Ta-da! you're a design thinker! validating the DesignShop as a model for teaching design thinking to non-designers and achieving systemic redesign in the education system

Abstract

"Hackathons" are known for creating unique, collaborative spaces where interested persons voluntarily participate in a marathon of hacking, or coding and tinkering, usually overnight. Only recently have hackathon-type events emerged with a focus on broad, systemic issues, such as education. In our first experiment, the Education Designathon, projects, or hacks, fell short of systemic scope. We identified design thinking as a problem-solving approach that could help in attacking broad, systemic issues while also teaching people new ways to collaborate and form sustainable solutions. A new model was born, The Education DesignShop, with eight key components and a structure around modules that teach design thinking and challenge participants to apply these methods towards their re-designs of the education system. We compare the results of projects born out of hackathon-type events, such as the Edu Designathon and HGSE (Harvard Graduate School of Education) Hackathon, against those born out of the Education DesignShop. We providing a framework for recognizing how the structure of the DesignShop aids in creating projects with a greater potential for impact and systemic change, as well as projects with stronger design thinking elements embedded into them. In addition, we tracked participants' problem-solving approach through three 20-minute evaluations given before, after, and a month after the DesignShop. By using Discourse Analysis we are able to code for sophistication levels of the design thinking stages outlined by Stanford's d.School - empathy, define, ideate, prototype, test - that are present in the participant responses over time. Our results hint at a transformation in the participant's problem-solving approaches as seen by their increased use of design thinking terminology and proposed implementations of the process. We visualize the logic flow in participant responses, and how they converge towards a train of thought that is structured by the design thinking process. By weighing the level of understanding shown at each of these stages by the participants in their responses, we deduce that design thinking was learned to varying degrees during the Education DesignShop and retained over a one-month span.