An Introduction to Design Thinking

Hi! Phylise Banner here, Curator of the InSync Blended Learning Hub. I want to share with you the benefits of using design thinking to inform the way we design, develop, and deliver modern blended learning solutions to serve our modern learners in their moments of learning need. Here at InSync, we focus on 5 specific phases of the design thinking approach to inform the design, development, and delivery of modern blended learning. We start with empathy. We do a lot of needs assessment in our work, but are we really listening? In the empathy phase our goal is to understand the learner in the context of our challenge, in this case what they may want or need from a virtual learning community. We need to get to the core of what is most meaningful to the modern learner. To understand what their moments of learning need really are. Next up, is the define phase. Here's where we define the problem we're going to address based on what we've learned in our needs assessment. Sound familiar? In this phase, our goal is to bring clarity and focus to the table and look for outstanding issues and craft a meaningful and actionable problem statement. Then, we ideate. Here's where we through caution to the wind and dream big. There's no bad idea. This is an open space where imagination is cherished. At this point, our goal is to move beyond the obvious and explore new opportunities and solutions. After that, it's prototype. A prototype should showcase the experience someone would have when interacting with your solution. Within the design thinking framework, the prototype is a low-end solution that's easily changeable. It can be an outline, a whiteboard drawing, a storyboard, a mindmap, flashcards, or even a collection of post-it notes. It just needs to guide the conversation. Low-end prototyping helps you see the issues you need to take into consideration and lets you adapt, change, fail, and remake quickly. And the last step is testing. Here's where we ask for feedback and circle back to our empathy phase to see what works and what needs more work. The Stanford Design school has a great rule of thumb: "prototype as if you know you're right, but test as if you know you're wrong." Testing is a chance to refine your solutions and make them better. These five phases model a mindful practice of designing, developing, and delivering modern blended learning by: reminding us to consider our learners and empathize about how, when, where, and why they learn; establishing learning objectives that are more in alignment with learner needs, just business goals; tapping into creativity while encouraging collaboration and dialogue during the design and development process; encouraging rapid development and iteration of learning solutions while embracing failure as an option; and listening to learner feedback and refining the blended learning solution to best meet the needs of our learners. You can learn more about design thinking by participating in this month's makerspace, and by exploring the associated resources in the Hub. See you online!