Design Thinking offers great tools for creative problem-solving. But after 13 years teaching design — in universities, MBA programs, and for the past eight years in K-12 classrooms — I’ve found that education needs its own adaptations.
Professional designers lead with empathy — understanding users before generating solutions. In classrooms, students benefit from a broader starting point that includes instruction and content knowledge.
Professional designers prototype quickly and iterate freely. In classrooms, where time and materials are limited, a planning stage makes student thinking visible before they start building.
These ideas are at the heart of the Creative Design Cycle — a framework to help students develop creative problem-solving skills through real-world projects, preparing them for challenges that don’t come with instructions. If you’re exploring design-based learning in your classroom, I hope it’s helpful.
Want to dive deeper into the ideas behind this framework? I wrote about them in detail in my article “Designed for Designers, Not for Classrooms” on my blog.