Lesson 2: Design Thinking

In this lesson you will learn about the components and process of design thinking. This will help you understand how to use the design process to facilitate inquiry in your classroom.

Lesson Objective:

• Demonstrate an understanding of design thinking and its components.

In this lesson, you will:

• View a video about design-thinking.
• Play a matching game to help you define steps of the design process and examples of design activities.

What Is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is a methodology for solving problems using a conglomeration of concepts from engineering, design, the arts, business, and the social sciences.

Learn more about design thinking from this video from the Stanford d.school: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjyutgqoBLo

Activity: How Does The Design Process Work?

Learn about the design process by looking at an example of a design process! This example was taken from the d.school's Wallet Project, in which students re-design the classic wallet to fit the needs of a partner.

To learn about the steps of this process, go through the flashcards on this Quizlet.

• Each flashcard will give you an example of the step the students are taking.
• The flip side of the card gives the name of the step in the design process.
• As you go through the flashcards, try to draw on what you saw in the video. What step do you think this card is?
• Once you've finished, brainstorm a definition for each phase in the design process.

Click here to go through the flashcards!

This is what the cards will look like.

Activity: How Well Do You Understand the Design Process?

• Play this matching game to see how well you know the steps of the design process:

• Match the design thinking term to its definition by dragging and dropping the term on top of the correct definition.
• If you are correct, both will disappear.
• To review the definitions, return to flashcard mode.

Click here to go to the matching game!

This is what the game looks like.

Interested in Design Thinking?

Check out more resources from the Stanford d.school: http://dschool.stanford.edu/

Links

If you've got a good handle on design thinking, move on to Lesson 3: The Design Inquiry Cycle to learn more about using design thinking and inquiry together in the ELA classroom.

Go back to the home page: Using Design-Thinking and Inquiry in Teaching Literacy

Go back to Lesson 1: Inquiry Skip ahead to Lesson 4: Writing Curriculum with the Design Inquiry Cycle

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