“The greatest scientists are artists as well.” Albert Einstein said, and in addition, many great artists are also scientists, like Leonardo Da Vinci. In exploring a new project, scientific or artistic, both sides of the brain are required, logical thinking and artistic creativity are not opposites. But prerequisites to design and manage the project you are working with, in order to get an excellent outcome. This is the foundation of how design thinking empowers learning organisations.
Design thinking empowers
However, in comparison to industrial society’s systemic thinking where the artistic part only at best was a nice view. You now have to turn the perspective to design thinking, which means that you start with the individual user experience. Since organisations that continue the systemic thinking with one-size-fits-all solutions will rather fast drown in the information flood, whatever their business is.
Learning Design Thinking
This human-centric perspective that experiences a revival in the post-industrial society that is boosted by digitization. Where machines instead of putting everything in shades of grey and try to adapt humans to one format of a product or a service. It learns to adapt it to each individual. Design thinking is basically directed on reaching a specific goal. In comparison to the systemic approach that focuses on solving an individual problem. This furthermore means that the latter is directed to fix errors within a system. While the design thinking perspective is about thinking out of the box. In order to get the user to buy and/or use what is inside the box.
Designing for Learning
As Loh Chin Ee, assistant professor in the English Language and Literature Academic Group at the National Institute of Education of Singapore writes:
“Although the term “design” may often be associated with artistic activity (for example, in the realm of fashion or furniture design), it can be more broadly viewed as engaging in activities to translate ideas into blueprints that would improve the quality of life.”
Three points are vital for the change of learning from systemic thinking of the industrial age to design thinking of our age:
1. The user/learner is the centre of the experience
2. Think outside the box to produce engagement
3. Design is not for the sake of design. The design has to be functional but at the same time plays with both the user’s rational- and emotional intelligence.
Written by
LarsGoran Bostrom©
Making use of AI in interactive books – Storyteller PublishingLab, Storyteller On Demand and Storyteller for Business
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