Unpacking the Concept of Design Thinking Through a Competency-based Curriculum

Job RutgersOntario College of Art and Design University

Canadajrutgers@faculty.ocadu.ca

Mi Song KimUniversity of Western Ontario

Canadamisong.kim@uwo.ca

Paul EppOntario College of Art and Design University

Canadapepp@faculty.ocad.ca

Abstract: Although increasing attention has been paid to design thinking in the context of new media and the globalizing knowledge economy, there is still little understanding of how design thinking could find its way into school curricular including both K-12 and higher education. The primary aim of this paper is to report an in-depth analysis of OCADU Industrial Design program’s competency based curriculum, which, in turn, will unpack the notion of design thinking. The research question is to understand how OCADU faculty members designed and implemented a competency-based curriculum that fosters students’ ability in design thinking. The results show three initial principles for defining design thinking: Design thinking as situated within design ‘doing’ and ‘feeling’, Design thinking embedded within different ‘design modeling’ languages’; and building creative confidence by increasingly being able to connect experiences.

Keywords: design thinking; competency-based curriculum; learning-by-design; digital technologies

Introduction

Increased attention has been paid to design thinking in the context of new media and the globalizing knowledge economy. This is because workers in the 21st century knowledge society will need to be lifelong learners that are able to find creative ways of adapting, integrating and connecting available knowledge to meet societal needs rather than accumulating new information. Although design thinking has become an integral part of engineering as well as business schools, (Dunne & Martin, 2006), it can also have a positive influence on 21st century education practices across disciplines. Moreover, due to emerging digital technologies, the 21st century learners are all producers and consumers of knowledge. Compared to a previous generation of learners in the information age, these learners are called ‘Generation Participatory (P)’ within the theoretical tradition of “Learning by Design” (Kalantzis & Cope, 2010). Generation P will be “the ones who participate, who solve problems, who innovate, who are risk takers, who are creative – in sum, who give their very best to the organization they work for” (p. 203). However, there is still little understanding of how design thinking can be integrated in school curricula including both K-12 and higher education. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to report our qualitative analysis of a competency-based curriculum at OCAD University in Canada, which, in turn, will unpack the notion of design thinking. That is, design thinking as a meditational process for the development of creativity.

Theoretical Framework

Design thinking has become an integral part of the engineering and business fields because design has become viewed as a central activity in these fields (McNeil, Gero & Warren, 1998). In this view, the umbrella term “design thinking” is generally defined as a process to create and enact solutions for complex problems drawing upon

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systemic reasoning, intuition and imagination since Rowe (1987) used it as the title of his book. Many design-thinking researchers tend to identify design thinking and its characteristics by making a comparison between novice and expert design thinkers. Razzouk and Shute (2012) reviewed the literature to gain better understanding of what design thinking is and how it is often ignored in education. They found that expert design thinkers tended to recognize underlying principles due to possessing larger cognitive chunks, clarified tasks in a shorter time, framed the problem faster, formed more abstract conceptualizations related to their domain and spend more time in producing solutions rather than investing much time in defining the problem. Expert design thinkers, in particular experienced engineers, employ integrated design strategies by making a preliminary evaluation of their tentative design decisions before implementing them and making a final evaluation (Ahmed, Wallace, & Blessing, 2003).

Situatedness. Furthermore, these reviews describe the importance of practice in interactive, hands on environments in transforming a novice into an expert design thinker. However, these reviews focus mainly on theories of creativity, problem solving and cognitive theories of human decision-making. There is still little understanding of a ‘situated’ view of designing (Gero & Fujii, 2000) although the notion of situatedness has become a recurrent theme in design research including artificial intelligence research since the mid-1980s. Often the concept of ‘situatedness’ addresses how a situation affects the designer’s actions, decisions and memory as functions of “both the situation and the way the situation is constructed or interpreted” (Gero, 1998, p, 52). For example, a situated view of design processes often emphasizes constructive memory (Rosenfield, 1988) - that is, the memory of the sensory experience, which is constructed in response to what is experienced. In this light, Schön’s (1983) concept of reflection-in-action is often emphasized for the designers ability to recognize gaps between the interpretations (or internal representation of the sensory experiences and concepts) of the external word outside the designer and the expected world in which the designer predicts the effects of actions according to the current goals and interpretations (Gero & Kannengiesser, 2004). By making the distinction among the external world, the interpreted world, and the expected world explicit, this situated view of design processes aims to promote reflective reasoning about the designer’s interactions with the external world toward the development of a communicative action about performance, such as justifying the selection of a particular design strategy or documenting a design rationale to explain decisions taken in a design process.

Think – do – feel. In the same vein, as educators for both design students and non-design students, we have experienced that learning to master situated design processes requires a student to not only reflect (think) in action but to also incorporate their own emotions in evaluating their designs. In fact, the term design thinking is misleading in the sense that the term stresses the cognitive part of what is otherwise a holistic unity. When observing the activity of design close up, we observed that the activity of design is a seamless blending of affective (feeling), cognitive (thinking) and psychomotor (doing) capabilities that are intricate related, interwoven, no longer distinguishable from each other. At OCAD University, pedagogy developers identified the term ‘competency’ as it includes these three attributes of design. Drawing upon a competency-centered approach to learning (Hummels & Vinke, 2009), a competency is defined by the knowledge (cognitive), skills (doing) and behaviors (Feeling) in a certain content or performance area. OCADU pedagogy developers felt that this term had the width and depth in its definition to carry the three-folded nature of design activity (Kim, 2013). In this paper we will articulate the competency-based curriculum of the Industrial Design program at OCADU to better understand and support design thinking for both design students and non-design students. We aim to design a design thinking competency-based curriculum for K12 and higher education that promotes students’ development of their affective capability and to use ‘learning by doing’ methods from within the psychomotor domain to ‘think’ through complex, wicked problems.

The Study

As one of the leading design schools in Canada, OCAD University (OCADU) attempts to define learning outcomes and measure learning progression in becoming a designer in a rigorous way for the Industrial Design (ID) program. A variety of design

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thinking methods have been applied to create a clearer picture of the student’s learning process within a four-year undergraduate design program. In particular, the ID program at OCADU has recently established a competency based curricular structure. To define the competencies, faculty members have spent three years investigating, discussing and defining the knowledge, skills and behaviors that designer students are required to master in all stages of the design process. The ID program has created a curriculum map that gives both faculty and students a visual roadmap that explains where in the process of learning design they are, at what point in time they are and how everything relates to each other. The map has a visual granularity, to allow the students see the big picture when they stand on a distance, but unveils details and pathways once they get closer to it. This competency-based model of education has been rolled out in 2013 and is now the method of organizing, measuring and delivering industrial design education at OCADU.

Using qualitative research method, this study involves an in-depth analysis of the competency-based curriculum at OCADU. In the overall project, we examine the learning progression of OCADU faculty members and students through analysis of video-recorded classroom observations, student-learning artifacts, student performance, surveys and interviews. However, in this paper, we will focus mainly on discussing the findings for this research question: In what ways did OCADU faculty members design and implement a competency-based curriculum that fosters students’ ability in design thinking? To investigate student performance in the competency-based curriculum, a case study approach (Yin, 1994) is adopted for this study. Following Stake (1995), we employ an instrumental case study to provide insight into an issue.

Findings

An iterative process characterizes the curriculum design process at the ID program. The overall aim of the ID faculty was to produce a visual map that would chart out all the courses, links and pathways for both students and faculty. In creating that map, the first challenge was to clarify the context in which design actually occurs. This challenge dealt with everyday questions from students like: ‘Do we learn to design products or also learn to design interactions?’ ‘What are the best areas for designers to find jobs in?’ ‘How far into the development of products do we need to be capable of?’ When ID faculty reviewed the existing curriculum, they used an inventory of these student questions and defined the ‘context of design’ as the landscape’ in which a student’s learning takes place and identified three key terms to define the learning landscape; design process, design focus and design themes.

The term ‘design process’ provided students with a common language to where in the design process an assignment or course was situated. The term ‘design typology’ provided students with a range, or spectrum of the types of design an industrial designer could be engaged in. The term design themes provide both students and faculty with a top down point of view of the application areas in which designers can develop different types of design in various stages of design process. Together, these terms provide students with an orientation as to where in the learning landscape they are in at any moment during their design education.

Design Process

The term ‘design process’ seemed to be a logical first construct on which we could build a model of a competency-based curriculum. The stages of a design process give design students a structure while they are defining, analyzing, scoping, creating or developing a product, interaction or service. Reviewing the design process being taught within different courses at the ID program we realized that different faculty used different definitions on process, process stages – all according to their differentiated professional design background. After a series of workshops with faculty helped to unify the term ‘design process’ (into the five stages of Discovery, Definition, Research, Concept and Development, see Figure 1) and terminology across the courses, we realized that while a design process has both a linear and an iterative nature, it did not offer us with a clear pathway to organize curriculum and learning outcomes.

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For instance, while a design project typically starts with the synthesis of trends into opportunities (First Stage: Discovery) and then into defining the size and scope of a project (Second stage: Define) a first year student will feel more at ease with just starting to make something, exploring ideas, forms and materials through their hands, within a given, defined project. Only in the fourth year have students matured enough that they are able to define their own projects (second stage of the design process) or are able to identify and synthesize trends, requirements and opportunities in starting points for design (first stage of the design process) – and use the full design process independently. When we visualized the use of design process stages within our four-year program it appeared that design students started their education in the ‘middle’ stage of a five-stage design process. While it is desirable that students understand where in the design process their assignments and projects are situated, the design process itself does not provide a contextual structure to organize a curriculum in a linear application.

Figure 1. Diagram of design process stages parsed over year levels at OCADU ID Program.

Design Typology

We then turned our attention to the kinds of output an industrial designer generates and assess if we could identify some order or structure to use a starting point for our curriculum design. When we looked at the creative output of our students and how their professional paths unfolded, it is more then ‘just’ designing products.. Industrial designers create products, configure materials, embody technologies, design interactions and even design services. In order to accommodate this typology of design output we decided to ‘scaffold’ these levels of output over the curriculum (see Figure 2).

Starting with a foundation in product design, each semester adds a ‘layer’ of complexity, eventually preparing for a final year in which students can choose to design anything with their own choice of this design typology. Some students choose to design products, but always with a thorough understanding of materials and manufacturing process. Other students choose to venture into system service and interaction design, and prototype tangible and digital interactions that are part of these ecosystems. While this scaffolding exercise gave us insight in how a design student could be prepared for a broader role, it was not useful as an overarching structure, but nevertheless an important building block that we would use in our curriculum design process.

Figure 2. Diagram of Design Typology.

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Design Themes

In what kind of jobs or professional areas do our industrial design students find work? And could these application areas contribute to the design of a curricular structure? The role of an industrial designer in industry is probably different in Canada then the US or Europe, with our strong commodity driven economy and its public health care system. To ensure that we were able to frame relevant and future proof themes we used OCADU’s recent strategic plan (Advancing Excellence at OCAD University for the Age of Imagination, 2012-2017) as context. The resulting themes (see Figure 3) do provide students with a relevant context to their future job areas and help to organize courses content wise. Yet when observing the activity of the design student in the classroom, these themes provide context (to the field in which they can apply their design skills, but still do not answer the question to what these design skills are and how these can be measured.

Figure 3. Design Strategic Themes.

The Learning Outcomes of Design

Having defined the ‘context of design’ the question that now arose was how to define the knowledge, skills and behaviors a student needs to successfully operate in this landscape? How could we describe these in a meaningful way and allow educators to measure and track learning progress between courses? But prior to answering that question we first needed to understand the definition of learning outcomes and how they ought to be used within an academic context.

Within OCADU we had been presented with examples of typical learning outcomes, learning outcome levels and assignment rubrics. When we reviewed these rubrics in depth, we felt that there was an overt emphasis of the word ‘knowledge’. The learning outcomes examples that we were presented with would include terms like ‘depth and breadth of knowledge’, ‘knowledge of methods’, ‘application of knowledge’ and ‘limits of knowledge’. We questioned to what extent could the activity of design be regarded as knowledge alone? Does a student first ‘receive’ the knowledge on design, in lecture of through examples and then they – ‘apply’ that knowledge in the process of making? We agreed that designers do need to have knowledge, on manufacturing methods, on materials, on the history of design. But this knowledge alone does not make you into a designer. Design is also ‘making’ and ‘doing’. Design students need to develop skills, to be able to use tools, to craft things, to be able to draw, to prototype things among others. These are the things that design students only learn by doing, and while it includes knowledge, it also includes motor skills, hand eye coordination and a ‘sense’ for material and forms. These are the typical skills that are acquired in the wood workshop, the metal workshop or in the design studio. But there were also other, more psychological or personal attributes. This was evident in the way that our faculty would speak about great students, we consistently would hear about the motivation of that student, or the resilience, the humility, the curiosity, or their courage. These were affective ‘attributes’ of design that we could not describe in either knowledge related learning outcomes of or in traditional skill development.

At that point in time we decided to do research into the history and development of learning outcome taxonomies which brought us back to the originator, Bloom’s taxonomy as it was being used, in some variations, then and now by most universities. When probing a bit further we learned that Blooms’ initial research culminated into three domains; the ‘Cognitive domain’ – relating to knowledge and thinking, the ‘Psycho Motor’ domain which refers to manual skills, coordination of things you

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need to do in order to complete a task and the ‘Affective domain’, relating to interpersonal and emotional attributes. Yet Bloom being an academic and scientist felt only capable and qualified to develop the cognitive domain, as it seemed to fit best academic institutions that are in the pursuit of disseminating and generating new knowledge. Yet for a design school, which obviously also includes skills, but is also a highly motivational affair, this emphasis on knowledge alone seemed to be counterintuitive to the way we taught design. Could design be defined as knowledge that then is applied? Or is it about skills? Or both? We felt a struggle arising between our intent to define and measure design-learning outcomes for design, yet at the same time unfamiliar and estranged from the existing, knowledge centric language and matrices that were given to us. How could we make sense out of this?

We did what designers do when they are faced with a wicked problem, and decided to leave the learning outcome matrices for what it was and to start from scratch. If we were to just observe how our industrial design students learn design, what could we learn? What do they do when they learn design? What knowledge do they have? What skills do they acquire? How do motivation and other ‘soft skills’ play a role? How does that all work together? When we followed students over time and elicited what they are doing when they are working on a project, we realized that what is happening is actually quite complex, with many intricate things happening at the same time. The example below describes a moment in the project of one of our students who was working on the design of furniture for a palliative care environment.

Figure 4. Role Playing

Figure 4 presents a student who is laying on a table. She is role playing, trying to empathize with being a patient. She tries to imagine what it is to be laying on a bed that a patient knows he/she will die in. While she is engaged in this immersion activity she is sketching different furniture functions patients and caregivers would need. In the moment, she is thinking about the requirements for her project - as she has reviewed the available literature and spoken to a series of health care practitioners. In this moment, captured by the photo, she is thinking, feeling and doing simultaneously. The empathy exercise relates to her affective capability. The application of visualization skills to identify what functions the furniture should provide relates to her psychomotor capabilities. Her thinking on requirements and literature references relate to her cognitive capabilities. Although this may now sound obvious, the activity of design is this; a seamless blending of affective, cognitive and psychomotor capabilities, that are intricate related, interwoven, no longer distinguishable from each other.

At this point in time we realized that if we were to define design in terms of learning outcomes, we needed to include cognitive, affective and psychomotor attributes. Searching for a term that could include these attributes we learned that the word ‘competency’ was quite close to this purpose. As such, competencies can be defined as the result of integrative learning experiences in which knowledge (cognitive), skills (doing), and behaviors (Feeling) interact in a certain content or performance area (Hummels & Vinke, 2009). In short, what we were now looking for was to develop ‘design competency’ learning outcomes. We felt that this term actually had the width and depth in its definition to carry the three-folded nature of design activity we had just identified.

Defining Design Competency Domains or Streams

With our understanding of ‘design competency’ as the term to organize and articulate the learning outcomes of industrial design, we now wanted to identify the ‘big picture competencies’ or

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‘competency themes’ of an industrial designer. We wanted to be able to tell students, in an easy to use language, what they were going to learn in less then five minutes.

To arrive at that big picture, we decided to review, compare and thematically organize the learning outcomes that were listed in the existing Industrial Design syllabi. We abstracted from all learning outcomes a long list of about a hundred key learning ‘terms’ and through filtering, clustering and deduction identified four industrial design competency domains/streams that were each given a title and a definition.

Images: In this domain students learn to express themselves in all forms of visual media. This includes visual, graphic and oral communication.

Objects: In this domain students learn to give shape to their ideas and develop a sensibility to form, based on a deep understanding of the process of making.

Thoughts: In this domain, students will become able to work and think interdisciplinary and use creativity techniques and future thinking methods.

Core: In this domain, students learn to elicit and integrate requirements from people, technology and business into a consistently used design process.

While some of the titles gave a semantic indication of the associated content (‘images’ and ‘objects’) the title ‘core’ referred to the term ‘core studio’ commonly used in OCADU, in which students work on capstone projects and integrate and apply everything they have learned in other courses that run in parallel, building further on what they have learned previously. The most challenging title turned out to be ‘thoughts’ competency domain as it caused two problems: for some readers it may assume that the other domain don't require thinking – which is untrue. It also may communicate that all you do in this domain is thinking which is also not true. But we could not find another term that would be broad enough and elusive enough to contain topics like trends synthesis, creativity tools, and professional preparation. So this one is not completely there yet we feel its claim is nicely provocative.

After defining these domains, we crosschecked with the course syllabi to assess if they would ‘fit’ the contextual descriptions of the themes. In this process we would fine-tune the descriptions of the domains to ensure that we would be able to include all.

Figure 5. Domains/Streams and Course descriptions.

Defining Competencies

Once we had identified the competency domains (‘Images’, ‘Objects’, ‘Core’ and ‘Thoughts’), we organized workshops with the faculty who where teaching courses in those domains. In these sessions, we worked in both a top down and a bottom up way.

In a top down fashion, we tried to break down each domain into smaller topics or competencies by discussing with faculty of what the they felt was the most important things that they taught. For example, within the ‘Objects’ domain discussion we interviewed the staff responsible for the wood and metal work areas. While we expected to learn about the need for skills, safety procedures and manufacturing methods mostly, a common thread emerged on students to become able to think three dimensionally through objects and manufacturing methods as one of the key learning outcomes. We strongly felt that this type of ‘reflection-in-action’ (*) was a key learning outcome, yet it had never

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been described in our curriculum as such, perhaps because it is rather implicit, so much of an everyday competency of a designer in the process of making that it was overseen.

Bottom up, we referred back to the existing syllabi and elicited the key learning aspects that was uniquely different from the other syllabi (of courses within this domain). Once we had a shortlist of key abilities in each domain, we then proceeded to synthesize, define and describe them in an easy to understand and compact way.

The merging of top down and bottom up insights concluded the exercise. We had an explicit goal to define no more then five competencies in each domain. The competency description should be short enough so that they could be explained in one or two sentences to both students and staff, but have sufficient depth in order for the competencies to be applied progressively, and to parse out different competency levels over multiple courses and semesters. In that way, we could weave connections between courses in different year levels. At this point in time we had identified sixteen competencies of design within four domains (see Fig. 6). The competencies in each domain/stream are developed by tracking competency ‘levels’ such as intake (I), grasp (G), use (U), create (C), and mastery (M), and each competency level has specific learning outcomes in terms of thinking, feeling and doing (see Figure 7).

Figure 6. Design Competencies. Figure 7. Competency Levels in a Stream

Discussion

What we hope to have achieved not just a set of metrics that do justice to the complexity and richness of the field of design, but especially a way for designers to express what it is that they do, in a

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greater level of detail and depth than the language found in the ‘design thinking’ debate. Drawing upon our competency-based curriculum at OCADU, this section will explore three initial principles for the design of the competency-based curriculum.

Design Doing-Feeling-Thinking

The term design thinking implies that it is occurring somehow solely within the cognitive domain. However, the discussion on the sitatuatedness of design demonstrates that the thinking that occurs within design is embedded within an intricate maze of design doing and design feeling. Thinking ‘trough peoples eyes’ usually involves ‘doing’ activities like role play, shadowing etc. and empowers you to ‘feel’ what people may feel. It is this holistic activity that includes ‘doing’ and ‘feeling’ that allows designers to think more multidimensional through problems. If we emphasis mainly knowledge, thinking and integration of information, that is mostly taught at universities and measure using knowledge driven taxonomies of learning outcomes, we may see the limitations of the use of only ‘cognitive based’ ways of understanding in approaching the so called ‘wicked’ problems.

Many design thinking authors underestimate the underlying design competencies of ‘doing’ needed to successfully operate. Within the domain of psychology, an emerging theme is that of ‘embodied cognition’ a term that implies that thinking as an activity is an integral part of the body, rather than a process purely located in the brain that provides commands to the body to react (Kim, 2013). Multisensorial doing seems to be a context in which creative exploration seems to flourish best. Yet we must not just copy processes and tools but understand that the application of these processes and tools stimulates a fluid interaction between thinking, doing and feeling. It needs to be understood that the methods are not mechanics, but vehicles that incorporate a certain ‘craft of doing’ and within that doing, activating thinking and feeling and within that looping of activity, design thinking can take place. While using these ‘tools’, designers use a variety of ‘modeling languages’ (Kim, 2011, 2014) like sketching, making of diagrams, process models or roleplaying.

Modeling Languages of Design

Our premise is that most people get trained within their university education in using language and numbers to understand, define and resolve challenges. In other words, they ‘think about the world’ though text, numbers and privilege the cognitive domain. Designers on the contrary routinely use a broader repertoire of modeling languages (Kim, 2014) Our competency-based curriculum at OCADU considers these modeling languages as competencies so that design students acquire a spectrum of ‘modeling languages’ in observing the world around them and in articulating various stages of the design process as follows:

1D: analytical thinking - text, numbers, argumentation, calculation2D: visual thinking - graphics, photos, drawings, diagrams 3D: spatial thinking - models, prototypes 4D: temporal thinking - role play, experience prototyping5D: conceptual thinking - through metaphor, analogy and association

For example, 1D text and numbers are acquired within liberal studies courses. 2D visual Thinking (in ‘Images’), 3D Spatial Thinking (in ‘Objects’), and 5D - Conceptual Thinking (in ‘Thoughts’) (see Figure 8). When developing their final year project, they are expected to seamless integrate all these modalities along the different stages of the design process and while applying different tool to achieve certain goals.

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Figure 8. Design Competencies at OCADU.

The attraction of ‘Design thinking’, in our view, is that it allows participants to think in ways about problems and challenges in a more holistic way, involving multiple ways of thinking about the world that is more natural, less abstracted. A design thinking process will stress design process and tools. It will evoke mindsets and motivation, but usually will not speak about the sophisticated thinking palette that trained designers have access to, albeit in an implicit, embedded way. It takes years to develop fluency in either one of these languages, let alone the ability to switch between these languages.

Building Creative Confidence by Connecting Things

In design thinking discourse, there is ample talk about creativity, or ideation or the ability to generate new ideas. In design education, the ability to create, to be creative and original is prized, but taken for granted as learned implicit, through osmosis, by doing and doing it again. Creativity is a quality that is highly valued, but not always well understood. Those who have studied and written about it stress the importance of a kind of flexibility of mind. Studies have shown that creative individuals are more spontaneous, expressive, and less controlled or inhibited. They also tend to trust their own judgment and ideas-- they are not afraid of trying something new. A common misunderstanding equates creativity with originality. In point of fact, there are very few absolutely original ideas. Designers know that new solutions are rarely completely new or original, but mostly a recombination of existing solutions in new configurations. These integrations or combinations are usually derived from a scanning of one’s internal bank of experiences or insights that can provide models, motives, analogies for the new forged relationship. In other words, creativity is the ability to see connections and relationships where others have not. As such, at the heart of the creativity embedded within design thinking is a laser like focus in which (like the craftsman when confronted with a problem in the process) engages in a cycle of experimentation, iteration, evaluation and reflection that is being fuelled by experiences, references, analogies and metaphors (collected through observation of the world in multiple languages, stored in one’s heuristic benchmark) is used in what we call an idea ‘welding process’ (Sennett, 2008).

The person who has creative confidence (Kelley & Kelley, 2013) is the person who feels confident that he/she would be able to do something about it (even if he or she does not know exactly how) and actually take action to start doing it. This mindset is the opposite of being complacent. It suggests a certain personal responsibility, engagement, initiative and intrinsic motivation to take action and solve problems, it implies a certain ‘creative confidence’. Creative confidence relates to two aspects of stance. First, of not having a fear to try or to be afraid of being judged by others. Secondly, it

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relates to the confidence in oneself that although he/she does not know how, he/she knows that he/she has the capability to find out, supported by the creative process.

Having some familiarity (experience) with creative ‘process’ (a tool) is a key element in acquiring creative confidence. The creative process is a ‘vessel’ that allows creative people to navigate through unknown territories (uncertainties and ambiguity) and find new land (solutions). The creative process doesn't tell them what to do, but provides them with a set of stages that structure how you can formulate an answer. In a typical creation process, the process stages always include some form of analysis and synthesis prior to the generation of new ideas, followed by a synthesis of ideas into larger solution directions. Using a defined process may feel counterintuitive to the notion of creativity (in the sense of free and unstructured exploration). Yet in creative practice, complex or innovative projects require even more thoughtful use of creative process.

Hence, teaching creative confidence is at the foundation of design education. At OCADU ID for example, the first year education specific aim is to help students develop this confidence. Two aspects of the design process are being emphasized; to help students discover their ‘creative voice’ and to train them in creative techniques that will help them to better express their ideas. Creative voice is about developing a deeper connection with your intuition, your taste and to develop the ability to listen to your ideas and to start trusting that voice in yourself that wants to create. Externalizing, sharing and discussing the results of their ‘creative voice’ helps students understand that the things they came up with have value, are interesting to others and worth to be shared. Creative techniques relate to both skills in visualizing and making, as well creative processes of developing their ideas.

The teachers in a design school expect students to develop their voice, to express their ideas, to formulate their own answers and provide feedback both on the content of their ideas, as well on the process of how they have developed these ideas. In evaluating students, the teacher does not rely on an inventory of ‘right answers’, neither are there multiple choice tests to assess if a student has acquired the necessary knowledge. Yet we must evaluate students somehow, but rely more on open criteria (is the product able to do this?, how do end users respond to that). The criteria for evaluation are ‘performance based’ rather then the more ‘prescriptive’ evaluations.

Conclusion and Implications

Drawing upon our emerging design principles of designing a competency-based curriculum that we have discussed above, what is defined as design thinking is a confluence of multiple levels: Activity of Design (different ways of learning such as blending thinking, doing and feeling). For design thinking to be successfully adapted in K12 or higher education, also some of its doing and feeling attributes need to be configured. Most importantly, our study implies the importance of ‘thinking languages of designers’ (fluency in and between different modeling languages). It is our understanding that designers, due to their fluency in different modeling languages may have more, or deeper experiences about the things they are supposed to create solutions for. Good designers are true scavengers of experience, they observe how the world works around them because it is up to them to create things to make this world function, try to understand the world around them not only in text, but also through images, spatial relationship, temporal interactions and metaphor and analogy in mapping, decoding the world around them. The observations of the world from 1D – 5D are being stored in the designer’s mind as a kind of heuristic bench, to be released within a context in which new solutions are required. For design thinking to be successful, therefore, some of these modeling languages need to be configured in K12 and higher education. For instance, visual thinking, spatial thinking, diagramming, role-play, and body storming are good attributes applicable to a wider area of curricula.

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