Welcome to our educators page. We hope that we can support you on your journey to discover and use Design Thinking to help the next generation to become more confident in using creativity to solve problems.
Why is Design Thinking important for students?
When we were little kids, before we went to school, we would play all day long. All of us. We had no problem inventing stuff and creating EVERYTHING. From wondering what crayon lines on our wall might look like to building treehouses, dolls houses, making stuff in a kitchen or painting. We had no fear of creating. It was fun and exhilarating and we just did it naturally. Sadly our education system beats the creativity out of us...and then we grow up and find we really need to find ways of expressing our creativity. We find that we NEED to know how to use our creativity to solve problems and express ourselves. Perhaps this is why you find Design Thinking interesting?
What we have found is that most people want to be creative again, but they have a real fear of trying and failing. Where they find themselves is that they lack the creative confidence to just do it. The more bureaucratic the environment people find themselves in the worse the feeling of having a lack of creative confidence will feel. When trying to introduce Design Thinking to students it would be well advised to remember this and to understand that a lot of the effect of Design Thinking work is just to get people to participate in the creative process again and through doing projects (you will not build creative confidence by trying to teach the theory of Design Thinking. It is all about doing it!) they will rebuild their confidence to explore, collaborate and create again. Without fear of failure or judgement.
If the above paragraph about creative confidence resonates with you, watch this video from David Kelley of IDEO.
Here are a few more links that might get you to the information you are looking for.
Browse our library of over 30 articles about implementing Design Thinking in Education.
Examples of Design Thinking in action. Browse our case study section.
Find tools and methods to support your Design Thinking projects.
See the available research on Design Thinking.