From design thinking to design knowing: An educational perspective

Abstract

The process of design explicates the procedural knowledge of design activities, shifting theoretical conceptions across practical dimensions. Design thinking, as a creative and innovative methodology, has been established as a designerly process for non-designers to address complex problems. This article reviews the implications of introducing the design thinking methodology as a pedagogical approach in design education at LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore, generating new knowledge to inform the research spaces of design practice and theory. Using the design thinking methodology as a sound framework to facilitate risk-taking decisions in design research and practice, students from the design specialisms of Design Communication, Product Design and Interior Design were inducted into an interdisciplinary project. The perspectives and insights arising from the collaborative, design thinking methodology are extracted, analysed and adapted to form a framework to illustrate the non-linear, circular structures of knowledge generation from theory (designerly knowing) to practice (design thinking) and research (design knowing).

Cultivation of the Skills of Design Thinking via the Project-Based Method as a Component of the Dual Model of Learning

“…The researchers integrate design thinking with the dynamic constructivist theory of culture to propose a situation-specific framework for the empirical analysis of design thinking in cross-cultural teams. The study's results provide some insight into how cultural knowledge shapes core design thinking in specific situations (Clemmensen et al, 2018).…”

“…The development of design thinking has been the subject of extensive research. The key areas of this research include the following: employing design pedagogy methodologies in teaching the fundamentals of entrepreneurship (Sarooghi et al, 2019), exploring design thinking as a soughtafter skill for future engineers (Soboleva, Karavaev, 2020) and health and medical workers (Badwan et al, 2018), and exploring design thinking as the basis of interactive group learning (Woolard, 2018;Clemmensen et al, 2018).…”

“…A separate group of research works is represented by research into the use of the projectbased method in pedagogy and in the process of fostering design thinking. Elsewhere, one may find some interest in research into procedural knowledge of project-based activity (Chon, Sim, 2019) and research that places project-based activity in the context of developing a strategy for development (Ben et al, 2016). Scholar G. Lutsenko, who has analyzed the current condition of Ukraine's system of engineering education, has noted the prevalence in it of traditional pedagogical approaches, whilst many universities are currently employing the problem-and project-based learning model, with a focus on fostering in a person the capabilities and skills that are the most sought-after in the labor market today (Lutsenko, 2018).…”

“…The use of the design thinking methodology as the basis for decision making in design research and practice implies inducting students into an interdisciplinary project. The scholars suggest that the "perspectives and insights arising from the collaborative, design thinking methodology are extracted, analyzed, and adapted to form a framework to illustrate the non-linear, circular structures of knowledge generation from theory (designerly knowing) to practice (design thinking) and research (design knowing)" (Chon, Sim, 2019).…”

Digital Facilitation Assistance for Collaborative, Creative Design Processes

“…They support employees to work together more efficiently for a satisfactory result [12]. One of several approaches for supporting such processes, which is used to help solving complex problems is called Design Thinking (DT) [22]. It aims at inventing new patterns, instead of analyzing them, and realizing new possibilities [28].…”