Students’ design thinking process in building solutions

In learning ecosystems, students can take the lead in building solutions to the development needs of business and industry. These kinds of processes create an authentic environment for students to learn essential skills for future work life. In solving challenges of work life, students can learn, for example, problem solving, team work, initiativeness, resilience and creativity. Furthermore, real-life cases in learning creates motivation, as students can experience that their work is meaningful for somebody else, not just for school and for a teacher.

How do you create this kind of meaningful and real life connected process, a process which creates added value to the students, teachers and also for work life partners? One possibility is to follow the design thinking process and its steps.

1. Students (as teams!) explore and analyse the needs of users - Teachers work as facilitators. Design starts with exploring the problem space, benchmarking what solutions are out there and going into the field to observe, interview and survey users.

2. Students define problems worth solving. It is important to understand what is the problem worth solving from the perspective of the user and customer.

3. Students ideate solutions. User understanding guides generating ideas that make a difference.

4. Students prototype solutions. Ideas are turned into something tangible by prototyping. Prototyping makes communicating ideas more easy.

5. Students test prototypes with users. By testing the prototypes, the hypotheses or assumptions solution is validated. Testing provides the opportunity to improve the solution based on user feedback - and change the direction of development if needed.

6. Students pitch the solution. For example, presenting the need, approach, benefits and competition advantage of their solution.

These kinds of collaborative processes are inspiring for all the stakeholders, especially students. They can feel empowered and their work is meaningful and beneficial, not just for school!