutionized the
movement of goods; or the development of the electric power grid, and how it
revolutionized energy provision and use. What new systems are required today?
What new systems will be required for tomorrow? Infrastructure also needs to be
looked at in the context of some important related issues such as sustainability,
climate change (concrete production produces significant green house gases),
migration (new centers of population, urban blight, etc.) and local natural resource
availability.

Taking a design thinking approach would encourage a truly collaborative

multidisciplinary initiative - bringing together.

Design Thinking Approach to Urban Infrastructure Planning

Traditional planning methodologies rely heavily on top-down approaches- the
plans are first made and strategized, and only then are the citizens informed about
it. These plans are usually made without involving the citizens in the process, and
as a result, often fail to reflect the problems faced by citizens on the ground.
Consequently, citizens naturally have a lesser degree of ownership of these top-
down plans and responsibility towards maintenance of public infrastructure. While
participatory planning approaches seek to address these gaps by working with the
citizens in understanding their problems, they rarely ‘close the loop’ by seeking
feedback from the citizens after the plan is prepared. Thus, the ownership of the
plan by the citizens is not guaranteed. Additionally, this also precludes any further
refinement of the existing plan.
Design Thinking provides us a framework to overcome the flaws of the traditional
participatory planning approaches in the following ways- first, design thinking
enables the creation of an infrastructure plan that places citizens at the heart of the
process. A process of deep empathising (through household surveys, interviews,
and charettes) will enable the development of a granular understanding of the
problems faced by citizens. Second, the design thinking method also facilitates a
process of refinement of the plan through continuous prototyping and testing.

V. Design Thinking in Retail sector

Over the past 3 years in China, “new retail” has become a popular concept that
merges online and offline retail. At frog, many of our clients express interest in
creating these “new retail” experiences.

While we appreciate that the market is embracing this new concept with
enthusiasm, we often begin our partnerships by asking our clients: “What do you
mean by new retail?” and “What business goal do you want to achieve by adopting
this new concept?”

Retail transformation is often a complicated process that requires systematic

diagnosis and exploration. From our collaboration with retail clients, we have
identified three key elements that are core to this transformation: human, product
& service, and touchpoint. At first sight, these might seem to be very common and
obvious. However, we often notice that these elements are understated or
misunderstood. We have identified three strategies for getting the most vale out of
retail transformation by finding new opportunities and filling unmet needs in the
market.

Be human-centric, not just user-centric

While “user-centric” thinking has been widely acknowledged and adopted, we

have noticed that companies often ignore the importance of the people that make
up their company or services. In the context of retail services, the staff directly
influences the customer’s experience. Instead of being purely “user-centric,” we
encourage our clients to be “human-centric” by engaging every person in the
organization in orchestrating and delivering seamless and captivating experiences.

BeautyFarm: Enhance staff experience through a human-centric lens

Last year we worked with the leading beauty care service in China, BeautyFarm, to
build a new venture brand that targets Millennials. Through a deep dive into the
staff experience of traditional services, we realized that in order to service a
customer for a 1.5 hour-long duration, four roles were involved: receptionist,
consultant, masseur and customer support. But each member of the staff had a very
specific and fragmented approach to their work. Because of this, they lacked
sufficient communication with their customers. Furthermore, they lacked the
proper tools and infrastructure to share the information their clients needed in order
to provide a more holistic experience. The staff structure and process not only led
to an overstaffed team but also created internal obstacles to delivering a seamless
and engaging experience.

As a result, we proposed a new staff model with a new role called Xurface beauty
peer, who is responsible for the entire experience of each customer in the store.
This new store staff model has enabled the team to be more agile and versatile.
Each beauty peer is able to create closer engagement throughout their focused
interaction with customers and delivers a caring and personal experience to them.

Ensure that new offerings are in service of your core

While e-commerce certainly accounts for a major share of retail companies’ annual
sales, it can also eat up margins with expensive digital campaigns. In addition, e-
commerce is coming to a turning point of hyper growth and traditional brick and
mortar retail is once again receiving attention. Companies are now looking to
leverage “service” to expand their revenue models. In our observations, this
usually results in companies trying to transform themselves into lifestyle brands by
adding bars and food courts in their stores with the hopes of keeping customers
engaged a little while longer. However, service should not just be an afterthought
or add-on, it should extend the value of existing product offerings and build
holistic engagement with customers.
Sportswear: Data is more important than your shopping behavior
When shopping for clothes and shoes, customers want to be able to try things on.
They want to know if the style fits and if the fabric is comfortable. Which presents
a huge exact gap between online and offline retail experiences. To bridge this gap,
a sportswear brand offers a 3D scan service for full body and feet. With the help of
the staff, customers can get accurate an scan result with a 3D model of their feet
and body build. The brand then has more accurate data to pull from for
recommending clothing and shoes to their customers.

JNBY “More than a Box”: Subscription-based stylist

Users expect clothing options that not only meet their size and comfort, but also
their unique style. At frog, we’ve asked ourselves how can we help users explore a
more suitable personal style in a wide range of fashion pieces, particularly via
online retailing? JNBY, a leading Chinese fashion brand, launched a new
subscription-based stylist service called “More than Box” last year where users can
get one-on-one exclusive recommendations from the featured stylist by paying an
annual fee of 199RMB. In addition, they receive their “boxes” with inspirational
clothing options that include a “try first, buy later” option up to six times a year.

This type of experimentation opens up a range of possibilities for personalized

recommendation services. This system allows us to no longer rely on the analysis
of past purchase data to push goods to the user, but rather to establish a more
qualitative, personalized and meaningful understanding of a user’s needs. The
needs are then transformed into these inspirational boxes with no commitment of
purchase upfront, which encourages users to explore more online.

Have a clearly defined strategy for your ecosystem of touchpoints

As retail spaces have regained power due to the slowdown of e-commerce

growth—especially in the realm of food and beverage, and fashion and service
businesses—physical spaces are becoming irreplaceable as the main stage for
customer engagement. However, moving into (or back into) brick and mortar
doesn’t come without its own set of challenges.
In the ecosystem of retail service design, touchpoints make up the bridge between
a brand and its customers. In order to create real engagement with the target
audience, it’s important to define a clear strategy for these touchpoints that
leverages a brand’s strengths and uniqueness.

“On the Way” Locations: Data-empowered store positioning and site selection
decision
When approached by a fast food chain to explore potential opportunities for
hundreds of stores, we used a method called “location intelligence” to gather
valuable user insights. By defining four key measures, we managed to understand
the attributes of each location: What is the workplace density versus residential
density? Is it well connected with public transit? How competitive is the area?

One key insight derived from qualitative user research was that being on the route
matters to busy commuters buying breakfast on their way to work. These users are
not even willing to cross the street if they don’t have to. Inspired by such insights,
we dug further into the pedestrian flow during morning peak hours. Within the
scale of a few blocks, we managed to identify “on the way” spots that have the
potential to bring in the most breakfast business. These insights not only provided
a clear diagnosis to the existing store performance but also informed potential site
selection dedicated to breakfast service.

In order to find real value, you have to start with the right questions

We know there is no cookie-cutter formula to succeeding when it comes to “new

retail.” Rather, every brand or company must find their own unique edge to hook
their customers and keep them coming back. “New retail” should be about
uncovering value, not adding teched-out bells and whistles for the sake of it. But in
order to find this bespoke solution, you need a partner that asks the right questions
in order to uncover unmet needs and opportunities. frog brings both a breadth and
depth of experience across industries and through multi-disciplinary teams—from
research and strategy to product, digital, service, tech and space—to help our
clients find the right thing, not just the new thing.