David Jakes Designs

THE DESIGN THINKING CLASSROOM: EXPLORING IMPROVEMENT AND INNOVATION

Throughout the book, I have made an intentional effort to avoid focusing on change.  It has been my experience throughout my career in multiple professions that change generally is perceived as something that’s negative.  Being asked to change may be perceived that you or your school is doing something wrong.  Perhaps that’s true, but in my experience, it is apparent that there is much good going on in schools and more right is happening than wrong.

So, admittedly, I have taken a softer approach to my design efforts with my school clients.  My efforts seek not to change what they do but focus on improving the educational experience they offer.  I have found that this approach is something schools can realistically get on board with, that honors their current experience in what they are doing well as well as recognizing that like everyone, there is something to improve.  I used the same approach with you to help you advance the experience of your classroom.  I am assuming that in your practice you have things that work with kids – hard-won from years of experience in the classroom.  Asking you to change and get rid of those things wouldn’t be appropriate and you wouldn’t do it anyway.  But asking you to build on those things, with some powerful approaches that blend those good things with the power of design is something that could be very interesting.

That brings us to how that happens.

Most of the work ahead focuses on improving what you do and creating new experiences.  This process makes use of the three concepts that are at the heart of this writing - invention, innovation, and improvement.

Improvement means to make things that exist better.  Invention means creating things that do not currently exist.  Innovation is where it gets interesting.  Both improvements and inventions can be innovative – I think that innovation is simply defined as a novel, unique or fresh approach to thinking and acting

Here is an example.  If you have flown recently, you probably know that many airlines now offer in-flight entertainment that is viewable on a cell phone.  I recently flew on an airline that was flying the new 737-MAX airplane.  In the back of the seatback in front of me, the manufacturer had added a docking bracket for a cell phone that placed the phone at a proper viewing angle.  You may have noticed that people had multiple solutions for this in the past, from homemade brackets to simply watching the phone on their tray table.  The airline created a standardized approach that was more effective and improved the traveler’s experience.

To me, this is not necessarily an invention because cell phone brackets have existed for many years in various formats.  It is definitely an improvement because of the better user experience.  And I think it's an innovation because the solution uniquely addressed a need and utilized existing strategies, and applied them in a new context.

The Design Thinking Classroom asks you to become an educator-designer.  To get there, you’ll most likely have to develop new approaches that ask you to add new dimensions to your practice.  In some cases, that might mean improving something you are already doing to support a design approach.  In other cases, you might have to add things to your practice that you don’t currently do, things that ask you to think and practice differently in order to apply design thinking to the learning experience.  And most likely, you’ll continue to do the successful things you have always done.  The journey to becoming an educator designer involves objectively evaluating your current practice, using all the good things, improving things, and adding things that you need to.  It just makes sense and over time, I’m hoping that improving the educational experience you provide can be accomplished through these pathways.