Monday, September 2, 2013

Design Thinking as a Social Innovation

Design Thinking seems like a natural byproduct of human thinking, except re-purposed and given the “spaces” of inspiration, ideation, and implementation.  As a society, it has been seen through history our stray from human nature.  We have spent time solving problems by attempting to fit unpredictable, multi-faceted problems into systematic and structured methods of thinking.  Design Thinking brings us back to what once would have been natural to us, starting at the root of the problem with the person that it is affecting.

Is Design Thinking a social innovation in itself?  It feels like a deconstruction of the systems that we have put into place over time.  More than a product, Design Thinking provides a new attitude and perspective to the way that we can find effective solutions to pressing social issues.  IDEO, a design and innovation consulting firm, provides the toolkit: Design Thinking for Educators.  This toolkit applies the same type of thinking used to develop social innovations, to education.  It’s interesting that even the basic human interaction of teaching could use the integration of Design Thinking to bring improvements to a classroom.  Design Thinking is reminding the world that human stories are the reason that social innovations are created.

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