Publications

On-demand strategy, speaking & workshops, latest articles, write for us, library/publications.

  • Competency-Based Education
  • Early Learning
  • Equity & Access
  • Personalized Learning
  • Place-Based Education
  • Post-Secondary
  • Project-Based Learning
  • SEL & Mindset
  • STEM & Maker
  • The Future of Tech and Work

examples of design thinking in education

Erika Giampietro and Destiny Egbuta on the Massachusetts Early College Promise

Getting smart on dallas school visits, kwaku aning, aaron schorn and mike yates on collective learning, research and demonstrating, michael gonzalez on rural innovation zones and cte, recent releases.

Unfulfilled Promise: The Forty-Year Shift from Print to Digital and Why It Failed to Transform Learning

The Portrait Model: Building Coherence in School and System Redesign

Green Pathways: New Jobs Mean New Skills and New Pathways

Support & Guidance For All New Pathways Journeys

Unbundled: Designing Personalized Pathways for Every Learner

Credentialed Learning for All

AI in Education

For more, see Library |  Publications |  Books |  Toolkits

Microschools

New learning models, tools, and strategies have made it easier to open small, nimble schooling models.

Green Schools

The climate crisis is the most complex challenge mankind has ever faced . We’re covering what edleaders and educators can do about it. 

Difference Making

Focusing on how making a difference has emerged as one of the most powerful learning experiences.

New Pathways

This campaign will serve as a road map to the new architecture for American schools. Pathways to citizenship, employment, economic mobility, and a purpose-driven life.

Web3 has the potential to rebuild the internet towards more equitable access and ownership of information, meaning dramatic improvements for learners.

Schools Worth Visiting

We share stories that highlight best practices, lessons learned and next-gen teaching practice.

View more series…

About Getting Smart

Getting smart collective, impact update, real-life examples of design thinking in the classroom.

  • Uncategorized

examples of design thinking in education

We are all continually trying to respond to a rapidly evolving global economy and the many dynamic cultural shifts therein. This response includes new pedagogies that are evidenced by new standards, assessments, tools and learning environments.

One such attempt to connect how the real world is problem-solving and what one can do in classroom environments is through Design Thinking . Early design thinking appeared in the late 60’s and early 70’s and has recently started to influence and infiltrate business and K-12 environments.

Much of the influence is coming from folks at IDEO , the industry leader, and the d. School at Stanford University , the higher education torchbearer. The rationale behind design thinking centers on a pedagogy aimed at creating and facilitating future innovators and breakthrough thinkers. It is about creating creative and collaborative workflows engineered to tackle big projects and prototyping to discover new solutions.

And although we have K-12 schools incorporating design thinking into their curriculum and instruction, as well as educators attending design thinking workshops at places like the d. School at Stanford, what does design thinking really look like in K-12 classrooms and schools?

Kicking Off The School Year

New Tech High School Napa  Principal Riley Johnson began this school year with a three-day school-wide design thinking challenge  for his staff and students.

According to Johnson, it was important that both students and teachers were immediately immersed into a three-day design thinking environment that would set the tone, culture and their mindsets for the upcoming school year.

Johnson said 415 students participated in a cross-curricular, cross-grade challenge that examined the question: “ How might we tackle a problem that our community (global, national or local) faces? ”

Teachers guided the students through specific themes and students selected a theme that interested them most before getting in mixed grade groups. The themes were:  teens, human rights, water, privacy, violence, equity, immigration, change as growth, food waste and robotics . Students, in their theme groups, had to go through a process of building empathy in potential users, creating a needs statement, brainstorming and ideation, generating prototypes and testing their ideas. Everyone presented and there were prizes awarded.

New Tech High Napa teacher Angelene Warnock said they were hoping to build a sense of shared empathy by taking all 415 students through the process together. “We hope to use design thinking as a stepping stone to deepening the already strong student culture we have,” said Warnock.

Even the New Tech High Napa students appreciated the school-wide intro to design thinking. “As a student, it was exciting to be able to start the year different from all other schools,” said senior Ami Ambu. “New Tech High has always stood out and gone down their own path and this challenge will help us continue to do that into the future.”

The High School Classroom

Veteran science teacher Rebecca Girard , of Notre Dame High School  in Belmont, CA, has been using design thinking as the foundational approach for her students to solve real-world problems.

Her students develop their own driving questions to investigate ways to share their learning. The scientific method and design thinking have many similarities according to Girard. “Over the past couple of years, I have been more clear about using the design thinking model in my science classes. I have especially focused on developing empathy and creating projects to share with others for feedback and reflection,” said Girard.

Sample design thinking projects have included: students designing their own labs experiments to discover and understand content, designing a solution to “why doesn’t everyone compost”, and the IDEO Ebola Challenge . Girard’s science students are also pursuing year-long design thinking projects that become their digital portfolios .

Notre Dame History Teacher Gabor Molnar has demonstrated that design thinking goes beyond the science and the scientific method and can be applied to all disciplines such as social science. Students in Molnar’s classes are studying the history of immigration in the U.S. but applying to the political challenges and solutions of today. Students used a variety of sources: blogs, news, political campaigns, music, song lyrics and more.

The Elementary Classroom

Design thinking challenges and projects are not limited to high school environments. At Hall Middle School  in Marin County, CA, Jennifer Fry’s fifth graders were immersed into design thinking last year in her digital art class.

Fry used design thinking with her students when they constructed interactive sculptures using a variety of media. Students worked in teams and were given one constraint: design and execute their sculpture in one class period. The idea was to model how engineers and architects, for example, view constraints not as obstacles, but rather as gateways to deeper resourcefulness and innovative thinking.

Her challenge looked like this:

Build a sculpture using the available materials with a moving and/or interactive component by 9:30. Additional information:

  • Your sculpture must have a MOVING and/or an INTERACTIVE element.
  • Consider the VISUAL component of your sculpture. What will the viewer SEE to draw them in?
  • You DO NOT have to use every  Little Bit in your kit. Use only the ones you need.
  • You may borrow bits from another group with their approval ONLY.
  • You may check out a SPECIAL Little Bit from Ms. Fry. The list is on the board.
  • Use the materials on the back table and on the supply shelves to construct your sculpture.
  • If you need something you don’t see, ask Ms. Fry.
  • Take CARE of the Little Bits!

Fry’s hope was to have the students look at and interact with other’s work, provide feedback and debrief the experience. She admits that although this project was an experiment and she didn’t know what to expect, it was a fantastic learning experience for herself and the students.

“In the ten years I’ve been teaching, I don’t remember ever seeing the level of engagement and ownership of learning as I did with this project,” said Fry. “Every student was able to achieve a level of success no matter his or her skill level. They had to be creative, develop something that was personally meaningful, worked within the constraints, and used technology that was new and different.”

For those educators and systems trying to incorporate more project-based approaches that emphasize problem-solving, relevance and collaboration, design thinking curriculum will have a great deal to offer.

For more on design thinking see:

  • Design Thinking: A Human-Centered Approach to Innovation in Education
  • Design Thinking in Schools: An Emerging Movement Building Creative Confidence in our Youth
  • 45 Design Thinking Resources for Teachers
  • Design Thinking: Lessons For The Classroom from Edutopia
  • Design Thinking for Educators
  • Design Thinking For Educators Toolkit from IDEO

Stay in-the-know with all things EdTech and innovations in learning by signing up to receive the weekly Smart Update .

examples of design thinking in education

Michael Niehoff

Discover the latest in learning innovations.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Related Reading

examples of design thinking in education

Using Design Thinking with Districts to Improve Formative Assessment Practice

examples of design thinking in education

Getting Started with Design Thinking

design thiking

How Design Thinking Transforms Communities, One Project at a Time

4.0

Balancing Design Thinking with Equity

Android robo.

An attempt to decide what real world can solve in problem solving and classroom situations is by design thinking.

Marie Alvarez

I am an art teacher working with Design Thinking. Our students work with Design Thinking through art lens. All their projects end with art. Could really use some ideas for real world problem solving that can be completed with an art prototype.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. All fields are required.

Nominate a School, Program or Community

Stay on the cutting edge of learning innovation.

Subscribe to our weekly Smart Update!

Smart Update

What is pbe (spanish), designing microschools download, download quick start guide to implementing place-based education, download quick start guide to place-based professional learning, download what is place-based education and why does it matter, download 20 invention opportunities in learning & development.

documentary

examples of design thinking in education

What is Design Thinking in Education?

In a world where artificial intelligence, exemplified by tools like ChatGPT, is reshaping our world, the human touch of design thinking becomes even more crucial. You might already be familiar with design thinking and curious about how to harness it alongside AI, or perhaps you’re new to this method. Regardless of your experience level, I’m going to share why design thinking is your human advantage in an AI-world. We’ll explore its impact on students and educators, particularly when integrated into the curriculum to design learning experiences that are both innovative and empathetic.

Back in 2017, I spearheaded a two-year research study at Design39 Campus in San Diego, CA, focusing on how educators used design thinking to transcend traditional educational practices. This study was pivotal in understanding how to scale from pockets of innovation to a culture of innovation. It’s rare to see a public school integrate these practices, and I always wondered, “Why is this the exception and not the norm?” How might design thinking when combined with AI tools, complement standards-based curricula by prompting students to tackle real-world challenges. We investigated the methods educators used to learn about design thinking and how they crafted learning experiences at the nexus of knowledge, skills, and mindsets, aiming to foster creative problem-solving in an increasingly AI-integrated world. The results revealed it had nothing to do with the technology. It had to do with people.

Design thinking is both a method and a mindset.

What makes design thinking unique in comparison to other frameworks such as project based learning, is that in addition to skills there is an emphasis on developing mindsets such as empathy, creative confidence, learning from failure and optimism.

Seeing their students and themselves enhance and develop their skills and mindset of a design thinker demonstrated the value in using design thinking and fueled their motivation to continue. In addition, it strengthened their self-efficacy and helped them embrace, not fear change.

The results indicate strong agreement amongst the educators between developing in demand skills such as creativity, problem finding, collaboration and communication and practicing design thinking. 

What is Design Thinking in Education

As workplaces determine how to leverage new and emerging technologies in ways that serve humanity, the two critical skills expected will be the ability to solve unstructured problems and to engage in complex communication, two areas that allow workers to augment what machines can do (Levy & Murnane, 2013.) 

Brynjolfsson and McAfee (2014) call this era, “The Second Machine Age,” characterized by advances in technology, such as the rise of big data, mobility, artificial intelligence, robotics and the internet of things. The World Economic Forum calls this era, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution.” 

Regardless of the name we give this era, Schwab warned, as did Brynjolfsson and McAfee, that failure by organizations to prepare and adapt could cause inequality and fragment societies. 

That era that we once talked about, is not here.

The rise of generative Ai.

As Erik Brynjolfsson shares, “There is no economic law that says as technology advances, so does equal opportunity.” The World Economic Forum reinforces this by sharing, that while the dynamics of today’s world have the potential to create enormous prosperity, the challenge to societies, particularly businesses, governments and education systems, will be to create access to opportunities that will allow everyone to share in the prosperity. 

Top 15 skills for 2025 to answer What is Design Thinking in Education?

Schwab, Brynjolfsson and McAfee advocate for schools being able to play a powerful role in shaping a future that is technology-driven and human-centered. Design thinking, a human-centered framework is one method that can provide educators with the skills and mindset to navigate away from the traditional model established during the industrial area. To a learner-centered vision where we design learning experiences at the intersection of knowledge, skills, and mindsets.

The Future of Work

Designing schools for today’s learner is not just about solving a workforce or technology challenge. It’s also about solving a human challenge, where every individual has the access and opportunity to reach their potential. 

Despite the changing expectations of the workplace brought forth by this era, today’s education systems largely remain unchanged. Leaving graduates without the knowledge, skills and mindsets to thrive in future workplaces and as citizens. Furthermore, the lack of equity has led to what Paul Attewell calls a growing digital use divide deepening the fragmentation of society. 

​​A decade ago, some of the most in-demand occupations or specialties today did not exist across many industries and countries. Furthermore, 60% of children in kindergarten will live in a world where the possible opportunities do not yet exist (World Economic Forum, 2017).

In Technology, Jobs and the Future of Work, McKinsey states that 60% of all occupations have at least 30% of activities that can be automated. 40% of employers say lack of skills is the main reason for entry level job vacancies. And 60% of new graduates said they were not prepared for the world of work in a knowledge economy, noting gaps in technical and soft skills. Before our experience with ChatGPT I’m reminded of Imaginable by Jane McGonigal where she shares, “Almost everything important that’s ever happened, was unimaginable shortly before it happened.”

With an influx of technology over the past decade, with iPads and Chromebooks, and now the acceleration of AI technology, particularly over the past year, we have to wonder what gaps exist that prevent us from accelerating and scaling the change we want to see in schools. 

One reason is that this challenge is complex and overwhelming. This is where design thinking practices are helpful in moving from idea to impact. Design thinking practices provide the structure and scaffolds needed to take a complex idea and simplify it.

The Design Thinking Process

Too often design thinking is seen as a series of hexagons to jump through. Check off one and move onto the next. Design thinking is a non-linear framework that nurtures your mindset toward navigating change. 

It can be used in three areas:

  • Problem finding
  • Problem solving
  • Opportunity exploration

The design thinking model is nonlinear. Resulting in a back and forth between the stages of inspiration, ideation and implementation, in an effort to continuously improve upon their potential solution (Shively et al., 2018). These stages were expanded by the d.School into empathy, define, ideate, prototype and iterate. In fact, there are many exercises that can be used to apply each area of the process. 

Let’s walk through each phase. Then I’ll share examples of how it is being used. I also want to preface this by saying that simply going through these stages is where most people misunderstand design thinking and don’t see the results they hoped for. These phases are here to help you develop an action-oriented mindset. Moving from identifying a problem to designing and then testing a solution to quickly get feedback. Each of these phases have numerous exercises to also help facilitate experiences based on your scenario.

Phase 1: Empathy

When you begin with empathy, what you think is challenged by what you learn. This alone is what makes design thinking so unique and is the first phase. During the empathy stage, you observe, engage and immerse yourself in the experience of those you are designing for. Continuously asking, “why” to understand why things are the way they are. 

This phase is where we see the most challenges, yet this phase is the most critical. An empathy map is probably the most common exercise. Yet there are others such as, “Heard, Seen, Respected.” Another challenge in this area is not speaking directly to the user. For example, I’ve sat in many “design thinking” experiences where the group will speculate on behalf of the users. For example, educators speculating about parents, administrators speculating about teachers. 

The purpose behind an empathy exercise is that when we begin with empathy, what we think is challenged by what we learn. While you can practice with each other, ultimately you must speak directly to who you are designing for.

Phase 2: Define

During the define stage you unpack the empathy findings and create an actionable problem statement often starting with, “how might we…” This statement not only emphasizes an optimistic outlook, it invites the designer to think about how this can be a collaborative approach.

Phase 3: Ideate

During the ideate phase you generate a series of possibilities for design. The focus here is quantity not quality. As you want to generate as many possibilities to see how they may merge together. As Guy Kawasaki shares, “Don’t worry be crappy.” Feasibility is not important at this step. Rather the key is to not think about what is possible but what can be possible. At the end, one of the ideas, or the merging of many ideas, is chosen to expand upon in the next phase. 

This is another phase where we see challenges. It is not enough to simply tell someone to get a piece of paper and then come up with lots of ideas. As adults, this is incredibly challenging and is also a muscle that needs to be developed. In fact, one of my favorite exercises is 1-2-4-all. Another is walking questions, where the prompt begins with “What if…” and then after each person writes something it is handed to the person on their right.

Phase 4: Prototype

During the prototype phase, ideas that were narrowed down from ideation are created in a tangible form so that they can be tested. During this phase, the designer has an opportunity to test their prototype and gain feedback.

Phase 5: Iteration

By quickly testing the prototype, the user can refine the idea. And have a deeper understanding to go back and ask questions to the group they are designing for. The feedback received from the user allows the designer to engage in a deeper level of empathy to refine the questions asked and the problem being defined. This brings us back to phase 1. 

You can find more of these exercises to lead your group through each phase at sessionlab.com . 

As schools strive to create student learning experiences that prepare them for their future, design thinking can play a critical role in complementing students’ knowledge with the skills and mindsets to be creative problem solvers.

Examples of Design Thinking in K12

While new approaches tend to be viewed with skepticism, an increasing number of studies are coming forward reflecting the promise of transferability of skills and mindsets from the classroom to real-world problems when utilizing design thinking. As expectations are raised about what student skills and mindsets are needed, the level of support for educators must increase as well to experience success in new strategies and the outcomes they promise. 

When student learning experiences include design thinking, their skills continue to be enhanced and developed. This in turn allows them to apply these strategies to be problem finders and problem solvers. Helping them be more comfortable with change and empowering them to solve unstructured problems. And work with new information, gaining knowledge, skills and mindsets that cannot be found in the confines of a textbook.

In “The Second Machine Age,” the authors share:

Technological progress is going to leave behind some people, perhaps even a lot of people, as it races ahead. As we’ll demonstrate, there’s never been a better time to be a worker with special skills or the right education. Because these people can use technology to create and capture value. However, there’s never been a worse time to be a worker with only “ordinary” skills and abilities to offer, because computers, robots, and other digital technologies are acquiring these skills and abilities at an extraordinary rate. The Second Machine Age | Erik Brynjolfsson | Andrew McAffee

Design thinking strengthens the mindsets and skills that today’s world demands with the ability to become creative problem solvers. Through nurturing the skills and mindsets developed through engaging in design thinking, schools can create more equitable use environments for all learners that leverage technology to accelerate creative tasks that can bridge the digital use divide.

Case Study 1: Design Thinking in Grade 6

A recent study by the Stanford Graduate School of Education highlights that through instruction, students transfer design thinking strategies beyond the classroom. And that the biggest benefits were to low-achieving students (Chin et al., 2019). 

The study included 200 students from grade 6. The researchers worked with the educators during class time to coach half the group of students on two specific design thinking strategies. And then assigned them a project where they could apply these skills.

The two strategies included seeking out constructive feedback and identifying multiple possible outcomes to a challenge. Each of these strategies were designed to prevent what the researchers called, “early closure”. Identifying the potential solution before examining the problem. 

After class the students were presented with different challenges to see how they would approach them. The students who were taught about constructive criticism asked for feedback when presented with the new challenge and were more likely to go back and revise their work. 

This area was significant, as a pre-test revealed that low-achieving students were behind their high achieving peers when seeking out feedback, a gap that the researchers say disappeared after classroom instruction, highlighting the need for this to be taught to all students, not just advanced students in electives.

As Attewell shares, “Placing computers in the hands of every student is not a solution because the challenge lies in addressing the “ digital use divide – changing the tasks that students do when provided with computers.” 

He further highlights the students who gain the types of skills highlighted by the Future of Jobs Report are white and affluent students. These students are more likely to use technology to develop trending skills with greater levels of adult support. Whereas minority students are more likely to use it for rote learning tasks, with lower levels of adult support. 

While design thinking is often found in pockets, presented to students already interested in this area, or the students who are in certain electives, the study led by the Stanford Graduate School of Education demonstrates the advances that can be made when this is offered to all students.

Case Study 2: Design Thinking in Geography

Another study (Caroll et al., 2010) focused on the implementation of a design curriculum during a middle school geography class. And explored how students expressed their understanding of design thinking in classroom activities, how affective elements impacted design thinking in the classroom environment and how design thinking is connected to academic standards and content in the classroom. The students were a diverse group with 60% Latino, 30% African-American, 9% Pacific Islander and 1% White.

The task was for students to use the design process to learn about systems in geography. The study found that students increased their levels of creative confidence. And that design thinking fostered the ability to imagine without boundaries and constraints. A key element to success was that educators needed to see the value of design thinking. And it must be integrated into academic content.

A challenge often associated with design thinking in education is not integrating it into mainstream education as an equitable experience for all learners despite showing that lower achieving students benefit more (Chin et al, 2019). 

If students are to experience dynamic learning experiences, then organizations must raise the level of support for educators and give them the time and space to learn and integrate design thinking.

How Educators Use Design Thinking

Educators are facing a number of challenges in their professional practice. Many of the requirements today are tools and methods they did not grow up with. Furthermore, the profession is tasked with designing new methods often within traditional systems that have constraints that may serve as roadblocks to change (Robinson & Aronica, 2016). 

A 2018 study by PwC with the Business Higher Education Forum shared that an average of 10% of K-12 teachers feel confident incorporating higher-level technology that affords students the opportunity to use technology to design learning that is active, not passive. 

As a result, students do not spend much time in school actively practicing the higher-level trending skills expected by employers. Moreover, the report shows that more than 60% of classroom technology use is passive, while only 32% is active use. While the study suggests that many teachers do not have the skills to engage students in the active use of technology, 79% said they would like to have more professional development for how to leverage technology to design learning that is active.

Case Study 3: Design39 Campus

As I shared earlier I led a two-year research study at Design39 Campus. The study examines how it helped teachers evolve their practice. At Design39 teachers are called “Learning Experience Designers” (LEDs). Borko and Putnam (1995) share that how educators think is related to their knowledge. To understand how LEDs are using design thinking to complement the standards-based curriculum, it was important to understand how they acquired and applied this knowledge.  

Despite design thinking having its roots outside of education, when asked, “What does design thinking mean to you?” The LEDs identified many commonalities amongst their own work as educators and design thinking. Moreover, they appreciated the alignment of their work with the vocabulary and structure of the design thinking framework. 

Over 50% of the LEDs interviewed identified design thinking as providing them with a common vocabulary and structure for what they already do. The LEDs identified educators as inherent design thinkers due to the shared human-centered focus of working with users. In this experience educators design challenges with cyclical learning tasks involving testing, feedback and iteration, and a design mindset to address the wide variety of complex problems within their individual classrooms and across education organizations.

One LED shared:

I just look at it as a process, a process in my mind that we kind of naturally go through as educators, and so with the design thinking process I feel that it is codifying what we do and so we start off always in empathy and empathy is the heart of design thinking and so we are problem solving, who are we problem solving for – people, our learners and so this entire process that we go through of brain dumping it, trying it, getting feedback and coming back to it again so that we can make sure we were really insightful about what the problem really was for the users and we continue around this process to fine tune a potential solution is the design thinking process. Learning Experience Designer | Design39 Campus

One of the ways mastery of knowledge is demonstrated is by teaching others. To assess their mastery of design thinking in education, learning experience designers were asked to describe their confidence in teaching someone else how to integrate design thinking into their curriculum.

Design Thinking in Education

Many LEDs acknowledged that although this is what it often looked like in the first year of the school opening, they have since had the time, space and collaborative opportunities to explore and create deeper integration. This was a point of reference mentioned by 78% of LEDs.

I think a lot of people see design thinking as one science activity, we design think everything from rules to problems that come up in the playground, it’s all through the day, they (the learners) are always looking for problems to solve. Learning Experience Designer | Design39 Campus

In another example, four LEDs made a note using the exact same language that “design thinking is not always cardboard and duct tape.” What allows them to design learning that is more meaningful  one LED highlighted:

Not every day is about using duct tape and cardboard, sometimes to do the design to solve the problems you have to hunker down and read and research and so some days, design thinking is highlighting and taking notes. Learning Experience Designer | Design39 Campus

Another LED elaborated on this idea by sharing that

Design thinking is a way of thinking, not always a product that is created at the end. Learning Experience Designer | Design39 Campus

LEDs in all focus groups shared how ultimately design thinking was an opportunity to design lessons that are “ bigger than we are .” 

This allowed for the LEDs to design learning experiences. With this, the end result was not to just design a potential solution to a challenge that was identified. Or to simply go from one standard to another, checking off boxes along the way, but that the solution, the work the learners were doing lived beyond the classroom for an authentic audience, where learners are working on real world problems and presenting their solutions to a real world audience.

Almost all of the LEDs shared that to them design thinking was a mindset. It is a process of inquiry that allowed for a more human centered environment where the learner was the focus. 

This highlighted a critical shift in the culture at Design39, an element Sarason (2004) discussed in saying no one ever asks:

“Why is school not a place where educators learn as well?” 

Bring a Design Thinking Workshop to Your School

We’ve invested in technology. Now it’s time to invest in people. Let’s discuss how design thinking practices can enhance the work you are doing in your school, giving everyone the mindset and skills to navigate change with enthusiasm and optimism. Use this calendar to schedule a time with Sabba to discuss bringing a workshop to your school. Workshops can be delivered both virtually and in-person.

Dr. Sabba workshop experience

Attewell, P. (2001). The first and second digital divides. Sociology of Education, 74(3), 252-259

Borko, H., & Putnam, R.T. (1995). Expanding a teacher’s knowledge base: A cognitive psychological perspective on professional development. In T. Gusky & M. Huberman (Eds), Professional development in education: New paradigms and practices (pp.35-65). Teachers College Press. 

Brown, T & Wyatt, J. (2010). Design thinking for social innovation.  Stanford Social Science Review, 8 (1), 30-35.

Brynjolfsson, E. (2014).  The second machine age: Work, progress, and prosperity in a time of brilliant technologies  (1st t ed.). W. W. Norton & Company.

Carroll, M., Goldman, S., Britos, L., Koh, J., Royalty, A., & Hornstein, M. (2010). Destination, imagination and the fires within: Design thinking in a middle school classroom. International Journal of Art and Design Education, (29)1, 37-53.

Chin, D. B., Doris, Blair, K.P., Wolf, R., & Conlin, L., Cutumisu, M., Pfaffman, J., Schwartz, D.L. (2019). Educating and measuring choice: A test of the transfer of design thinking in problem solving and learning. Journal of the Learning Sciences. 1-44. 

Levy, F., & Murnane, R. (2013). Dancing with Robots. NEXT Report.

McKinsey Global Institute (2017). Technology, Jobs and the Future of Work. McKinsey. 

PwC (2017). Technology in U.S. Schools: Are we preparing our students for the jobs of tomorrow . Pricewater House Coopers. https://www.pwc.com/us/en/about-us/corporate-responsibility/library/preparing-students-for-technology-jobs.html .

Robinson, K., & Aronica, L. (2016). Creative schools: the grassroots revolution that’s transforming education. Penguin Books.

Shively, K., Stith, K.M., & Rubenstein, L.D. (2018). Measuring what matters: Assessing creativity, critical thinking, and the design process. Gifted Child Today, 41(3) 149-158.

World Economic Forum. (2018). The future of jobs: Employment, Skills and Workforce Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution . World Economic Forum. 

examples of design thinking in education

I believe that the future should be designed. Not left to chance. Over the past decade, using design thinking practices I've helped schools and businesses create a culture of innovation where everyone is empowered to move from idea to impact, to address complex challenges and discover opportunities. 

stay connected

examples of design thinking in education

designing schools

[…] importance of learning experiences at the intersection of developing learning skills and mindsets. Design thinking is one approach that can help you master both. In my experience it’s rare that design thinking […]

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

« How Education Leaders Use Social Media to Build Trust, Encourage Creativity, and Inspire a Collective Vision

Creative Career Map: How Students Can Navigate the Future of Work with Design Thinking »

examples of design thinking in education

Browse By Category

Social Influence

Design Thinking

examples of design thinking in education

Join the Community

All of my best and life changing relationships began online. Whether it's a simple tweet, a DM or an email. It always begins and ends with the relationships we create.  Each week I'll send the skills and strategies you need to build your human advantage in an AI world straight to your inbox. 

As Simon Sinek Says: "Alone is hard. Together is better."

©DesigningSchools. All rights reserved. 2023

Instagram is my creative outlet. It's where you can see stories that take you behind the scenes and where I love having audio chats in my DM.

@designing_schools

examples of design thinking in education

  • Our Mission

Design Thinking in Education: Empathy, Challenge, Discovery, and Sharing

As a model for reframing methods and outcomes, design thinking reconnects educators to their creativity and aspirations for helping students develop as deep thinkers and doers.

Four young students are sitting around a classroom table building a contraption out of legos and wires. It looks like it might be able to move prompted by technology.

"Design thinking gave me a process to weave through all of the project–based learning experiences I create with my kiddos."

"As a leader of a #NextGen school, design thinking is our continuous innovation process."

"Design thinking reminds me all the time why I became an educator; it all starts with empathy."

An Oasis for Educators

The quotes above -- full of insight and affirmation -- are just some of the many that I've heard from educators taken by the power of design thinking and moved to bring it into their practice. When we started the @K12lab at Stanford's d.school back in 2007 we began with a hunch that design thinking would be a great tool for educators to deploy in their classrooms and schools, and that ultimately, it would be a useful process for kids working through interdisciplinary challenges. What we found in our initial prototypes -- launching an innovation lab space, creating a design thinking professional development experience, and running student-facing design challenges for middle- and high-school classes -- was that the design thinking process functioned as a kind of oasis for educators, reconnecting them to their creativity and aspirations for helping students develop as deep thinkers and doers, not just as test takers.

In the last few years, the field has witnessed an explosion of interest in design thinking, nationally and internationally. You can literally see its growth mapped on the Design Thinking in Schools map and in the internationally booming Design for Change student challenge platform. The spread of design thinking also shows up in new national efforts like IDEO’s Teacher’s Guild platform and the very active Twitter chat community built around #DTK12chat . Educators are also supporting each other as design thinkers in regional collaborations like Atlanta’s #AK12DC, a collection of 30 public and independent schools working to accelerate design challenges, and Henry Ford Learning Institute 's work in Michigan to gather regional enthusiasts and design thinking leaders.

As the movement for design thinking in education broadens and deepens, many practitioners are flexibly customizing the design thinking process in their own contexts. Coming from the d.school, I particularly love seeing the teachers and leaders with whom we work sharing how they moved from the process we taught them (empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test) to language that works in their own context. For example, check out Mary Cantwell’s DEEPdt or Urban Montessori's incorporation of design thinking in their core values .

4 Modes for Developing Your Practice

If you're considering how to embrace design thinking in your school culture, I believe you should focus on four critical modes underlying the process:

1. Lead with empathy.

Empathy is, of course, the root of human-centered design. Leading with empathy builds on the classic definition of "walking in someone else's shoes" to get us out of our own heads and into the lived reality of others so that we can understand the implicit needs and root causes of the situations in which we work. Leading with empathy means pushing yourself to get closer to people, and to do so consistently, publicly, and with conviction.

How do you do it? Listen more; talk less. Immerse yourself in how others experience your school or program. Adopt a beginner's mind and use all of your senses to notice what's happening around you. At the d.school, we believe in these practices so much that we're issuing a Shadow a Student challenge from our School Retool project to illuminate the power of leading with empathy. If you want to step into empathy, it will be a great way to get started.

2. Challenge assumptions.

This is the opposite of "keep calm and carry on." Challenging assumptions means that when confronted with a problem, you seize the opportunity to do better than you've done before. Useful phrases to build into your lexicon are "What if. . . ?" and "How might we. . . ?" Just the simple act of introducing the language of possibility can start the shift from how we've always done things to the potential for a reframe. Reframing is critical for innovation, but it's also a way of moving from a deficit point of view to an asset focus. Challenging assumptions lets us see what both children and adults are truly capable of doing. Harnessed for good, challenging assumptions steers you in the direction of more effective policies and practices because you're willing to see things differently.

3. Make experiments happen.

Here's the rub. "Just do it" is more than a pitch for selling sports gear. It means try something and learn from it. We can tangle ourselves in all kinds of knots about "embracing failure," but what really matters is trying something, letting people know that you're trying it, and generating opportunities for feedback. You'll learn the most from what doesn't work.

When you find yourself sitting in one more meeting to make a plan for a plan, just stop and say, "What could we try in order to figure this out?" This sets you on the path to experiment with quick hacks and low-resolution prototypes. Whatever you try will point you in the direction of what's next. At the d.school, we call it a bias toward action : Don't talk -- do. And when you do, then you observe, reflect, and try again to get it right.

4. Share your process.

Design cannot thrive in isolation. As you share your empathy work or your experiments, share what's hard, not just what's shiny and new. You can share those things as well, but we'll all learn more when you share your process, warts and all.

I invite you to investigate how leading with empathy, challenging assumptions, and making experiments happen can deepen your teaching or leadership practices. And as you do, please share what you've learned -- you may have discovered what we've yet to imagine.

Design Thinking

What makes design thinking different.

Traditional courses progress the student learning from conceptual understanding towards demonstrations of skill and capacity in a linear, topically focused manner. Setting this scaffolding is set in place, fixes the problems, and the solutions are typically within a known range. But many course problems are research questions that defy simple explanations or right/wrong answers. For these courses, need a more dexterous approach. 

In Design Thinking, they are discovering knowledge through exploration. Students help define the problems, identify and develop potential solutions, and determine ways to assess the work. Instructors serve as facilitators and advisors to this learning. Embedded throughout the process is capacity-building through linked-learning experiences, collaborative exercises, and creative problem-solving [iii] . Learning often involves hands-on experiences focused on real-world challenges. By centering course activities around a problem and generating creative solutions, these courses support the development of essential competencies such as critical thinking, reflective learning, adaptability, effective collaboration, and systems thinking.

The Design Thinking Multi-Stage Model

Discovery (empathy, research, and problem definition), ideation (interpret, create, and make), experimentation (prototype, test and evaluate), evolution (re-think, re-make, repeat), deployment (socialize, pilot, and integrate).

Design Thinking represented by arrows pointing right - Discovery (Empathy, Research, Problem Definition), Ideation (Interpret, Create), Experimentation (Prototype, Test, Evaluate), and Evolution (Rethinking, Redesign, Repeat)

The first stages are directed towards understanding and defining potential problems for solutions by asking, “What Is It?” The requisite foundation for all other design thinking stages is the ability to generate informed and empathetic work during this stage. How? Through literature reviews and consultations with experts along with the combined observations and engagements with people and physical environments relevant to the topic. Information gathered and documented during this stage can be aligned with course objectives and assessments. Students will gain a deeper understanding of the issues throughout the process.

Upon completing the information gathering, teams organize, interpret, and make sense of the data to define a problem scope. Doing so requires both analysis (i.e., breaking down complex concepts) and synthesis (i.e., creatively piecing information together to form whole ideas). A good problem statement should be human-centered, broad enough for creative freedom, but narrow enough to be manageable. As a general rule, consider using the Stanford d. school “Why-How Ladder” (a variation of the Sakichi Toyoda “5 Whys” technique) to refine the problem statement and to suggest how to move forwards with design problem-solving.

Unlike the traditional project-based learning method, instructors do not define the problem in design thinking. They can, and should, define a scope, but defining the actual problem is part of the student responsibility. 

At this stage, students interpret their research into a range of creative ideas and potential solutions. This step starts the “What If?” phase of the work. Instructors should encourage enthusiasm and collaborative participation by incorporating active-learning methods, visualization techniques of “systems-thinking,” and other image-oriented methods to document brainstorming.

Expert guidance is required to maintain enthusiasm in the ideation process by guiding proposals and bringing focus to the expectations. Instructors suggest practices to enhance the solutions and temper expectations (e.g., “your solution won’t solve world hunger as you proposed, but it can make a difference in one stage of food production—let’s use that to refocus the design effort.” Eventually a more narrow range of possible solutions is identified, and the work of making/designing begins.

In this stage, ideas become manifest. Students are deciding how and what to produce is of central importance. Iteration is essential. Align activities with course objectives and professional practice models. As ideation moves into prototyping, the expectation is that student groups produce several scaled-down versions or features of the final solution. Doing so allows students to understand better the constraints and benefits inherent to the solutions they’ve designed. The introduction of new tools and skills can occur during this stage, along with emphasizing collaborative efforts. 

Experimentation is only complete when identifying problems by breaking the project down through evaluation.

This process looks for failures and revelations that emerge through testing; profound learning opportunities arise when solutions don’t meet their objectives. 

Learning how to define and evaluate the relative value and efficacy of the prototypes follows is an essential skill. Students often return to the Discovery stage to identify the proper standards for evaluating success (Who does it work for? Does it work in the way you intended? How would you know?). At this stage, instructors can show how practical conditions affect evaluation (industry standards, code requirements, etc.) and how exigent forces would affect the solution (e.g., broader economic, sociological, and cultural conditions).

This stage isn’t the end of the process; ultimately, testing is a generative process for redesign as it reveals opportunities for improvement. By trying to determine how and why specific solutions are rejected, improved, or accepted, students develop clarity of how real users would behave, think, and feel when interacting with the solution. At this stage, alterations and refinements are expected to be more mature and technically developed. Collaborations may be extended into communities to expand testing and assessment.

The multi-stage process implies a linear direction of progress, but designing and learning are inherently more unpredictable, so the model is flexible. Information learned from testing helps refine the problem definition and the overall design. There is a perpetual loop of feedback. Ultimately, solutions are evolved and improved through reiteration and repetition, as fewer factors are considered for each iteration.

The challenge of design thinking is often knowing when this evolutionary process of redesigning is “done.” Solving a problem, particularly a vexing one, is unlikely within the constraints of school. Academic calendars and restrictions are quite different from practice, so there are often situations in which a “good enough for now” scenario is the goal.

Ideally, of course, the process can spark an interest in students to continue a life-long engagement in these research projects. This process is ultimately about joining on-going conversations and searching for new knowledge through design solutions. It isn’t about resolution. The passion of the search is what is essential to teach and learn.

Specific projects may have the opportunity to develop into real-world solutions. This stage of deployment focuses on ways that solutions become tangible, actionable, and ready for use. In the socializing phase, the ideas develop to the degree that buy-in occurs and teams built around the solution. This phase relies on the ability to tell compelling stories about the solution. Because these stories have naturally developed through a rigorous Design Thinking process, it is relatively easy to build a narrative around a solution based on the process.

In the piloting phase, the solution is introduced to a predetermined group to gain real-world feedback and reviews. Depending on the solution’s stage and scope, this may occur at a smaller scale during prototyping. In this phase, the focus is on identifying barriers to implementation of use and integration. Depending on the solution, these barriers to production and method may be profound. This work takes in-depth expertise and cross-disciplinary collaborations to understand markets, supply-chains, production, delivery models, and how the solution will enhance or disrupt existing models.

What is the Difference between Project-Based Learning (PBL), Understanding by Design (UbD), and Design Thinking (DT)?

Project-based learning (PBL) is a broader category of educational activities in which curricular activities are all centered around sustained engagement with a problem or project. Using PBL, a potentially important study narrowed down into a series of discrete activities using student-directed learning. A PBL approach can closely align with curricular checkpoints by defining a path of inquiry and production through essential guiding questions and required deliverables.

The Understanding by Design (UbD) model, is similar to PBL in its use of creative problem solving as the central learning activity. It differs mostly in the way of evaluating success. In UbD, educators help define the problem and develop a process of design-learning with the final result. In some courses, particularly those with complex topics, there may not be a readily available answer. The problem itself may not be easily defined, which complicates the PBL and UbD model.

Design Thinking is intentionally more open-ended than these other options. Students help to define the problem based on a generative topic that opens an area of research. Students are encouraged to align what they produce with their broader research questions. Assessment is related to prototyping and rebuilding intended to promote creative risk-taking.

Design Thinking Resources for Educators

  • Kelley, T. (2016). The Art Of Innovation . London: Profile Books.
  • O’Donnell Wicklund Pigozzi Peterson, Architects Inc, VS Furniture, & Bruce Mau Design. (2010). The third teacher : 79 ways you can use design to transform teaching & learning / OWP/P Architects, VS Furniture, Bruce Mau Design . New York: Abrams.
  • Weinschenk, S. (2015). 100 MORE Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (1st ed.) . New Riders.

Manuals / Toolkits

  • IDEO.org. (2015). T he Field Guide to Human-Centered Design (Community Engagement Manual) . Retrieved from https://www.designkit.org/
  • Riverdale Country School & IDEO.org. (2019). Design Thinking for Educators Toolkit (2 nd Edition). Retrieved from https://www.ideo.com/post/design-thinking-for-educators/

Organizations

  • Institute of Design at Stanford (d.School) website  (Hasso-Plattner)
  • RED lab: Research in Education and Design website (Stanford School of Education)
  • TD4Ed: Teachers Design for Education website (Business Innovation Factory)
  • Edutopia, Design Thinking Video Collection
  • Design Thinking For Educators”  context  /  profession  /  practice  /  mindse

[i] Tim Brown, “Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation,” Harper Business, 2009. https://designthinking.ideo.com

[ii] Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design (d.school) at Stanford, “Design Thinking Mix Tapes,” 2018. https://dschool.stanford.edu/resources/chart-a-new-course-put-design-thinking-to-work

[iii] IDEO, “Design Thinking for Educators Toolkit” (2 nd Edition), IDEO + Riverdale Country School, 2019. https://www.ideo.com/post/design-thinking-for-educators

[iv] Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial (3 rd Ed.), 1996

  • Open access
  • Published: 22 March 2021

Using design thinking to cultivate the next generation of female STEAM thinkers

  • Rie Kijima   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7202-2418 1 ,
  • Mariko Yang-Yoshihara 2 &
  • Marcos Sadao Maekawa 3  

International Journal of STEM Education volume  8 , Article number:  14 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

17k Accesses

37 Citations

18 Altmetric

Metrics details

Countries around the world have struggled to implement education policies and practices to encourage more female youths to pursue Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). This has resulted in a persistent and sizeable gender gap in science and mathematics subjects in some countries. Using mixed-methods sequential explanatory design, this paper explores an educational intervention—specifically, a 3-day design thinking workshop—in Japan, designed to change female youths’ perceptions regarding STEM topics. Framed using a constructivist approach to learning, the workshops aimed to engender creative confidence, empathy, and global competence among youths.

The findings show that female youths who participated in the workshop had increased interest in engineering, greater creative confidence, more positive perceptions of STEM, higher levels of empathy and pro-social factors, and a more varied outlook on career options. We argue that this short intervention had a strong influence on the female youths’ mindsets, self-images, and perceptions of STEM.

This study provides empirical support that a short intervention can produce positive change in how female youths relate to STEM. In gendered societies, an innovative method like design thinking has the potential to revitalize education curriculum in ways that spur female youths’ confidence and creativity, enabling them to imagine a career in the field of STEM.

Introduction

Countries around the world have struggled to implement education policies to level the playing field for all genders to pursue their interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. Gender inequality in STEM fields continues to persist at various levels, as evidenced by mathematics scores in secondary education (Guiso, Monte, Sapienza, & Zingales, 2008 ), employment in math-intensive fields such as engineering (Ceci, Williams, & Barnett, 2009 ), and the gender wage gap in STEM professions (Blau & Kahn, 2017 ). Gender gaps in STEM start well before women enter the workforce. Students begin forming strong academic preferences and particular likes and dislikes of certain subjects in middle school (Fryer Jr & Levitt, 2010 ). It is around this phase in their adolescent years that girls become less motivated to pursue STEM topics (Kerr & Kurpius, 2004 ). Also, unless they take advanced levels of mathematics in high school, it is unlikely that girls will pursue science, mathematics, or engineering degrees in college (McIlwee & Robinson, 1992 ).

This study is at the intersection of two approaches to STEM education. The first is the traditional focus on STEM as a framework of learning that emphasizes knowledge acquisition, such as theory to model-based reasoning, which involves an iterative process of analyzing data to support or advance a theory (e.g., Borko, 2016 ; Duschl & Bismack, 2016 ). The second is STEAM, an approach that adds the Arts (hence the “A”) to STEM in order to harness a sense of creativity and inquiry to conventional STEM education (e.g., Daugherty, 2013 ). Our research emphasizes the importance of STEAM learning and how design thinking complements STEM. Proponents of STEAM argue that integrating artistic and design approaches will spur innovation (Madden et al., 2013 ; Robelen, 2011 ; Sousa & Pilecki, 2013 ). Furthermore, the integration of art and design into STEM allows for more human-centered innovation, ensuring that technological development is responsive to the needs, desires, and challenges of users (Chen & Lo, 2019 ).

This study explores what benefits an educational program that utilizes design thinking might have for a specific group of learners. Our study is significant because it contributes to our understanding of how an immersive design thinking educational program can foster greater interest in STEM among female adolescents. Moreover, it addresses the need to understand how design thinking could serve as “a model of thinking” for learners in the twenty-first century (Li et al., 2019a , p. 94). This study is also relevant because it highlights how a human-centric, empathy-focused pedagogical approach encourages youths to become more actively engaged with issues around them.

The study’s main research question asks: What kind of changes in terms of perception and understanding of STEM do we observe among youths who participate in the 3-day design thinking workshop? Specifically, we hypothesized that the intervention would increase the female youths’ interest and motivation and provide them the nudge needed to consider STEM as plausible and interesting fields of study. We offer evidence regarding the influence of the workshop by analyzing student-level data collected between 2016 and 2020 via surveys and interviews. We find that female youths who participated in the workshop showed increased interest in engineering and design, greater creative confidence, more positive perceptions of STEM, higher levels of empathy and pro-social factors, and a more varied outlook on career options. We end by proposing a model for an integrated approach to STEM learning within formal classroom settings and beyond (English & King, 2015 ; Estapa & Tank, 2017 ).

Globally, studies have shown that there is almost no difference between boys and girls in their aptitude and performance in mathematics in the early years of elementary school, but the gender gap widens over time. By fifth-grade, female students in the USA score 0.2 standard deviations lower than their male cohorts, which is equivalent to approximately 2.5 months of instruction (Fryer Jr & Levitt, 2010 ). A cross-national study of 19 African countries yields similar results: boys outperform girls in mathematics and the factors associated with this gender gap are due to socio-cultural factors, such as high fertility rate, mother’s educational level, and greater prevalence of Islam (Dickerson, McIntosh, & Valente, 2015 ). Japan follows this global trend. There is no statistically significant difference between boys and girls in their performance in mathematics in fourth grade since 2003; however, the gender gap widens over time (Meinck & Brese, 2019 ). By the time students reach eighth grade mathematics, there is a gender gap in favor of boys. This finding is consistent over a period of 20 years (Meinck & Brese, 2019 , p. 8).

Japan represents a perfect example of a narrow and leaky pipeline. There is a very small percentage of students entering STEM fields and the retention rate of STEM majors is extremely low. Nationally, women’s representation in higher education is below parity. In 2017, female students comprised 36.9% of undergraduates, 28.9% of doctoral students, and 26.7% of Master’s students. Footnote 1 Furthermore, women make up 16.2% of the total number of researchers in Japan, which puts Japan at the bottom of 25 advanced economies (The Cabinet Office, 2019 ). Footnote 2 In STEM fields, women accounted for 8.8%, 14.6%, and 15.9% of all researchers in engineering, science, and natural science, respectively (The Cabinet Office, 2018 ).

Underrepresentation of women in Japanese higher education is particularly notable in STEM fields. In academia, women made up 7.4% and 4.9% of faculty in science and engineering fields, respectively, compared to 22.9% in humanities (The Cabinet Office, 2016 , p. 372). Certain areas in STEM fields suffer particularly low representation of women in STEM fields: Mechanical Engineering (1.6%), Applied Chemistry (3.6%), Electrical Engineering (3.7%), Physics (4.4%), and Civil Engineering (5.7%) in 2007 (Kato & Chayama, 2012 , p. 37).

Increasing various pathways to pursue STEM promises to yield benefits for women. In particular, encouraging women to pursue and excel within STEM fields could potentially increase women’s private rate of return—a consideration that is particularly relevant in the case of Japan. Today, the difference between the male and female median wage in Japan is 23.5, approximately 10.6 percentage points higher than the OECD average, indicating a large gender wage gap in favor of men (OECD, 2020 ). According to data from Europe, it is estimated that women who pursue STEM careers earn, on average, 33% more than women who pursue non-STEM careers (Beede et al., 2011 ). Some studies also show a narrower gender pay gap in STEM than in non-STEM professions (Beede et al., 2011 , p. 1), especially among women and underrepresented minorities (Oh & Lewis, 2011 ). If this condition also holds true in Japan, women who pursue STEM could expect a higher private rate of return.

Conceptual framework

We draw our conceptual framework from the social constructivist approach to learning. Constructivists such as Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky argue that learners construct their own version of knowledge through interpretation, organization, and cumulative development of ideas (Ackermann, 2001 ; Fosnot & Perry, 1996 ). While both are concerned with how knowledge can be cumulatively constructed, Vygotsky emphasizes the importance of social interactions in enhancing the process of learning (Phillips, 1995 ). Thus, social constructivists argue that students learn best when they are able to situate their learning within a social context that enables them to internalize concepts (Cobb, 2016 ; Nyikos & Hashimoto, 1997 ).

Design thinking is deeply rooted in the constructivist approach to learning. Design thinking consists of a set of procedures that enable the learners to embrace ambiguity (Collins, 2013 ; Leifer & Steinert, 2011 ). In this paradigm, design thinkers are encouraged to move away from the quest for absolute answers and to engage in deductive reasoning through exploration of impartial and imperfect answers (Collins, 2013 ). This process enables the learners to engage in deep analysis and to internalize concepts and ideas.

Furthermore, design thinking emphasizes and builds learners’ communication and collaboration skills, both of which are at the heart of constructivism. STEAM learning begins by defining a real-life problem (Boakes, 2020 ) and then responding to it by focusing on problem-solving skills (Herro, Quigley, Andrews, & Delacruz, 2017 ) and collaborative teamwork (Jolly, 2014 ). Design thinking shifts the focus from individual work to team collaboration through interviewing, needs finding, data synthesizing, and prototyping. This process of engagement with peers provides opportunities for learners to listen, negotiate ideas, and construct knowledge collectively, expanding their individual zone of proximal development (Nyikos & Hashimoto, 1997 ).

Design thinking has become increasingly common and relevant in educational contexts precisely because it centers around problem-solving that enhances the learner’s deeper understanding of needs, challenges, and issues (Goldman & Kabayadondo, 2016 ). This process provides a framework for participants to address complex, global issues by identifying diverse solutions (Noweski et al., 2012 ; Scheer, Noweski, & Meinel, 2012 ). The skills emphasized in design thinking, such as critical thinking, creativity, competence, collaboration, and communication, are all considered essential skills in the twenty-first century (Rotherham & Willingham, 2009 ; Trilling & Fadel, 2009 ). The complexity of global issues demands students capable of addressing real-world problems (Brown & Wyatt, 2010 ; Kelley & Knowles, 2016 ). Furthermore, design thinking enables us to tackle so-called wicked problems (Rittel & Webber, 1973 ) that we encounter on a day-to-day basis but that remain difficult to solve. Design thinking harnesses these skills through interactive, student-centered learning modules (Wrigley & Straker, 2017 ) and enables students to become agents of change (Carroll et al., 2010 ). The emphasis on and value of creativity, collaboration, and innovation has spurred educators to apply design thinking in learning circles, leading to the increased use of design thinking in educational contexts over the years.

The rationale for using design thinking in education is grounded in the findings of previous studies that point to the approach’s positive influence on learners. Design thinking strategies have been demonstrated to improve students’ problem-solving skills, especially among lower achieving students (Chin et al., 2019 ). Furthermore, design thinking increases students’ creativity (Gözen, 2015 ), as measured by the learner’s creative confidence (Rauth, Köppen, Jobst, & Meinel, 2010 ). In a study focusing on middle school students, Carroll ( 2014 ) documents how design thinking fosters mentorship, promotes collaboration, and inspires students to consider STEM careers. Exposure to design thinking also transforms young adolescents’ perception of engineers as designers, innovators, and scientists (Goldman, Zielezinski, Vea, Bachas-Daunert, & Kabayadondo, 2016 ). It also offers teachers new pedagogical tools (Noweski et al., 2012 ) to innovate on their curriculum. Furthermore, the results of this study have strong policy implications in the adoption and utilization of design thinking as a pedagogical approach to increase the number of students under-represented in STEM fields, such as girls and minority students, in learning communities around the world. The human-centered approach in design thinking (Brown, 2009 ; Brown & Wyatt, 2010 ; Kimbell, 2011 ) also resonates with “A” in STEAM due to the former’s emphasis on empathy. This study answers the need for more research to address the potential of design thinking in promoting and accelerating STEAM learning (Li et al., 2019b ).

Literature review

In this section, we conduct a critical literature review of factors associated with female youths’ interest in STEM. Various meta-analyses have provided rich accounts and evidence of interventions that positively impact girls’ interests and aspirations to pursue STEM fields (van den Hurk, Meelissen, & van Langen, 2019 ; Wang & Degol, 2013 ). We review three bodies of literature that directly inform the analytical framework of this study. First, we examine educational interventions that focus on utilizing existing structures, such as schools and after-school programs, to reduce the gender gap in STEM subjects. Second, we survey findings that evaluate the role of mentors in shaping female youths’ perceptions and understandings of STEM pathways. Third, we draw on insights from psychological interventions that focus on improving non-cognitive factors, such as self-efficacy.

Increase opportunities: in-school and out-of-school STEM programs

One of the ways to increase girls’ interest in STEM is to offer more STEM opportunities within and beyond school contexts. On average, girls pursue fewer courses in mathematics and science (Lehrer, Jacobson, Kemeny, & Strom, 1999 ), which makes them less prepared to advance to higher levels of mathematics and science in post-secondary institutions (Buday, Stake, & Peterson, 2012 ). Early experiences influence students’ perceptions of STEM (Blickenstaff, 2005 ). Some proven interventions range from an online biology course (Kara & Yeşilyurt, 2008 ) to a targeted STEM program for minority students (Schultz et al., 2011 ). Scholars advocate redesigning educational experiences to benefit girls, such as offering less biased curricular content (e.g., addressing bias in textbooks that depict more male than female figures) (Blickenstaff, 2005 ). Another way to address gender bias would be to offer an educational curriculum that targets girls specifically. While the effectiveness of single-gender programs is mixed (Wang & Degol, 2013 ), there is some evidence to suggest that girls perform better in mathematics and science in a single-gender program (Cherney & Campbell, 2011 ). For example, single-gender classrooms can increase female students’ persistence in STEM and increase the likelihood that they will take additional STEM courses beyond their regular courses (Shapka & Keating, 2003 ).

STEM socialization: role models

Female STEM students may experience a “chilly climate” that lacks social support for women within those fields, thus contributing to their sense of isolation and alienating others from entering STEM (Blickenstaff, 2005 ; Wang & Degol, 2013 ). Furthermore, younger female students may be socialized to think that STEM is not right for them at a very early phase in their learning. To reverse this trend, role models can play a positive impact on female students’ perceptions of STEM (Lockwood, 2006 ; Weber, 2011 ). When women are paired with mentors, who provide consultations and support, or experts of the same gender interested in STEM, they exhibit increased positive attitudes toward STEM (Blickenstaff, 2005 ). In a study that focused on students in post-secondary institutions, the presence of female role models increased the subjects’ self-efficacy in STEM and resulted in positive perception and greater identification with STEM (Stout, Dasgupta, Hunsinger, & McManus, 2011 ). The presence of female mentors also resulted in higher academic performance among younger female students in mathematics (Marx & Roman, 2002 ) and science (Buday et al., 2012 ). Near-peer mentors (e.g., undergraduate or graduate students) can also have a positive influence on students’ perceptions of STEM (Tenenbaum, Anderson, Jett, & Yourick, 2014 ; van den Hurk et al., 2019 ). When female adolescents are surrounded by other female peers interested in STEM, they are more likely to pursue STEM (Raabe, Boda, & Stadtfeld, 2019 ).

Changing mindset: self-efficacy

Researchers have focused on psychological and sociocultural factors that affect students’ aptitudes and performance in the areas of science and mathematics (Eccles, 1994 ; Eccles, Jacobs, & Harold, 1990 ). They argue that non-cognitive factors, such as self-efficacy and self-concept (Bandura, 1986 , 1989 ), play a significant role in their performance in STEM subjects. In STEM-related fields like engineering, female students exhibit lower levels of self-efficacy than their male counterparts (Eddy & Brownell, 2016 ; Hackett & Betz, 1981 ). This is especially true among the highest achievers (Halpern et al., 2007 ), which may be due to the fact that high-performing female students have a harder time coping with failures and setbacks because of a sudden loss of belief in their own effectiveness (Dweck, 2007a ).

The literature on growth mindset provides us with a framework to understand how learners deal with failure. Growth mindset is a belief held by individuals that abilities can be developed, as opposed to the belief that abilities are fixed and that intelligence is innate (Dweck, 2007b ). Children and youths who hold strong beliefs about their mindsets are influenced by their role models, such as parents and teachers (Haimovitz & Dweck, 2016 ). Students with a growth mindset perform better than students with a fixed mindset in mathematics over time (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007 ). A nationally representative study of growth mindset intervention shows an overall increase in student learning outcomes among lower-achieving students as measured by their GPA, and a higher uptake of advanced mathematics courses among higher-achieving students (Yeager et al., 2019 ). Furthermore, motivational messages about the malleability of intelligence can positively impact female students’ self-efficacy (Burnette, Russell, Hoyt, Orvidas, & Widman, 2018 ; Degol, Wang, Zhang, & Allerton, 2018 ). Female students with positive self-efficacy and a growth mindset are less affected by gender stereotypes (Good, Rattan, & Dweck, 2012 ). These studies show that it is especially important for young female students to be able to counter any negative messages with messages of growth mindset as they enter the STEM pipeline. The findings from these studies have helped inform the design of this educational intervention, emphasizing concepts such as not being afraid of making mistakes through iteration and prototyping.

Profile of youths

In total, 103 youths participated in the STEAM design thinking workshop. These female youths ranged from 13 to 18 years of age (and thus in sixth to ninth grade). Approximately two-thirds of the youths attended private school, and over half of the youths had mothers working full-time. Youths participated from various prefectures including Hokkaido, Fukushima, Kanagawa, Tokyo, Chiba, Shiga, Kyoto, Osaka, Hyogo, Kumamoto, Kagoshima, and Okinawa as well as from the USA (California, New York, and New Jersey). A total of 97 youths completed the survey (Table 1 ).

Data collection

Data collection spanned a period of 4 years between July 2016 and June 2020. This particular design thinking and STEAM workshop was conducted five times, with each session consisting of 18–24 participants. The workshops were held in Tokyo, Japan. There are no repeat participants in the sample, and the sample consists of youths who successfully completed the workshop. Footnote 3 First, youth surveys were employed to collect quantitative data. We gathered data from 97 female middle and high school youths. The participants of the workshop were given pre- and post-intervention surveys. Second, a total of 19 interviews were conducted after the workshop. The interviews were structured around key analytical constructs similar to those used in the survey; however, the purpose of interviews was to obtain stories that could highlight participants’ experiences and perceptions.

Data analysis

The study used the mixed-methods sequential explanatory design approach (Creswell & Clark, 2017 ). In this mixed-methods approach, qualitative data are used to complement or strengthen the key findings from quantitative analysis (Creswell & Clark, 2017 ). First, we chose survey data collection in order to collect systematic responses regarding student attitudes, preferences, and beliefs from a large number of participants (Weisberg, Krosnick, & Bowen, 1996 ). The youth surveys consisted of items that directly address the analytical constructs of this study: (1) interests and perceptions toward subjects: art, social science, language, mathematics, science, and engineering Footnote 4 ; (2) creative confidence Footnote 5 ; (3) career plans Footnote 6 ; (4) growth mindset Footnote 7 ; (5) perceptions toward failure Footnote 8 ; (6) aspirations for STEM Footnote 9 ; and (7) pro-social Footnote 10 constructs, in addition to background information. The questions on creative confidence are similar to those validated by Dosi, Rosati, and Vignoli ( 2018 ). Footnote 11 The survey items were structured so that the responses were generated using Likert scales (scale of 1–6). The results of surveys were analyzed using a pairwise t test, and Cohen’s d effect sizes are reported. Second, qualitative data collection using interviews were conducted after the intervention. The constructs in the interview protocol included (1) classes/academic interests Footnote 12 , (2) career goals Footnote 13 , (3) role models Footnote 14 , and (4) experiences in the design thinking workshop. Footnote 15 The audio-recorded interviews were transcribed, and the content was analyzed. The selected excepts were minimally edited, including grammatical mistakes, to strike a balance between maintaining the authenticity of participants’ voices and enhancing the readers’ understanding of the excerpts (Oliver, Serovich, & Mason, 2005 ). Pseudonyms are used in order to protect participants’ identity.

The intervention

Five phases of the steam design thinking process.

Each STEAM design thinking workshop spanned three and a half days. Participants were introduced to design thinking as a progression of five stages of—from empathy-building to needs-finding, brainstorming, prototyping, and testing. We emphasized that design thinking is a nonlinear process (Goldschmidt & Weil, 1998 ). A sixth phase, the presentation pitch, was added in order to enable the youths to hone their collaborative skills through presentation and storytelling.

Phase I: empathy building

Youths learned about the user by conducting an in-depth interview. An example of a user from the 2016 workshop is a retired senior citizen in her 60s who was taking care of her ailing mother. After the interview, the youths went through an art-based portrait session in order to synthesize the findings in abstract terms. Using pastels, pencils, colored pencils, the youths developed a visual representation of the users’ needs.

Phase II: needs finding

In this phase, youths analyzed the content of the interview using an empathy map and an insight identification procedure. The output of this phase is the development of a needs statement.

Phase III: ideation

Using colorful post-its, youths jotted one idea per post-it to share on the wall. Prompts were used to encourage participants to think out of the box, such as: “Your team was just given an opportunity to work with a famous pop star,” or “You need to implement this idea in outer space (without gravity).” These prompts were meant to enable youths to think creatively, get out of their comfort zone, and work with imaginative ideas in order to spur creativity.

Phase IV: prototyping

Using basic prototyping materials such as recycled plastic bottles and cardboards, glue, tapes, scissors, and play dough, teams developed tangible products that could be tested. The teams tested their prototypes with the user and iterated the prototypes in subsequent steps.

Phase V: presentation

On the third day of the workshop, youths presented their work to a panel of guest commentators, consisting of experts such as venture capitalists, product designers, academics, and executive leaders of start-up companies. Each team delivered a 5-min pitch and answered questions from the commentators.

Unique features of the program

Near-peer mentors.

A near-peer mentoring system was embedded in the program given previous findings suggesting that such mentoring helps to increase STEM interest in students (Tenenbaum et al., 2014 ; van den Hurk et al., 2019 ). Each team consisted of four youths, grouped according to their age and proficiency in English (not all girls were fluent in English) and to reflect the diversity of the applicants in each session. One or two design coach(es) were assigned to each group. These design coaches were bilingual undergraduate or graduate students who could serve as mentors to youths. They guided, facilitated, and translated for the participants. They also provided strong support to the youths through words of encouragement and reminders to think out of the box and not be afraid to make mistakes.

Design challenges: local solutions addressing global issues

The design challenges given to teams varied in topic from year to year. The common thread across all years was a focus on global issues using local solutions. In year 1, the topic was technology and senior citizens. This topic was selected in order to address the issue of population decline in Japan and explore the potential of technology to ameliorate senior citizens’ overall quality of living. This challenge was also selected to foster intergenerational communication, as young people often lack opportunities to interact with senior citizens and vice versa. In year 2, the topic focused on women engineers in Japan. To implement this program, women senior engineers and STEM managers from prominent companies were invited as users. In years 3 and 4, the design challenges were framed using the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, highlighting local issues with global implications, such as access to education, water, food sustainability, and environmental issues.

Involvement of women STEM leaders

Women STEM leaders were invited to the workshops. Their presence helped to “normalize and humanize” STEM fields so that the participants could better understand what it is like to become a leader in STEM fields (Roberts et al., 2018 , p. 11). Women STEM leaders were invited to the program from prominent design and manufacturing companies based in Japan. The participants heard the women’s life stories, their pathways to STEM fields, and the various challenges they faced in their professions.

After the 3-day workshop, youths participated in a site visit to see women STEM leaders in action. In the past, the youths participated in a site visit to a design consultancy firm. During these visits, the participants were able to interact with STEM leaders and see firsthand how design thinking is applied in the real world. They engaged in a curated group activity to reflect on what their ideal STEM career might look like. This interactive and reflective exercise enabled youths to internalize the experiences they had in the workshop.

This section reports five key findings from surveys and interviews. These findings illustrate the changes in participants’ perceptions, mindsets, and interest in STEM. In addition to the primary objective of increasing youths’ interest in STEM, we also observed changes in their creative confidence, empathy, and pro-social constructs (see Table 2 ).

Finding 1: increased interest in engineering

We observed measurable changes among youths who participated in the workshop. After the 3-day intervention, there were improvements in youths’ perceptions, interest, and self-efficacy vis-à-vis engineering. This is in alignment with the focus of the workshop on engineering; the youths spent most of their time designing solutions to a given problem. There were changes in youths’ perceptions toward engineering measures, as reflected in their responses (on a Likert scale of 1-strongly disagree to 6-strongly agree) to items such as “I like to imagine creating new products.” The results of the paired-sample t tests show that the mean differs before participating in the workshop ( M = 4.50, SD = 1.05), and after participating in the workshop ( M = 4.77, SD = .86; t (83) = − 2.58, p = .012, d = .29). Youths also gained an understanding that engineering is a job that improves others’ lives, as revealed in quotes such as: “If I learn engineering, then I can improve things that people use every day.” There was a statistically significant difference in the score for this variable before the program ( M = 3.88, SD = .96) and after the program ( M = 4.25, SD = .86; t (83) = − 3.93, p < .001, d = .40). After participating, youths were more strongly inclined to consider engineering as a way to solve world issues. This was reflected in an increased desire by youths “to design things that improve the world.” Again, there was a measurable change in this variable before ( M = 4.45, SD = .97) and after the program ( M = 4.71, SD = .91; t (83) = − 2.47, p = .016, d = .28). The following excerpt encapsulates a participant’s post-workshop enthusiasm toward engineering:

It [my goal] has changed slightly, particularly because of the influence of participating [in the workshop], and after participating I decided that I want to become an engineer. I love science as well, so I am thinking of [becoming] something like an engineer scientist, combining science and engineering… I cannot be 100% sure that I will be successful, and I do worry, but nothing starts without taking [on] challenges, so you cannot [just] think about risks and not move forward. So even though I’m not 100% confident, I do have a strong feeling that I will do it anyways. (Kae)

Findings show that the participants’ perceptions toward engineering shifted; they now view engineers as people who exhibit various traits, such as creativity, technical knowledge, and problem-solving skills, and they were able to imagine themselves as engineers. In the next section, we discuss the changes in participants’ creative confidence.

Finding 2: changes in creative confidence

The second key finding from the STEAM design thinking workshop was an increase in participants’ creative confidence. In this study, creative confidence is a measurement of individuals’ ability to work under conditions of uncertainty, as well as their openness to feedback and critiques of ideas still in progress (Kelley & Kelley, 2013 ). It is also related to their willingness to persist, demonstrating grit, after experiencing a moment of failure, or coming up with ways to address issues when setbacks arise (Duckworth, 2016 ). The surveys showed that participating in the workshop made youths more confident to work under difficult conditions and to obtain feedback and critiques, even when their ideas were not fully developed. There was significant change in their attitude toward working on open-ended questions before the intervention ( M = 3.81, SD = 1.10) and after the intervention ( M = 4.10, SD = .87; t (80) = − 2.46, p = .016, d = .29). Some examples of the participants’ insights, as revealed in interviews, included:

I found it unexpectedly easy to create something new. I found that we can actually come up with and create something by exchanging ideas over just three days, rather than thinking about it for years. (Kaori)
[At this workshop], they don’t care about the quality at all. I really liked it when they said, ‘Come up with any ideas you have in mind without worrying about getting judged asking questions or suggestions.’ (Manami)

The participants were encouraged to go through a rapid trial-and-error process. This bias toward action (Kelley & Kelley, 2013 ; Schweitzer, Groeger, & Sobel, 2016 ) to test early-phase prototypes for further iteration and development is at the core of entrepreneurship (Ries, 2011 ). The participants were asked how they would respond if asked to share their work with others before finishing that work to their own satisfaction. Before the workshop, the participants were hesitant to share ( M = 3.84, SD = 1.12), but the results of the post-intervention survey suggest that they became more confident to share ideas that are still in progress with others ( M = 4.10, SD = 1.09; t (80) = − 2.37, p = .02, d = .23). This entrepreneurial spirit was elevated during the workshop, enhancing the sense of creative confidence among the participants.

We also observed that girls who participated in the workshop felt self-conscious at first about voicing their opinions and sharing them with a large number of people, including their male cohorts. The results of the survey show that the participants’ sense of creative confidence increased over the course of the program. Prior to the workshop, the participants expressed a lower confidence that they could be successful ( M = 3.23, SD = .99) than they did after the intervention ( M = 3.48, SD = 1.03; t (81) = − 2.15, p = .034, d = .24). Participating in the workshop broke barriers for these girls and empowered them to feel more comfortable voicing their thoughts.

[I learned that] It is important to speak your thoughts, and that I unintentionally restricted myself from doing so in certain occasions around boys and in a larger number of people. (Hitomi)
I think it was very good to have an atmosphere where people could express their opinions without denying the opinions of others. In Japanese classrooms, people tend to worry about whether they have the right answer or not, or what the people might think of them, so few people speak up. In this workshop, all the groups were speaking up, and even I, who usually can't speak up, was able to say what I thought without hesitation. I thought it would be great if my class could be more active like this. (Suzuka)

These excerpts help us to understand that participating in the workshop encouraged the participants to share their voice and feel a greater sense of agency. In this process, the youths felt that their voice was valued and their ideas could lead to innovations.

Furthermore, findings show that female youths’ attitudes toward failure, a measurement of creative confidence, also shifted. After participating in the workshop, more girls disagreed that the effects of failure were negative and should be avoided, with the mean score decreasing from pre-workshop ( M = 2.51, SD = 1.14) to post-workshop ( M = 2.16, SD = 1.11; t (75) = 2.61, p = .011, d = − .32). The following excerpt shows how the workshop changed one participant’s attitude toward failure:

I’m not great at creating something from scratch, but I realized that there’s a role I can play in that. Prior to this experience, if I didn’t like something, I would do my best to avoid it. Through this experience, though, I felt like there was something even I can do. Perhaps others are better at creating something from scratch, but when it comes to developing it or making it into something bigger, I think there’s something that I can contribute. (Akemi)

The rise in the participants’ creative confidence was one of the most revealing findings in our study. Japanese students are used to learning in schools that emphasize strong notions of what is correct and incorrect. The Japanese college entrance examination system trains students to master test-taking skills, while focusing little attention on critical thinking skills (Yamamura, 1989 ). Participation in the design thinking and STEAM workshop increased the participants’ creative confidence. This frame of mind, which strengthens youths’ confidence to tackle difficult, complex, and global issues, was one of the key changes we observed among youths who participated in the program.

Before participating in this workshop um I was, I thought I was [a] very close-minded person and um wasn't good communicator, but um as I participate in the workshop, I was the oldest one in my group and then I sort of led them to speak up and then like express their opinion so I guess I wasn't [a] very close-minded person. (Lisa)
Hmm, about myself…well, when I made the prototype, I have a rather cautious personality, but to put together and shaping your thinking into a concrete form, you kind of have to keep going with a rough idea in mind without caring too much about it being messed up. I also never had the experience to just keep doing things as ideas come, or speak up for myself, so that kind of thinking. It was refreshing having to behave like that, and I think I was made aware of my ability to act like I had never had before. (Yui)

The findings from this study provide evidence that the participants experienced changes in their mindset, which is related to improvements in their creative confidence, such as bias toward action, and the importance of voicing their thoughts. In the next section, we discuss the changes in participants’ perception of STEM.

Finding 3: perceptions of STEM

Female youths’ perceptions of STEM changed and broadened after participating in the workshop. The survey asked respondents to agree or disagree with this statement: “People who study STEM tend to work alone in labs.” Before the workshop, on average, the respondents fell in the “middle,” neither particularly agreeing nor disagreeing with this statement ( M = 3.44, SD = .93), but after the workshop, their perceptions of STEM specialists had changed, with an observable decline in their level of agreement ( M = 2.96, SD = .98; t (26) = 2.80, p = .01, d = − .50) with the above statement. This is a significant shift in the youths’ perceptions of STEM toward understanding that STEM can actually lead to a variety of professions. Furthermore, prior to participating in the workshop, many youths expressed the belief that STEM fields consist of mostly technical knowledge ( M = 3.96, SD = .85). After the workshop, there was a decline in their responses to this construct, suggesting an expanded understanding of STEM that includes and values non-technical knowledge, such as the abilities to communicate, collaborate, and be creative ( M = 3.59; SD = .80; t (26) = 2.08, p = .048, d = − 0.45). The following excerpt concurs with the survey findings:

Before attending [the workshop], when I thought about the people in the sciences, I would think of someone in the sciences who would always be looking at numbers and be able to solve problems instantly. I realized that they weren't just about numbers, but more about thinking outside the box, and bringing different things together. So even though I'm not great with numbers, I felt like it's something even I can do. (Kaori)
I think STEM is so important for our world. I think it encourages people to use the world around us and use it creatively to fix problems. I think that’s by [participating in the workshop, it] gave me the opportunity to think about that in a bigger, real world sense. That definitely changed how important STEM is [to me]. (Rina)

These findings show that participation in the workshop enabled youths to see the work of STEM professionals as much more fluid and less technical than they might have previously imagined. This is significant as encouraging female youths to pursue STEM requires changing their understanding not only of their own facility for STEM but also of STEM fields themselves. We need, in short, a concerted effort to demystify STEM professions.

Finding 4: empathy and pro-social indicators

The fourth measurable change among youths who participated in the workshop concerned the component of empathy in STEM learning and pro-social perceptions. Studies have shown that under-represented students, such as first-generation, minority, and female students, show greater motivation to pursue STEM topics if they believe that science advances pro-social goals, such as improving the lives of others and serving their communities (Allen, Muragishi, Smith, Thoman, & Brown, 2015 ; Estrada et al., 2016 ). We observed some meaningful shifts in the youths’ pro-social attitudes. In response to the following statement: “People who study STEM tend to care about other people,” there was an increase in the mean response from pre-workshop ( M = 4.03, SD = .99) to post-workshop ( M = 4.45 SD = .94; t (63) = − 3.12, p = .003, d = .44). This indicated an increased understanding among youths that the field of STEM is grounded in empathy. Another pro-social indicator worth highlighting is the youths’ perceptions that a career in STEM is ideal for those who want to make the world a better place. Their perception changed from before the workshop ( M = 3.74, SD = .97) to after the workshop ( M = 4.15, SD = 1.04; t (80) = − 3.68, p < .001, d = .41). The following stories also highlight how participants linked STEM with pro-social attitudes:

When we conducted an interview for a customer [user] [at the workshop], it was exciting to create a product, which satisfied the customer’s [user’s] needs. I realized how fun it is to help someone, and thought that I want to have a job like this, and so I want to become an engineer. (Kae)
I think with the development of science and technology, life becomes more convenient, and I think there is a possibility that we can solve various environmental problems with the development of technology. So, I imagine that this profession is something that supports that sort of development by doing research to create a brighter future for Earth. I am not saying that everything science and technology is good, but I have the image that they are here to improve things. (Yui)

These excerpts provide insight into how the participants grasped the concept of empathy and its relevance in creating meaningful solutions. Furthermore, the youths attributed the solution of global problems to the process of design in engineering and technology.

Finding 5: career aspirations

Youths described their increased interest in STEM fields after attending the workshop. More specifically, their desire to pursue options related to STEM was heightened. In response to the statement, “I would consider a career in science,” the average before the workshop was ( M = 3.17, SD = 1.50) and then increased after the workshop ( M = 3.54, SD = 1.42; t (75) = − 3.29, p = .002, d = .25). The following excerpts reflect the respondents’ aspirations for STEM:

Yeah, I think it was really important to do the workshop before my senior year, especially because I'd be applying to colleges. I think it was a good confirmation that I definitely want to do work... something in STEM, but, also, try to learn, maybe, some art and tech, and try to broaden my perspective and learn more things…. Since I also like Math and Science, being able to do that., but also knowing that you're helping people, and it creates real solutions in the world, is really important, and I want to do that. (Miku).
..It [the workshop] made me look at all the different workshop[s] that was um focusing…that focused on design thinking or even STEM field, STEM fields to…girls…and then…um I-I began participating um in um IT camp that was organized by [a] Japanese company…so that was, that was very similar to what I did in design thinking but it also helped me add on to my art and science skills and so I realized…and it made me realize that I really do enjoy those two fields and then I…yeah…that brought my focus to STEAM field more. (Lisa)

The participants engaged with women STEM leaders from various industries. Several female engineers, designers, and scientists were invited to interact with participants in each session. Footnote 16 The women STEM leaders talked about their decisions to pursue a career in STEM, described impactful projects they had worked on, and discussed the challenges of work-life balance. We also measured change in participants’ perceptions of women’s role in society. There were more participants post-workshop agreeing with the statement: “If I have children, I see myself staying in the workforce.” There was a significant change pre-workshop ( M = 4.65, SD = 1.18) and post-workshop ( M = 4.86, SD = .99), suggesting that the presence of women STEAM leaders had an influence on female youths ( t (82) = − 2.06, p = .043, d = .19). Furthermore, female youths who participated in the program also responded more positively to: “I can see myself starting my own company/business,” indicating their entrepreneurial spirit. The results of the pre-intervention ( M = 3.43, SD = 1.14) and post-intervention ( M = 3.63, SD = 1.10) show that participation in this workshop enabled the female youths to feel that one day they could, both, have a family and become entrepreneurs, just like the STEAM women they interacted with during the workshop ( t (79) = − 2.11, p = .038, d = .18).

This study shows that a short, 3-day intervention can make a positive impact on young female youths’ perceptions of STEM, pro-social attitudes, creative confidence, and career pathways. It does this by creating a “hook” or stimulating interest among youths to have a more favorable opinion about working in STEM.

At the same time, the study’s second finding is that persistent gender norms are hard to overturn and require additional interventions. Gender norms around STEM topics are deeply embedded in sociocultural roots and pre-conceived notions of gender and thus difficult to reverse. This is evident in the analysis. We asked youths a series of questions regarding gender in STEM fields, using statements such as, “Women should pursue STEM fields in the future.” We also asked the participants about their perceptions regarding women in leadership positions, using statements such as, “Girls can have greater, more positive impact on society,” and “I want to inspire other girls by becoming a leader in my field.” We were unable to observe meaningful changes in the responses to these questions. In their daily lives outside of such interventions, female youths experience persistent norms and social forces that still reduce their ability to imagine themselves in STEM fields or to believe that they too could become leaders and inspire other girls to follow suit.

If our collective goal is to inspire more young female youths to pursue STEM subjects, then we need to create more awareness of what STEM entails and enables, provide more opportunities and pathways into the fields, and offer extensive support for female youths to experiment with various branches of STEM. In Japan, there is a lack of clear consensus and provision of STEM education at the national scale (Yata, Ohtani, & Isobe, 2020 ). We advocate for a systematic change that would impact the education system at large. The Ministry of Economic and Trade and Industry has recently begun an initiative to promote STEAM learning (METI, 2019 ); however, systematic, inter-departmental efforts will be necessary to nudge more female youths to pursue STEM. This could be done through a combination of interventions that include policies to promote more female participation in STEM programs, campaigns to increase parents’ and educators’ awareness of STEM, and the provision of discretionary funding for teachers to implement STEM curriculum in the classrooms. Hands-on engineering projects and supplementary courses such as virtual STEM programs could also help increase opportunities for female youths to consider STEM.

Third, this study offers strong evidence of the positive impact of a design thinking curriculum on female youths’ interest in STEM. The findings suggest that girls not only changed their perception of STEM subjects but also exhibited greater empathy and felt an increased sense of belonging in STEM as a result of participating in the workshop.

The main limitation of this study is its focus on a brief educational intervention with a relatively small number of enrolled youths. Given that it was not a randomly selected group of youths, there is no comparison group and the study is prone to selection bias. Also, we encountered some difficulties in the data collection, which limited the scope of the qualitative analysis for this study. Participants were extremely hard to track after the program was over, and the double consent process (parents and minors) prohibited us from securing a large pool of respondents for the interviews. Obtaining in-depth responses from young respondents also made the data collection more challenging. In the next phase of data collection, we will consider having a focus group to solicit in-depth responses. When interviewees share similar backgrounds and experiences, focus groups are likely to create interactions among the respondents and yield a desirable outcome (Creswell & Poth, 2017 ).

Countries around the world are implementing novel ways to encourage more female youths to consider STEM careers (van den Hurk et al., 2019 ). We explore the influences of a short, 3-day design thinking workshop on young adolescent girls living in Japan. The study provides empirical support that such a workshop can have a positive impact on the participants, boosting their interest in STEM. In addition, the design thinking approach increased the participants’ creative confidence, their empathy, and their pro-social tendencies. By providing exposure to women STEAM experts, the workshop also changed female participants’ outlook on work-life balance as well. To conclude, the promise of design thinking extends far beyond the benefits of innovation and creativity; it is a viable pedagogical approach that can be used to cultivate the next generation of female STEAM thinkers.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and analyzed during this research project are not publicly available since data were collected from minors who were under the age of 18 at the time of data collection.

It is noteworthy that these numbers were even lower just a decade ago. In 2007, the share of female students in Science was 25.3% at the undergraduate level, 17.5% at the doctoral level, and 22.1% at the Master’s level.

Proportion of Women Researchers, in descending order of countries (The Cabinet Office, 2019 ): Iceland, Portugal, Estonia, Slovak Republic, Spain, Greece, Norway, UK, Poland, Turkey, Slovenia, Italy, Denmark, US, Belgium, Sweden, Chile, Switzerland, Ireland, Finland, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Luxembourg, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Korea, and Japan.

During the 3-year period, two students dropped out of the program, citing health reasons.

An example of a question related to engineering: “I like to imagine creating new products.”

Items related to creative confidence were developed by Royalty, Oishi, and Roth ( 2013 ).

An example of a career-related question is: “I would consider a career in science.”

An example of a growth mindset-related question is: “You have a certain amount of intelligence, and you really cannot do much to change it” (Dweck, 2007b ; Mangels, Butterfield, Lamb, Good, & Dweck, 2006 ). In this case, respondents agreeing with this statement would count as not having a growth mindset.

An example of a question related to failure is: “Experiencing failure limits learning and growth.” (Haimovitz & Dweck, 2016 , 2017 )

An example of a question related to aspirations for STEM is: “I would consider a career in science.”

An example of a question related to a pro-social indicator is: “If you want to make the world a better place, you should pursue a career in STEM.”

Questions that measure “creative confidence” provided by Dosi et al. ( 2018 ) are (1) I think I can use my creativity to efficiently solve even complicated problems; (2) I am comfortable to think something new, different from what already exists; (3) I am sure I can deal with problems requiring creativity; and (4) I believe in my abilities to creatively solve a problem. The questions we used to measure creative confidence in our survey asked respondents to indicate (using a 6-point Likert Scale) their confidence to (1) effectively work on a problem that does not have an obvious solution; (2) share your work with others before it is finished to your satisfaction; (3) try an approach to a problem or task that you know may not be the final or best solution; (4) continue to work on a problem after experiencing a significant failure; (5) help others be more creative; and (6) solve problems in ways that others would consider creative.

An example of a question related to STEM classes: “Are you taking any classes in STEM this year?”

An example of a question related to career goals: “Have you considered a career in STEM?”

An example of a question related to STEM fields: “Do you have any role models in the STEM fields?”

An example of a question related to the design thinking workshop specifically: “Has your perception and understanding of what a career in STEM would be like stay or change after participating in the workshop?”

2016: NASA engineer and a physician; 2017: four engineers from prominent international manufacturing companies, and one senior designer; 2018: one diversity and inclusion officer from a prominent consultancy company, three engineers from international manufacturing companies; 2019: three engineers from international manufacturing companies, and one senior designer. Special guests included university professors and a former deputy director of science in the US administration.

Abbreviations

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

Ministry of Economics, Trade, and Industry

Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics

Ackermann, E. (2001). Piaget’s constructivism, Papert’s constructionism: What’s the difference? Future of Learning Group Publication , 5 (3), 438 http://learning.media.mit.edu/content/publications/EA.Piaget_Papert.pdf .

Google Scholar  

Allen, J. M., Muragishi, G. A., Smith, J. L., Thoman, D. B., & Brown, E. R. (2015). To grab and to hold: Cultivating communal goals to overcome cultural and structural barriers in first-generation college students’ science interest. Translational Issues in Psychological Science , 1 (4), 331.

Article   Google Scholar  

Bandura, A. (1986). The explanatory and predictive scope of self-efficacy theory. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology , 4 (3), 359–373.

Bandura, A. (1989). Human agency in social cognitive theory. American Psychologist , 44 (9), 1175.

Beede, D., Julian, T., Langdon, D., McKittrick, G., Khan, B., & Doms, M. (2011). Women in STEM: A gender gap to i nnovation. ESA Issue Brief# 04-11. In US Department of Commerce https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED523766.pdf .

Blackwell, L. S., Trzesniewski, K. H., & Dweck, C. S. (2007). Implicit theories of intelligence predict achievement across an adolescent transition: A longitudinal study and an intervention. Child Development , 78 (1), 246–263.

Blau, F. D., & Kahn, L. M. (2017). The gender wage gap: extent, trends, and explanations. Journal of Economic Literature , 55 (3), 789–865. https://doi.org/10.1257/jel.20160995 .

Blickenstaff, J. (2005). Women and science careers: leaky pipeline or gender filter? Gender and Education , 17 (4), 369–386. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540250500145072 .

Boakes, N. J. (2020). Cultivating design thinking of middle school girls through an origami STEAM project. Journal for STEM Education Research , 3 , 259–278. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41979-019-00025-8 .

Borko, H. (2016). Response 1: Model-based reasoning in professional development. In R. A. Duschl, & A. S. Bismack (Eds.), Reconceptualizing STEM Education: The Central Role of Practices , (pp. 139–144). New York: Routledge.

Brown, T. (2009). Change by design: How design thinking transforms organizations and inspires innovation . New York: Harper Business.

Brown, T., & Wyatt, J. (2010). Design thinking for social innovation. Development Outreach , 12 (1), 29–43.

Buday, S. K., Stake, J. E., & Peterson, Z. D. (2012). Gender and the choice of a science career: The impact of social support and possible selves. Sex Roles , 66 (3–4), 197–209.

Burnette, J. L., Russell, M. V., Hoyt, C. L., Orvidas, K., & Widman, L. (2018). An online growth mindset intervention in a sample of rural adolescent girls. British Journal of Educational Psychology , 88 (3), 428–445.

Carroll, M., Goldman, S., Britos, L., Koh, J., Royalty, A., & Hornstein, M. (2010). Destination, imagination and the fires within: Design thinking in a middle school classroom. International Journal of Art & Design Education , 29 (1), 37–53.

Carroll, M. P. (2014). Shoot for the moon! The mentors and the middle schoolers explore the intersection of design thinking and STEM. Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research , 4 (1), 3.

Ceci, S. J., Williams, W. M., & Barnett, S. M. (2009). Women’s underrepresentation in science: sociocultural and biological considerations. Psychological Bulletin , 135 (2), 218.

Chen, C. W. J., & Lo, K. M. J. (2019). From teacher-designer to student-researcher: A study of attitude change regarding creativity in STEAM education by using Makey Makey as a platform for human-centred design instrument. Journal for STEM Education Research , 2 (1), 75–91.

Cherney, I. D., & Campbell, K. L. (2011). A league of their own: Do single-sex schools increase girls’ participation in the physical sciences? Sex Roles , 65 (9–10), 712–724.

Chin, D. B., Blair, K. P., Wolf, R. C., Conlin, L. D., Cutumisu, M., Pfaffman, J., & Schwartz, D. L. (2019). Educating and measuring choice: a test of the transfer of design thinking in problem solving and learning. Journal of the Learning Sciences , 28 (3), 337–380.

Cobb, P. (2016). Where is the mind? A coordination of sociocultural and cognitive constructivist perspectives. In C. T. Fosnot (Ed.), Constructivism: Theory, perspectives, and practice , (pp. 34–52). Teachers College Press.

Collins, H. (2013). Can design thinking still add value? Design Management Review , 24 (2), 35–39.

Creswell, J. W., & Clark, V. L. P. (2017). Designing and conducting mixed methods research . Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2017). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches , (4th ed., ). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc.

Daugherty, M. K. (2013). The Prospect of an “A” in STEM Education. Journal of STEM Education: Innovations and Research, 14 (2), 10–15.

Degol, J. L., Wang, M.-T., Zhang, Y., & Allerton, J. (2018). Do growth mindsets in math benefit females? Identifying pathways between gender, mindset, and motivation. Journal of Youth and Adolescence , 47 (5), 976–990. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-017-0739-8 .

Dickerson, A., McIntosh, S., & Valente, C. (2015). Do the maths: An analysis of the gender gap in mathematics in Africa. Economics of Education Review , 46 , 1–22.

Dosi, C., Rosati, F., & Vignoli, M. (2018). Measuring design thinking mindset. DS 92: Proceedings of the DESIGN 2018 15th International Design Conference, 1991–2002 . https://doi.org/10.21278/idc.2018.0493 .

Book   Google Scholar  

Duckworth, A. (2016). Grit: The power of passion and perseverance . New York: Scribner.

Duschl, R. A., & Bismack, A. S. (2016). Reconceptualizing STEM education: The central role of practices . New York: Routledge.

Dweck, C. (2007a). Is math a gift? Beliefs that put females at risk. In Why aren’t more women in science?: Top researchers debate the evidence . Washington DC.: C.: American Psychological Association https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-22337-004 .

Dweck, C. (2007b). Mindset: The new psychology of success . New York: Ballantine Books.

Eccles, J. S. (1994). Understanding women’s educational and occupational choices: Applying the Eccles et al. model of achievement-related choices. Psychology of Women Quarterly , 18 (4), 585–609. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1994.tb01049.x .

Eccles, J. S., Jacobs, J. E., & Harold, R. D. (1990). Gender role stereotypes, expectancy effects, and parents’ socialization of gender differences. Journal of Social Issues , 46 (2), 183–201.

Eddy, S. L., & Brownell, S. E. (2016). Beneath the numbers: A review of gender disparities in undergraduate education across science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines. Physical Review Physics Education Research , 12 (2). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.12.020106 .

English, L. D., & King, D. T. (2015). STEM learning through engineering design: Fourth-grade students’ investigations in aerospace. International Journal of STEM Education , 2 (1), 14.

Estapa, A. T., & Tank, K. M. (2017). Supporting integrated STEM in the elementary classroom: A professional development approach centered on an engineering design challenge. International Journal of STEM Education , 4 (1), 6.

Estrada, M., Burnett, M., Campbell, A. G., Campbell, P. B., Denetclaw, W. F., Gutiérrez, C. G., … Zavala, M. (2016). Improving underrepresented minority student persistence in STEM. CBE—Life Sciences Education , 15 (3), es5. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.16-01-0038 .

Fosnot, C. T., & Perry, R. S. (1996). Constructivism: A psychological theory of learning. In C. T. Fosnot (Ed.), Constructivism: Theory, Perspectives, and Practice , (2nd ed., pp. 8–33). New York: Teachers College, Columbia University.

Fryer Jr., R. G., & Levitt, S. D. (2010). An empirical analysis of the gender gap in mathematics. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics , 2 (2), 210–240.

Goldman, S., & Kabayadondo, Z. (2016). Taking design thinking to school: How the technology of design can transform teachers, learners, and classrooms . New York: Routledge.

Goldman, S., Zielezinski, M. B., Vea, T., Bachas-Daunert, S., & Kabayadondo, Z. (2016). Taking design thinking to school: How the technology of design can transform teachers, Learners, and Classroomse. In S. Goldman, & Z. Kabayadondo (Eds.), Taking design thinking to school: How the technology of design can transform teachers, learners, and classrooms , (pp. 90–118). New York: Routledge.

Goldschmidt, G., & Weil, M. (1998). Contents and structure in design reasoning. Design Issues , 14 (3), 85–100.

Good, C., Rattan, A., & Dweck, C. S. (2012). Why do women opt out? Sense of belonging and women’s representation in mathematics. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 102 (4), 700–717. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026659 .

Gözen, G. (2015). Influence of design thinking performance on children’s creative problem-solving skills: An estimation through regression analysis. Journal of Education, Society and Behavioural Science, 12 (4), 1–13.

Guiso, L., Monte, F., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2008). Culture, gender, and math. Science , 320 (5880), 1164–1165.

Hackett, G., & Betz, N. E. (1981). A self-efficacy approach to the career development of women. Journal of Vocational Behavior , 18 (3), 326–339. https://doi.org/10.1016/0001-8791(81)90019-1 .

Haimovitz, K., & Dweck, C. (2016). Parents’ views of failure predict children’s fixed and growth intelligence mind-sets. Psychological Science , 27 (6), 859–869.

Haimovitz, K., & Dweck, C. S. (2017). The origins of children’s growth and fixed mindsets: New research and a new proposal. Child Development , 88 (6), 1849–1859.

Halpern, D. F., Benbow, C. P., Geary, D. C., Gur, R. C., Hyde, J. S., & Gernsbacher, M. A. (2007). The science of sex differences in science and mathematics. Psychological Science in the Public Interest , 8 (1), 1–51. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1529-1006.2007.00032.x .

Herro, D., Quigley, C., Andrews, J., & Delacruz, G. (2017). Co-measure: developing an assessment for student collaboration in STEAM activities. International Journal of STEM Education , 4 (1), 26.

Jolly, A. (2014). STEM vs. STEAM: Do the arts belong. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-stem-vs-steam-do-the-arts-belong/2014/11

Kara, Y., & Yeşilyurt, S. (2008). Comparing the impacts of tutorial and edutainment software programs on students’ achievements, misconceptions, and attitudes towards biology. Journal of Science Education and Technology , 17 (1), 32–41.

Kato, M., & Chayama, H. (2012). Nihon no daigaku kyouin no jyosei hiritsu ni kansuru bunseki [Analysis of the ratio of women in science in Japan]. https://www.nistep.go.jp/wp/wp-content/uploads/mat209j.pdf

Kelley, D., & Kelley, T. (2013). Creative confidence: Unleashing the creative potential within us all . New York: Crown Publishing Group.

Kelley, T., & Knowles, J. G. (2016). A conceptual framework for integrated STEM education. International Journal of STEM Education , 3 (1), 11.

Kerr, B., & Kurpius, S. E. (2004). Encouraging talented girls in math and science: Effects of a guidance intervention. High Ability Studies , 15 (1), 85–102. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359813042000225357 .

Kimbell, L. (2011). Rethinking design thinking: Part I. Design and Culture , 3 (3), 285–306.

Lehrer, R., Jacobson, C., Kemeny, V., & Strom, D. (1999). Building on children’s intuitions to develop mathematical understanding of space. In E. Fennema, & T. A. Romberg (Eds.), Mathematics classrooms that promote understanding , (pp. 57–77). New York: Routledge.

Leifer, L., & Steinert, M. (2011). Dancing with ambiguity: Causality behavior, design thinking, and triple-Loop Learning. Information Knowledge Systems Management , 10 , 151–173.

Li, Y., Schoenfeld, A. H., DiSessa, A. A., Graesser, A., Benson, L., English, L. D., & Duschl, R. A. (2019b). On thinking and STEM education. Journal for STEM Education Research , 2 , 1–13.

Li, Y., Schoenfeld, A. H., DiSessa, A. A., Graesser, A., Benson, L. C., English, L. D., & Duschl, R. A. (2019a). Design and design thinking in STEM education. Journal for STEM Education Research , 2 , 93–104.

Lockwood, P. (2006). “Someone like me can be successful”: Do college students need same-gender role models? Psychology of Women Quarterly , 30 (1), 36–46.

Madden, M. E., Baxter, M., Beauchamp, H., Bouchard, K., Habermas, D., Huff, M., … Plague, G. (2013). Rethinking STEM education: An interdisciplinary STEAM curriculum. Procedia Computer Science , 20 , 541–546.

Mangels, J., Butterfield, B., Lamb, J., Good, C., & Dweck, C. (2006). Why do beliefs about intelligence influence learning success? A social cognitive neuroscience model. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience , 1 (2), 75–86.

Marx, D. M., & Roman, J. S. (2002). Female role models: Protecting women’s math test performance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin , 28 (9), 1183–1193.

McIlwee, J. S., & Robinson, J. G. (1992). Women in engineering: Gender, power, and workplace culture . New York: SUNY Press.

Meinck, S., & Brese, F. (2019). Trends in gender gaps: using 20 years of evidence from TIMSS. Large-Scale Assessments in Education , 7 (1), 1–23.

METI. (2019). Visions of the “Future Classroom” Program Compiled as Effort towards Educational Reform in the Reiwa Era. https://www.meti.go.jp/english/press/2019/0625_002.html

Noweski, C., Scheer, A., Büttner, N., von Thienen, J., Erdmann, J., & Meinel, C. (2012). Towards a paradigm shift in education practice: Developing twenty-first century skills with design thinking. In Design thinking research , (pp. 71–94). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Nyikos, M., & Hashimoto, R. (1997). Constructivist theory applied to collaborative learning in teacher education: In search of ZPD. The Modern Language Journal , 81 (4), 506–517.

OECD. (2020). Gender Wage Gap. OECD Data. https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/gender-wage-gap.htm

Oh, S. S., & Lewis, G. B. (2011). Stemming inequality? Employment and pay of female and minority scientists and engineers. The Social Science Journal , 48 (2), 397–403.

Oliver, D. G., Serovich, J. M., & Mason, T. L. (2005). Constraints and opportunities with interview transcription: Towards reflection in qualitative research. Social Forces , 84 (2), 1273–1289.

Phillips, D. C. (1995). The good, the bad, and the ugly: The many faces of constructivism. Educational Researcher , 24 (7), 5–12.

Raabe, I. J., Boda, Z., & Stadtfeld, C. (2019). The social pipeline: how friend influence and peer exposure widen the stem gender gap. Sociology of Education , 92 (2), 105–123.

Rauth, I., Köppen, E., Jobst, B., & Meinel, C. (2010). Design thinking: An educational model towards creative confidence. In T. Taura, & Y. Nagai (Eds.), DS 66-2: Proceedings of the 1st international conference on design creativity (ICDC 2010) . Glasglow: The Design Society.

Ries, E. (2011). The lean startup: How today’s entrepreneurs use continuous innovation to create radically successful businesses . New York: Crown Business.

Rittel, H., & Webber, M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences , 4 (2), 155–169.

Robelen, E. (2011). STEAM: Experts make case for adding arts to STEAM. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/12/01/13steam_ep.h31.html

Roberts, T., Jackson, C., Mohr-Schroeder, M. J., Bush, S. B., Maiorca, C., Cavalcanti, M., … Cremeans, C. (2018). Students’ perceptions of STEM learning after participating in a summer informal learning experience. International Journal of STEM Education , 5 (1), 1–14.

Rotherham, A. J., & Willingham, D. (2009). 21st Century. Educational Leadership , 67 (1), 16–21 http://cesa7ita2009.pbworks.com/f/21st+Century+Skills+Curriculum+Teachers+Assessment.pdf .

Royalty, A., Oishi, L. N., & Roth, B. (2013). Acting with creative confidence: developing a creative agency assessment tool. In L. Leifer, H. Platttner, & C. Meinel (Eds.), Design Thinking Research , (pp. 79–96). Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01303-9_6 .

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Scheer, A., Noweski, C., & Meinel, C. (2012). Transforming constructivist learning into action: Design thinking in education. Design and Technology Education: An International Journal, 17 (3), 8–19.

Schultz, P. W., Hernandez, P. R., Woodcock, A., Estrada, M., Chance, R. C., Aguilar, M., & Serpe, R. T. (2011). Patching the pipeline: Reducing educational disparities in the sciences through minority training programs. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis , 33 (1), 95–114.

Schweitzer, J., Groeger, L., & Sobel, L. (2016). The design thinking mindset: An assessment of what we know and what we see in practice. Journal of Design, Business & Society , 2 (1), 71–94. https://doi.org/10.1386/dbs.2.1.71_1 .

Shapka, J. D., & Keating, D. P. (2003). Effects of a girls-only curriculum during adolescence: Performance, persistence, and engagement in mathematics and science. American Educational Research Journal , 40 (4), 929–960.

Sousa, D. A., & Pilecki, T. (2013). From STEM to STEAM: Using brain-compatible strategies to integrate the arts . Thousand Oaks: Corwin.

Stout, J. G., Dasgupta, N., Hunsinger, M., & McManus, M. A. (2011). STEMing the tide: Using ingroup experts to inoculate women’s self-concept in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 100 (2), 255–270. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021385 .

Tenenbaum, L. S., Anderson, M. K., Jett, M., & Yourick, D. L. (2014). An innovative near-peer mentoring model for undergraduate and secondary students: STEM Focus. Innovative Higher Education , 39 (5), 375–385. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-014-9286-3 .

The Cabinet Office. (2016). Kagaku gijyutsu kankei katsudoutou ni kansuru chousa, 2016 [Survey on science and technology research and activities conducted by local public or incorporated administrative entities, 2016]. https://www8.cao.go.jp/cstp/stsonota/katudocyosa/h27/innovation8.pdf

The Cabinet Office. (2018). Kagaku gijyutsu kankei katsudoutou ni kansuru chousa, 2018 [Survey on science and technology research and activities conducted by local public or incorporated administrative entities, 2018]. https://www8.cao.go.jp/cstp/stsonota/katudocyosa/h30/h30.html

The Cabinet Office (2019). Women and men in Japan, Chapter 5: Education and research fields . Tokyo: Gender Equality Bureau Cabinet Office, The Government of Japan http://www.gender.go.jp/english_contents/pr_act/pub/pamphlet/women-and-men19/pdf/1-5.pdf .

Trilling, B., & Fadel, C. (2009). 21st century skills: Learning for life in our times . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Wiley.

van den Hurk, A., Meelissen, M., & van Langen, A. (2019). Interventions in education to prevent STEM pipeline leakage. International Journal of Science Education , 41 (2), 150–164.

Wang, M.-T., & Degol, J. (2013). Motivational pathways to STEM career choices: Using expectancy–value perspective to understand individual and gender differences in STEM fields. Developmental Review , 33 (4), 304–340. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2013.08.001 .

Weber, K. (2011). Role models and informal STEM-related activities positively impact female interest in STEM. Technology and Engineering Teacher , 71 (3), 18–21.

Weisberg, H., Krosnick, J. A., & Bowen, B. D. (1996). An introduction to survey research, polling, and data analysis , (3rd ed., ). Newbury Park: Sage Publications.

Wrigley, C., & Straker, K. (2017). Design thinking pedagogy: The educational design ladder. Innovations in Education and Teaching International , 54 (4), 374–385. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2015.1108214 .

Yamamura, Y. (1989). Gendai Nihon no Kazoku to Kyoiku (現代日本 の 家族と教育). Kyoiku Shakaigaku Kenkyu (教育社会学研究) , 44 , 5–27. https://doi.org/10.11151/eds1951.44.5 .

Yata, C., Ohtani, T., & Isobe, M. (2020). Conceptual framework of STEM based on Japanese subject principles. International Journal of STEM Education , 7 (1), 1–10.

Yeager, D. S., Hanselman, P., Walton, G. M., Murray, J. S., Crosnoe, R., Muller, C., … Dweck, C. S. (2019). A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement. Nature , 573 (7774), 364–369. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1466-y .

Download references

Acknowledgements

This study received valuable support from Shelley Goldman, Tanner Vea, Keiko Okawa, Masa Inakage, Kathy Liu Sun, and Daisuke Kan. We thank Audra Wingard, Miwa Okajima, and Kenshiro Hama for their excellent research assistance. We also thank Mika Isayama, Risako Yang, Mei Maruo, and Elisa Baba for their valuable help running the workshop and collecting data. We are indebted to all the women STEM leaders and users who volunteered their time to mentor youths. Naomi Kurisu and Risako Ninomiya helped implement the workshops. We are grateful to Tom Kelley and IDEO for their support of this initiative. The research protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board at Stanford University (#37986 & #56468) and the Human Ethics Committee at the University of Toronto (#39319).

The manuscript was prepared and developed using grants from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and the Institute for Gender and the Economy at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. In-kind support was provided by the Stanford Graduate School of Education and Keio University Graduate School of Media Design.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto, 1 Devonshire Place, Toronto, ON, M5S 3K7, Canada

Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education, Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies at Stanford University, Encina Hall, 616 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA, 94305-6055, USA

Mariko Yang-Yoshihara

Keio University Graduate School of Media Design, 4-1-1 Hiyoshi Kohoku-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa, 223-8526, Japan

Marcos Sadao Maekawa

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

RK conceived, designed, analyzed, and took the lead in writing the manuscript. MYY was involved in all phases of the study. She co-organized and facilitated the workshops and contributed to the development of the surveys and the interview protocol. MSM co-organized the workshops and recruited design coaches and users. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rie Kijima .

Ethics declarations

Competing interests.

The authors declare no competing interests for this study. RK and MYY have disseminated the research results to academic audiences, government officers, foundations, and media outlets. RK and MSM have complied with the conflict of interest disclosure requirements at their respective academic institutions. RK and MYY are co-founders of SKY Labo, a non-profit organization based in Tokyo, Japan. Currently, no financial conflict of interest has been identified since the authors do not earn any income from this organization.

Additional information

Publisher’s note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Kijima, R., Yang-Yoshihara, M. & Maekawa, M.S. Using design thinking to cultivate the next generation of female STEAM thinkers. IJ STEM Ed 8 , 14 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-021-00271-6

Download citation

Received : 21 April 2020

Accepted : 18 January 2021

Published : 22 March 2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-021-00271-6

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

  • Design thinking
  • Creative confidence
  • Female youths

examples of design thinking in education

TechnoKids

Technology integration blog for teachers

Discover the 5 Simple Steps to Design Thinking in Education

Design thinking is a five-step model for creative problem solving that focuses on understanding people’s needs to develop products, services, policies, or strategies. This process finds solutions that balances what humans desire with what is possible and affordable. Design thinkers work in diverse fields including engineering, architecture, graphic design, game development , advertising, animation , video production, healthcare, and business. However, the truth is everyone is a designer at one time or another.

In fact, design thinking has a valuable place in education. It can be used to improve learning, enhance the classroom environment, shape policy, and more! Keep reading to learn how the five-step design thinking model can be used by educators to solve problems.

5 Steps in the Design Thinking Model

There are five steps to design thinking which are empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test . The model is from IDEO . IDEO provides organizations with a creative toolkit to develop unique, practical solutions.

Design thinking is not a linear process. Rather, it begins with understanding the end-user and transitions to an experimentation of ideas. This approach constantly shifts back to the needs of people to verify that the solution will meet the goal. Since schools focus on children, IDEO has resources specifically for educators to support their use of design thinking.

1. Empathize Stage

The first step in a design thinking model is to understand the end-users’ or audience’s feelings and values . This can be done through observation, interviews, or by imagining yourself as the person in the situation. Not only is practicing empathy step one, it is also the number one priority of design thinkers. In fact, the cornerstone of design thinking is that solutions should be human-centered .

If you are in an education setting the end-user might be the students, teachers, parents, or administrators. To design a solution to enhance learning it is important to understand stakeholders’ needs. Research tools such as observational checklists, polls, surveys, or interview questions are methods for gaining insight into how the school community feels or what they value. However, personal observations, informal discussions, and student work also provide vital data.

2. Define Stage

The second step is to take the insights from the Empathize Stage and use them to identify one key problem that a product, service, policy, or strategy can solve. By narrowly defining the problem, it channels all resources towards a specific goal. Phrase the problem statement from the user’s perspective. This helps to keep them as the primary focus. A recommendation is to post the problem statement in a prominent location. This way it can be referred to often throughout the design thinking process.

Consider, this fill-in-the-blank sentence as a starting point to writing a problem-statement:

[ End-users ] want [ desire ] and feel [ emotion ] because [ problem ].

The problem-statement for students might be, students want new school spirit days and feel bored because each year the same ones are scheduled. A problem-statement for teachers could be, teachers need a story time area in the library and feel frustration because there is a lack of space. A problem-statement for a parent might be, parents want their children to be safe when dropping them off in morning and feel worried because cars are not following the lane routes. And a problem-statement for an administrator could be, administrators need to improve reading test scores and feel concern because several schools have poor comprehension results in Grade 3 .

You get the idea. The definition of the problem centers on helping PEOPLE. The solution must transform a negative emotion into a positive one. Consider how a problem-statement can become a solution-statement, students have new school spirit days and feel excitement because they are going to have lots of fun . Or, administrators improved reading test scores in several schools and feel satisfaction because comprehension results are higher in Grade 3 .

3. Ideate Stage

The third step in a design thinking model is to brainstorm a variety of solutions to a problem . This is often done as a team to gain a wide range of ideas. Brainstorming can use formal techniques such as mind-mapping or word association. Alternatively, it could just be a group discussion that results in a collection of post-it notes stuck to a whiteboard.

In an education setting, the team members might be a class of students, school staff, parent committee, board of directors, community groups, or a combination of all these stakeholders. To help devise the optimal solution it is often best to include a multitude of participants. This will help to avoid personal biases or groupthink, which can limit idea generation.

Tips for Ideating

Post-problem statement.

At this stage, make sure that the data from the Empathize Stage is available for reference and post the problem-statement. This has three purposes. First, it offers an anchor to keep everyone focused on the task. Second, it provides a reference point for understanding the issue. And finally, it becomes a trigger for new ideas.

Set Aside Reflection Time

A word of advice… set aside reflection time for introverts. Extroverts love to shout out ideas and gain momentum as the energy level in the room increases. Whereas introverts often need a quiet space to consider ideas and may not be as comfortable sharing them in a large group setting. For this reason, you might want to begin the Ideate Stage by having people work independently, in pairs, or as a small group before assembling as a team.

Transcribe Ideas and Post to a Shared Location

Do not limit the Ideate Stage to only one discussion or moment. Often the best ideas come afterwards when traveling home, chatting with a friend, or sleeping. For this reason, one suggestion is to transcribe the ideas at the end of the brainstorming session and place it in a shared location. Now, team members can easily access the document to list additional ideas as they occur.

Ideating Guidelines for Design Thinking

Since the Ideate Stage is a vital part of the design thinking process, it is a good idea to establish rules for ideating. For example:

  • there are no bad ideas
  • the more ideas the better
  • imagine all possibilities
  • wild ideas are welcome
  • reserve judgement
  • set a goal for the number of ideas and then exceed it

4. Protype Stage

The fourth step as design thinkers is to pick an idea that seems feasible and create a simple model or example . If there is no viable idea, then there might be a need to return to step 2 to redefine the problem. The Prototype Stage is all about experimentation. The goal is to find issues with the design to devise a better solution.

Do not waste time creating the perfect prototype. It is not meant to be a final product. Instead, it provides a visual aid to trigger thoughts and ideas. Remember, the aim is to fix design flaws to arrive at the optimal solution. It other words, it is good to find shortcomings and mistakes. The more, the better! View this stage as a series of rough drafts.

The form of the prototype depends on the problem and solution. There isn’t just one type of prototype. In fact, there are many!

Creative Endeavor

If you are working on a creative endeavor such as a video, animation, or game the prototype could be a sketch , storyboard , or flowchart that illustrates ideas. By mapping each part of the concept, the flaws become apparent. Icons or symbols are a useful way to represent ideas. As the solution evolves, software can create a rough mock-up .

In an education setting, there are many creative endeavors that require design thinking. For example, the prototype could be a doodle of a new mascot, sequential drawings for a educational video, or an illustration of a poster to promote a school program.

Product Development or Physical Space

If the solution relates to product development or a physical space, design thinkers might create a model . The prototype could be a pencil and paper drawing. Or if the item is three-dimensional, build a sculpture with cardboard, blocks, popsicle sticks, play doh, or other materials. If the solution is an enhancement to an existing product, then modify the item itself to show design changes. At this stage, if team members are tech-savvy there are software programs that will produce a wireframe or simulation .

In a school environment there are many products or spaces that can enhance learning. For example, the prototype could be a diorama of a miniature playground structure, floor plan of a reconfigured library, or map of a new school drop-off route. There are practical ways design thinking can help educators solve existing problems.

Policy or Strategy and Design Thinking

If the solution is a new or updated policy or strategy, the protype will take the form of a working draft. It could be an outline with bulleted or numbered list, graphic organizer , slide presentation , or brief report . At this stage, getting the right phrasing is not essential. All that is required are tangible ideas to explore.

In a school setting the prototype for a policy or strategy will most likely will take the form of written or verbal communication. It could be a list of new school spirit days, recommendations for a reading program, evaluation of robotic kits, or updated safety rules at recess.

What Happens if the Prototype Fails?

Sometimes, you have a great idea…but it just doesn’t work. There are design flaws that cannot easily be overcome. The issues might be a limitation of resources, time, money, or expertise. If this happens, do not worry. In fact, this is good news! Cut your losses early and return to one of the previous steps.

5. Test Stage

The final stage in design thinking is to share the prototype with a group of peers or end-users for feedback . By this point, you have some confidence in your solution and are looking to finetune the design. It is important to refer to step 1 and 2. You want to verify that the end-user’s needs and feelings are being met.

Just as the Prototype Stage takes multiple forms, so does the Test Stage. Testing might be a product pitch, presentation with a question-and-answer period, submission of a draft report, game test, observations of user interaction, or panel review. During this phase, you are seeking more than positive feedback. In fact, constructive criticism or bugs are welcome.

What happens next? At this point in the design thinking model, there could be a decision to implement the solution. Alternatively, if the design has flaws there might be a shift to any of the previous steps. Remember design thinking is not linear!

Educators will often test a prototype by presenting the solution to a committee. This group of people will then decide about whether a solution moves forward or if it needs further enhancement. Depending on the type of problem, the concept might need to be shown to additional stakeholders to gain approval.

If the project was student-driven the test might be a submission of work to the teacher, with a reflection on strengths and weakness to the design. Evaluation includes not only the quality and creativity of the prototype, but also the depth of students’ insights.

Book cover

  • © 2015

Design Thinking for Education

Conceptions and Applications in Teaching and Learning

  • Joyce Hwee Ling Koh 0 ,
  • Ching Sing Chai 1 ,
  • Benjamin Wong 2 ,
  • Huang-Yao Hong 3

National Institute of Education, Singapore, Singapore

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan

Examines Design Thinking from an education context

Provides better understanding of applications of design thinking in educational settings

Stimulates conversation among educational researches to further consider the theoretical development of Design Thinking

40k Accesses

74 Citations

13 Altmetric

  • Table of contents

About this book

Authors and affiliations, bibliographic information.

  • Publish with us

Buying options

  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
  • Durable hardcover edition

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check for access.

Table of contents (8 chapters)

Front matter, design thinking and education.

  • Joyce Hwee Ling Koh, Ching Sing Chai, Benjamin Wong, Huang-Yao Hong

Critical Perspectives on Design and Design Thinking

Design thinking and 21st century skills, design thinking and children, design thinking and preservice teachers, design thinking and in-service teachers, developing and evaluating design thinking, back matter.

  • 21st century skill
  • design thinking and children
  • design thinking and students
  • design thinking and teachers
  • design thinking in education
  • design thinking in teaching and learning
  • lesson planning
  • reflection in action
  • learning and instruction

“The authors clearly define the aims of the text as being to further the debate amongst teachers, teacher educators and educational researchers on the theoretical development of design thinking within the context of educational settings. … a book that would hold appeal for all of those with an interest in design thinking in an educational context, irrespective of their position; educational researcher. pre-service teacher, in-service teacher or teacher educator. … I recommend this text as essential reading … .” (David Wooff, Design and Technology Education, Vol. 21 (3), 2016)

Joyce Hwee Ling Koh, Ching Sing Chai, Benjamin Wong

Huang-Yao Hong

Book Title : Design Thinking for Education

Book Subtitle : Conceptions and Applications in Teaching and Learning

Authors : Joyce Hwee Ling Koh, Ching Sing Chai, Benjamin Wong, Huang-Yao Hong

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-444-3

Publisher : Springer Singapore

eBook Packages : Humanities, Social Sciences and Law , Education (R0)

Copyright Information : Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2015

Hardcover ISBN : 978-981-287-443-6 Published: 11 May 2015

Softcover ISBN : 978-981-10-1333-1 Published: 23 October 2016

eBook ISBN : 978-981-287-444-3 Published: 25 April 2015

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XII, 131

Number of Illustrations : 1 b/w illustrations, 5 illustrations in colour

Topics : Teaching and Teacher Education , Learning & Instruction

Policies and ethics

  • Find a journal
  • Track your research

Product Design Bundle and save

User Research New

Content Design

UX Design Fundamentals

Software and Coding Fundamentals for UX

  • UX training for teams
  • Hire our alumni
  • Journal of UX Leadership
  • Our mission
  • Advisory Council

Education for every phase of your UX career

Professional Diploma

Learn the full user experience (UX) process from research to interaction design to prototyping.

Combine the UX Diploma with the UI Certificate to pursue a career as a product designer.

Professional Certificates

Learn how to plan, execute, analyse and communicate user research effectively.

Learn the principles of content design, from mastering tone and style, to writing for interfaces.

Understand the fundamentals of UI elements and design systems, as well as the role of UI in UX.

Short Courses

Gain a solid foundation in the philosophy, principles and methods of user experience design.

Learn the essentials of software development so you can work more effectively with developers.

Give your team the skills, knowledge and mindset to create great digital products

Join our hiring programme and access our list of certified professionals.

Learn about our mission to set the global standard in UX education

Meet our leadership team with UX and education expertise

Members of the council connect us to the wider UX industry

Our team are available to answer any of your questions

Fresh insights from experts, alumni and the wider design community

Read stories from our students who have made successful careers in UX after completing our course

What is design thinking?

Discover what is design thinking and why it’s important, including the five stages of design thinking. Deep dive into a few case studies and learn how to apply design thinking.

Free course promotion image

Free course: Introduction to UX Design

What is UX? Why has it become so important? Could it be a career for you? Learn the answers, and more, with a free 7-lesson video course.

design thinking illustration

Design thinking is a mindset that breeds innovation. While it’s based on the design process, anyone in any profession can use it when they’re trying to come up with creative solutions to a problem. 

In this guide, we’ll walk you through what design thinking is and why it’s important, including the five stages of design thinking. Then we’ll present a couple of design thinking case studies and wrap up with a primer on how to apply design thinking. And don’t worry, this guide is broken down into easily digestible chunks, as follows:

Let’s get started!

What is design thinking? A definition

Design thinking is an approach used for problem-solving. Both practical and creative, it’s anchored by human-centred design.

Design thinking is extremely user-centric in that it focuses on your users before it focuses on things like technology or business metrics. 

Design thinking is also solution-based, looking for effective solutions to problems, not problem-based, which looks at the problem itself and tends to focus on limitations. 

Design thinking is all about getting hands-on with solutions. The aim is to quickly turn your ideas into testable products so you can see what works and what doesn’t.

[GET CERTIFIED IN UX]

Why is design thinking important? 

Design thinking is important because it challenges assumptions and fosters innovation. While many ways of thinking rely on the habits and experiences we’ve formed, they can limit us when it comes to thinking of design solutions. Design thinking, however, encourages us to explore new ideas. 

It’s an actionable technique that allows us to tackle “wicked problems,” or problems that are ill-defined. For example, achieving sustainable growth or maintaining your competitive edge in business count as wicked problems, and on a broader scale, poverty and climate change are wicked problems too. Design thinking uses empathy and human-centred thinking to tackle these kinds of problems.

Who uses design thinking?

The short answer? Everyone! Design thinking can help you in whatever your role or industry. People in business, government, entertainment, health care, and every other industry can benefit from using design thinking to come up with innovative solutions. 

The most important thing design thinking does is help people focus on their customers or end users. Instead of focusing on problems to fix, design thinking keeps things user-centric, which boosts customer engagement. 

What are the 5 stages of design thinking?

According to the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University (known as d-school), the five stages of design thinking are: 

Although these stages appear to be linear, following one after the other, design thinking isn’t a linear process. Stages are often run in parallel or out of order, or repeated when necessary.

Phase 1: Empathise 

Your goal here is to research your users’ needs to gain an empathic understanding of the problems they face. You’ll get to know your users and their wants and needs so you can make sure your solutions put them front and centre. This means setting aside your own assumptions and getting to know your users on a psychological and emotional level. You’ll observe, engage, watch and listen. 

Phase 2: Define

Here you state your users’ needs by compiling the information you gathered during the Empathise phase and then analysing it until you can define the core problem your team has identified. 

You do this by asking questions like: what patterns do you see in the data? What user issues need to be resolved? The conclusion of this phase comes when you’ve figured out a clear problem statement that is defined by the users’ needs. For example, “Bank customers in Glasgow need…”

You can learn more about how to write a problem statement in this guide.

Phase 3: Ideate

In this phase, you’ll generate ideas and solutions. You and your team will hold ideation sessions where you can come up with as many ideas as possible. No idea is too silly for this stage. The important thing is getting all ideas out on the table. There are a variety of techniques you can use, like brainstorming and mind mapping, to come up with solutions. This phase ends when you’ve managed to narrow down your ideas to just a few of the best ones.

Phase 4: Prototype

Your goal in this phase is to find the best solution to the problem by prototyping —that is, producing scaled down versions of the product or its features found in the previous phase. You’ll put each solution to the test by improving, redesigning, accepting, or rejecting it.

Phase 5: Test

Here you’ll try out the solutions you arrived at in the previous phases by user testing them. However, while this is the final stage of design thinking in theory, it’s rarely the final stage in reality. Design thinking often includes going back to previous phases to find other solutions or to further iterate or refine your existing solution.

[GET CERTIFIED IN USER RESEARCH]

Design thinking examples and case studies

Now that you understand the theory and process of design thinking, let’s look at some examples in action where design thinking had a real-world impact.

Case Study 1: American Family Insurance’s Moonrise App

American Family Insurance, a company that offers life, business, auto, and home insurance, came to design company IDEO with the goal of innovating in a way that would help working families. 

Stages 1 & 2: Empathise and Define

While American Family thought their customers might benefit from budgeting tools, IDEO found from their research in the Empathise phase that, actually, people needed a way to build up their savings against unforeseen needs.

They noticed a lot of people had meticulously planned budgets, which made budgeting tools a moot point. But they were living just within their means and an extra expense, like a doctor’s visit or kid’s basketball uniform, could throw their budget off. These people didn’t want to take on debt though, they wanted extra work so they could have a cushion.

Stages 3 & 4: Ideate and Prototype

IDEO took that idea and ran with it, creating Moonrise, an app that matches people looking for work with extra hours and income. Today’s businesses depend on on-demand work but the temp agencies they work with tend to want permanent placements. Moonrise does things differently. It enables companies to find people who are already employed elsewhere for short-term work through a simple text message interface. The employers can list shifts on the platform and workers are paid as soon as they finish their shifts.

Stage 5: Test

To test the app, 11 Moonrisers, six employers, and a team of designers and programmers were assembled for a one week period to work out the kinks in the platform. 

Based on the test’s success, American Family Insurance now owns the startup Moonrise, which launched in Chicago in 2018 and has since expanded to additional states. In 2018, over 7,000 shifts have been fulfilled and over $500,000 has been earned by people on the app.

Case Study 2: GE Healthcare’s Scanning Tools

GE Healthcare has cutting-edge diagnostic imaging tools at its disposal, but for kids they’re an unpleasant experience. 

“The room itself is kind of dark and has those flickering fluorescent lights…. That machine that I had designed basically looked like a brick with a hole in it,” explained Doug Dietz , a designer who worked for GE. How could they make the experience better for kids?

The team at GE began by observing and gaining empathy for children at a daycare centre and talking to specialists who knew what paediatric patients went through. The team then recruited experts from a children’s museum and doctors from two hospitals. This gave them a lot of insight into what children went through when they had to sit for these procedures and what could be done to lessen the children’s stress.

Stages 3, 4 & 5: Ideate, Prototype, and Test

The first prototype of the new and improved “Adventure Series” scanner was invented. Through research and pilot programs, the redesign made imaging machines more child-friendly, making sure they have other things to focus on than the scary looks and sounds of the machine. For example, the Coral City Adventure in the emergency room gives children an underwater experience where they get into a yellow submarine and listen to the sound of harps while their procedure takes place.

Patient satisfaction scores increased to 90% and children no longer suffer such anxiety about their scans. The children hold still for their procedures more easily, making repeats of the scans unnecessary. There’s also less need for anesthesiologists, which improved the bottom line for those hospitals that used the scanning machines because more patients could get scanned each day.

How to apply design thinking 

If you want to apply design thinking in your own work, follow these steps and best practices:

  • Improve design thinking skills. Use training to explain, improve, and practically implement the phases of design thinking. You can do this in several ways such as workshops, online courses, or case studies shared with your team.
  • Identify the correct problem. Listen to users and ask them unbiased questions in order to understand their perspectives. Engage with everyone and stay open-minded, so you can identify the correct problem, not the problem you or your organisation thinks users are having. 
  • Have more debriefs. Be open about what went right and what went wrong in your process. Openly discuss why things succeeded or failed and why. View failure as learning, not as an excuse to give up.
  • Iterate and iterate some more. The goal of design thinking is finding the best answer possible—and that probably won’t come in the first round of iteration. You’ll need to test and iterate as much as possible with new ways to solve the problem.

Design thinking is so popular—and so effective—because it places the user’s needs front and centre. For more user-centric design tips, learn how to incorporate user feedback in product design , get to grips with user research ethics , and learn how to conduct effective user interviews .

  • design thinking

Subscribe to our newsletter

Get the best UX insights and career advice direct to your inbox each month.

Thanks for subscribing to our newsletter

You'll now get the best career advice, industry insights and UX community content, direct to your inbox every month.

Upcoming courses

Professional diploma in ux design.

Learn the full UX process, from research to design to prototyping.

Professional Certificate in UI Design

Master key concepts and techniques of UI design.

Certificate in Software and Coding Fundamentals for UX

Collaborate effectively with software developers.

Certificate in UX Design Fundamentals

Get a comprehensive introduction to UX design.

Professional Certificate in Content Design

Learn the skills you need to start a career in content design.

Professional Certificate in User Research

Master the research skills that make UX professionals so valuable.

Upcoming course

Build your UX career with a globally-recognised, industry-approved certification. Get the mindset, the skills and the confidence of UX designers.

You may also like

design thinking illustration

The importance of clear and consistent branding in Content Design (and how to achieve it)

voice ux design blog header image

Designing for voice interfaces: The opportunities and challenges of UX design

Build your UX career with a globally recognised, industry-approved qualification. Get the mindset, the confidence and the skills that make UX designers so valuable.

2 April 2024

5 Design Thinking Project Examples for Students from the Design Thinking Association

5 Design Thinking Project Examples for Students

There are not that many Design Thinking project examples for students on the web. Most design thinking project examples are aimed at working professionals i.e. engineers, marketing, business people, and are not really great project examples for K-12 and college students to grasp how the process works. Nor is it easy to understand how they apply to your particular problem or passion.

Not all students who study Design Thinking are going to become professional designers, many will continue on into businesses in a variety of different functions from CEO to project management and customer service. The problems that school students want to solve are not necessarily the same type of problem as an adult in business may want to solve, nor should they be.

Educator Link

5 Design Thinking project examples for K-12 students:

1. Partner with a local non-profit to help them solve a problem and help them become more effective. Download and read this great article  about setting up Design Thinking projects for K-12 Students from the website Design Thinking 4 Teens (DT4T). All non-profits could use support helping them solve the difficult problems they are set up to try to tackle and the students will get a lot of satisfaction from the participation in trying to solve difficult real life issues.

2. Set a project question related to the students environment. Something they would find beneficial to solve such as  " How might we use empty lot's in our neighborhood?" What do our residents need. How can we make these eyesores useful spaces and cool places to be. Who knows if that encouraged revenue generation it may even be a solution for the owners as well!

3.  How might we support people who drop out from school? Hint: It's about creating supportive environments. N one likes to see a friend fall by the wayside. This is a great way to help friends in need directly or indirectly.

4.  Design Thinking in the Elementary Classroom: the Power of Empathy. This story helps provide a strong reason and guidelines as to what type of problem to chose - something close to your students that they can relate to. Like the problem of messy bathrooms.

5. Design a useful and meaningful gift for a family member. In this exercise K-5 teacher, Maddie, introduces and explores the technique of empathy (seeing the world from another persons point of view). Maddie also has a lot of useful information on her site besides the great description of how she implemented this project. While this project is really about the development of a design thinking skill, we included it here as we are sure that it is a project that would engage all kids!

USA Flag

6 ideas to help you develop your design thinking skills:

1. What is Design Thinking and How do we Apply it?

A  good concise article  describing the process with clear descriptions of what happens in each phase and some ideas on how to apply it. Once you have this basic idea, go to the next video for a more in-depth lecture on the process.

Co Barry does an excellent job in this TEDtalk Video to explain the power of Design Thinking in the K-12 education system.

2. Stanford.school Design Thinking Workshop lecture

One of the best Design Thinking project examples for students is shown in this Stanford Design Thinking Workshop demonstration by Justin Ferrell. From this you will get a very clear idea of how the process works in reality. You should be able to run your own design thinking workshop with your fellow students after watching this video.

3. Design Thinking - Improving School Experiences and Helping Teachers.

These four design thinking project example projects for students from 3rd to 5th graders give a good idea of the type of problems tackled and the solutions presented. It's not strong on process, but a great example of the type of problems  students can tackle.

4. Design Thinking project examples for Teenage Students

If you love the Design Thinking process and enjoy the results that you have produced using this problem solving process, then why not think about joining a community of like minded teens across the USA? Oliver Greenwald has been design thinking since he was 10 and has created a formal community of teen design thinkers from a Google for Education grant he won.

5. The Design Thinking Association Case Studies Index

You should also refer to the  Design Thinking Case Studies Index  where all of our case studies are categorized per industry or market vertical. We add to it every week, so keep coming back to the index to see the new case studies.

6. 5 Fun activities to get your students started with design thinking

...and some solid advice for those who are running design thinking projects to help get students in a creative mindset.

1. Read the book

The Third Teacher: 79 Ways You Can Use Design to Transform Teaching & Learning , by Trung Le a principal education designer at Cannon Design. There is also a website for this book with some really valuable resources, such as:

  • A downloadable list of the 79 ideas
  • A downloadable excerpt from the book including an interview with sir Ken Robinson
  • 79 Ideas flash Cards

2. Design Thinking Lessons from the classroom  

Design thinking, a dynamic, creative and collaborative approach to problem solving, presents a unique model for educators who wish to facilitate from within the class, rather than impart knowledge to it.

3. Real life examples

One from the first day of school, one from a High school classroom and one from an elementary school classroom.

4.  5 Fun Activities To Get Your Students Started With Design Thinking

In this article Julie Mason describes some great starting points to get your students creative juices flowing.

5. Read our follow up article, More Design Thinking Examples for Students

If you have or find design thinking project examples for students that you think we should add, please contact us and we will get them posted for you.

How to Train Your Brain for Design Thinking

examples of design thinking in education

Design thinking is a framework for solving complex, human-centered problems. Design thinking encompasses mindsets and tools that help people unleash creative and entrepreneurial behavior. 

3 Benefits of Design Thinking

  • It enables human-centered design .
  • Its prototype and testing phases allow rapid, low-risk and efficient design and iteration.
  • It helps unleash creative and entrepreneurial behavior.

The design thinking process unfolds in phases originally proposed by the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford: Empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test. 

In the empathize phase , designers learn about the people or users for whom they are innovating. They employ ethnographic-style field research strategies (e.g., naturalistic observation, interviewing) to build empathy for people and understand what is important to them. 

In the define phase , teams craft insights about people that highlight their values and needs. Insights are reframed as targeted questions that can be answered through brainstorming in the ideate phase . Once many creative solutions have been generated, convergence techniques are used to narrow down the most promising solutions

In the prototype and test phase s, designers build models of their top solutions that are presented to users who interact with them firsthand and provide feedback. Sometimes, mini experiments are run to test the underlying assumptions of a given solution. 

design thinking trends How Will AI Impact the Design Thinking Framework?

Methods of Design Thinkers

Design thinking can nurture a more creative organizational culture because design thinkers embrace mindsets that impact day-to-day interactions and experiences at work.

For example, they are curious, generative, playful, imaginative and observant. They adopt a “test to learn” philosophy and view user testing, experimentation and critical feedback as essential opportunities to learn and grow.  They also “build to think,” meaning they spend more time sketching things out on storyboards, building rough prototypes and trying things out.

Design thinkers draw from a library of tools and methods that help them achieve the goals of each phase.   

Mapping techniques

In the empathize phase, design thinkers use mapping techniques to help synthesize their learning about users. An empathy map is a graphic organizer that summarizes what users are thinking, feeling and doing in a particular context. The tool surfaces user pain points (frustrations or obstacles in the user experience) and gains (wins, ideal outcomes). 

Journey maps are empathy maps plotted over time. Designers identify stages of the end-to-end user experience and capture what people think, feel and do at each stage, along with noting pain points. This allows designers to focus on specific innovation opportunities that arise within the customer journey.   

brainstorming tools

In the ideate phase , teams use brainstorming tools to increase their fluency and flexibility. For example, when the well of ideas starts to run dry, the switch-hats technique can be helpful. With this tool, teams generate a list of famous people or brands and then continue the brainstorm by listing ideas that the famous person or company might suggest. This switch of perspective can lead to more ideas and a more diverse range of ideas.    

storyboarding

Storyboarding is a method that assists design teams in the very early stages of prototyping. A storyboard is a comic strip depicting how the user will enter, engage with and exit the new experience. Storyboards can be drafted with just a marker on chart paper, or they can be generated digitally, but in all cases, they help designers envision a future state and convey ideas to others. Feedback on a simple storyboard can fuel iteration of solutions before prototypes are built out.  

more on corporate innovation How to Build a Culture of Experimentation

How to Train Your Brain in Design Thinking

The design thinker’s brain must work in ways that run counter to our routine thinking patterns. 

Human beings are not naturally inclined to excel at design thinking, and our cognition can interfere with innovation . Certain cognitive efficiencies — such as not encoding details and capturing the gist instead or failing to recognize something in plain view because our attention is directed elsewhere — can serve us well in daily life but serve as obstacles in design thinking. 

Here are four ways you can get your brain on board to ensure that your next design sprint is a success.  

Observe in teams and take photographs

As our attentional and perceptual systems are bombarded by environmental stimuli, we each attend to different things. When conducting naturalistic observation, work in teams and take photographs so you have a record of the scene that can be studied later.   

Engage in bottom-up processing

We tend to draw conclusions about people prematurely based on experience or expectations. Design thinkers who engage in bottom-up processing gather discrete bits of sensory information (quotes, individual observations), record them on individual sticky notes and then identify patterns to ensure that insights are based on new data and not assumptions.   

Seek disconfirming evidence

Our thinking is often clouded by confirmation bias, which leads us to notice and lend more credence to information that confirms an existing belief. Designers must acknowledge this bias and actively seek disconfirming evidence to ensure a balanced interpretation of human behavior. Otherwise, our understanding of people may be inaccurate.    

Normalize critical feedback

Most people are inherently defensive in the face of critical feedback . For the prototype-test cycles in design thinking to be effective, teams need to create conditions where feedback is viewed as a gift that leads to more innovative solutions.

Sharing ideas “early, ugly and often” can normalize the process of receiving feedback because there is no expectation that early ideas will be perfect. Begin with a round of “what do we love” about this idea before moving into constructive critique. With its focus on meeting people’s needs and rapid prototyping, design thinking provides a powerful framework for unleashing transformative innovation . Just remember that training for your next design sprint requires leveraging the methods and tools and getting your brain on board, too.

Built In’s expert contributor network publishes thoughtful, solutions-oriented stories written by innovative tech professionals. It is the tech industry’s definitive destination for sharing compelling, first-person accounts of problem-solving on the road to innovation.

Great Companies Need Great People. That's Where We Come In.

IMAGES

  1. Design Thinking for Schools Poster

    examples of design thinking in education

  2. How to use Design Thinking in Education?

    examples of design thinking in education

  3. Design Thinking models. Stanford d.school

    examples of design thinking in education

  4. Design thinking, explained

    examples of design thinking in education

  5. Design Thinking Process

    examples of design thinking in education

  6. Stanford Design Thinking Process

    examples of design thinking in education

VIDEO

  1. What is Design Thinking? #shorts

  2. Interaction Design : Design Thinking

  3. DESIGN THINKING STUNTING PROBLEM

  4. Introduction to Design Thinking in Business Problem Solving

  5. Design Thinking ฉบับเข้าใจง่าย ม้วนเดี่ยวจบ

  6. Design Thinking for Educators

COMMENTS

  1. Real-Life Examples of Design Thinking in the Classroom

    Real-Life Examples of Design Thinking in the Classroom. Project-Based Learning. Uncategorized. 2. We are all continually trying to respond to a rapidly evolving global economy and the many dynamic cultural shifts therein. This response includes new pedagogies that are evidenced by new standards, assessments, tools and learning environments.

  2. Design Thinking in Education

    Design Thinking in Education. Design Thinking is a mindset and approach to learning, collaboration, and problem solving. In practice, the design process is a structured framework for identifying challenges, gathering information, generating potential solutions, refining ideas, and testing solutions. Design Thinking can be flexibly implemented ...

  3. What is Design Thinking in Education?

    Design thinking is both a method and a mindset. What makes design thinking unique in comparison to other frameworks such as project based learning, is that in addition to skills there is an emphasis on developing mindsets such as empathy, creative confidence, learning from failure and optimism. Seeing their students and themselves enhance and ...

  4. Exploring Design Thinking in the Classroom

    In Art, Design, and Learning in Public Spaces (S316), Senior Lecturer Steve Seidel has noticed that "the mirroring of the artistic process and design thinking process engages different students in different ways."In the course, students critically examine the learning opportunities available in socially-engaged and participatory art. Students explore two full project cycles that include ...

  5. 45 Design Thinking Resources For Teachers And Students

    Educators across the world have been using design thinking to create such a world. Design thinking consists of four key elements: Defining the Problem, Creating and Considering Multiple Options, Refining Selected Directions, and Executing the Best Plan of Action. An early example of design thinking would have been Edison's invention of the ...

  6. PDF Design Thinking in Education

    Design Thinking is versatile. Design Thinking remains equally impactful at the activity, project, course, or program scale. The design process can be employed in its entirety over several months or as a component of another methodology. Design Thinking can be explored directly as an approach or in pursuit of other academic or collaborative work.

  7. Design Thinking for Teachers (and Students)

    Design thinking often consists of five commonly used steps: Empathize. Define. Ideate. Prototype. Test. The first step involves research, interviews, and observation to learn more about the people (customers, users, students, stakeholders) you want to design for and help with your solution. Step two is about defining and understanding the problem.

  8. Design Thinking in Education: Empathy, Challenge, Discovery ...

    4 Modes for Developing Your Practice. If you're considering how to embrace design thinking in your school culture, I believe you should focus on four critical modes underlying the process: 1. Lead with empathy. Empathy is, of course, the root of human-centered design. Leading with empathy builds on the classic definition of "walking in someone ...

  9. Design Thinking

    Design Thinking is part of the broader project-based learning educational model. It uses a creative, systematic approach to teach problem-solving. Students progress through the stages of Discovery, Ideation, Experimentation, and Evolution in search of innovative solutions to vexing problems. The learning process integrates many activities ...

  10. Design Thinking in Education: Innovation Can Be Learned

    Education needs new ways to prepare individuals and societies for the multitude of changing challenges in the twenty-first century. In today's world—characterized by digitization, increasing speed, and complexity—design thinking has established itself as a powerful approach to human-centered innovation that can help address complicated problems and guide change in all areas of life.

  11. Design Thinking in Education: Perspectives, Opportunities and Challenges

    The article discusses design thinking as a process and mindset for collaboratively finding solutions for wicked problems in a variety of educational settings. Through a systematic literature review the article organizes case studies, reports, theoretical reflections, and other scholarly work to enhance our understanding of the purposes, contexts, benefits, limitations, affordances, constraints ...

  12. More Design Thinking Examples for Students

    This is a follow on article to our original article "5 Design Thinking Examples for Students". Redesigning the Classroom Layout: Design thinking can be used to reimagine the physical layout of a classroom to optimize the learning environment. Students can collaborate, conduct research, and brainstorm ideas on how to rearrange desks, create ...

  13. Stefanie Panke* Design Thinking in Education: Perspectives

    the adoption of design thinking in education. For example, Goldman, Kabayadondo, Royalty, Carroll, and Roth (2014) stated that in in over 60 US universities and colleges, design thinking is taught through workshops, supplemental training, courses, or degree programs. Similarly, Callahan (2019) observed that design thinking

  14. Design Thinking in Education

    Most design thinking project examples are aimed at working professionals i.e. engineers, marketing, business people, and are not really great project examples for K-12 and college students to grasp how the process works. ... We offer a summary of the webinar, Design Thinking: Education Edition, which discusses design thinking principles and ...

  15. Introduction: Design Thinking in the Field of Education

    Abstract. Design Thinking has become an established approach in science and the commercial sector so that companies and institutions worldwide are benefiting from this new problem-solving and innovation mindset. At HPI, we have learned over the past 15+ years that design thinkers, whether students or professionals, develop a more thorough ...

  16. The Future of Design Thinking in Education: Challenges and

    The nine chapters in this book provided rich perspectives on ways of thinking about and enacting educational design. Throughout the book, the authors shared examples of prominent design processes in education, along with how teachers, system leaders, university instructors, and students are engaging in design in varied contexts.

  17. Using design thinking to cultivate the next generation of female STEAM

    The rationale for using design thinking in education is grounded in the findings of previous studies that point to the approach's positive influence on learners. Design thinking strategies have been demonstrated to improve students' problem-solving skills, especially among lower achieving students (Chin et al., 2019).

  18. (PDF) Design Thinking in Education: Perspectives ...

    Design thinking involves five phases (see Figure 1) implemented through an iterative process and incorporates an empathetic, user-centered approach that allowed us to challenge our legacy practice ...

  19. Discover the 5 Simple Steps to Design Thinking in Education

    In fact, design thinking has a valuable place in education. It can be used to improve learning, enhance the classroom environment, shape policy, and more! ... In an education setting, there are many creative endeavors that require design thinking. For example, the prototype could be a doodle of a new mascot, ...

  20. Design Thinking and Innovation in Education

    6. Design thinking is a creative and human-centered approach to solving problems and generating innovative solutions. It involves understanding the needs and perspectives of the users, empathizing ...

  21. Design Thinking for Education

    "The authors clearly define the aims of the text as being to further the debate amongst teachers, teacher educators and educational researchers on the theoretical development of design thinking within the context of educational settings. … a book that would hold appeal for all of those with an interest in design thinking in an educational context, irrespective of their position ...

  22. What is design thinking? Examples, stages and case studies

    A definition. Design thinking is an approach used for problem-solving. Both practical and creative, it's anchored by human-centred design. Design thinking is extremely user-centric in that it focuses on your users before it focuses on things like technology or business metrics. Design thinking is also solution-based, looking for effective ...

  23. 5 Design Thinking Project Examples for Students

    Once you have this basic idea, go to the next video for a more in-depth lecture on the process. Co Barry does an excellent job in this TEDtalk Video to explain the power of Design Thinking in the K-12 education system. 2. Stanford.school Design Thinking Workshop lecture. One of the best Design Thinking project examples for students is shown in ...

  24. How to Train Your Brain for Design Thinking

    The design thinking process unfolds in phases originally proposed by the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford: Empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test.. In the empathize phase, designers learn about the people or users for whom they are innovating.They employ ethnographic-style field research strategies (e.g., naturalistic observation, interviewing) to build empathy for people ...