Dave Whittington (dave.whittington@royalroads.ca) is an Associate Faculty member in the School of Leadership Studies and the School of Business at Royal Roads University, Victoria BC Canada.

Rationale

Design thinking has come of age (Kolko, 2015) and is now widely adopted in many organizations. Students of leadership need to understand what it is and how they might use it to effectively design solutions to complex challenges. This chapter explains how design thinking is introduced to students in a leadership program at Royal Roads University (RRU) using a fast-paced, hands-on, design sprint. The use of a sprint allows the students to experience a complete design exercise in a very short time.

The capstone project in RRU’s MA Leadership program (RRU, n.d.) provides an opportunity for students to lead a project that engages participants in co-creating a positive change in their organization. In preparation for this project students are introduced to a range of action-oriented research approaches and methods. Design thinking is one such approach and this chapter describes an activity that introduces students to the principles and practices of this approach. There is an emerging body of literature (Brown, 2009; Martin, 2009) that supports the use of design thinking as an approach to leading change and collaboratively designing solutions to complex organizational problems. Through experiential learning, students see how a design thinking approach and methods can be used to facilitate a structured process where research participants collaboratively explore a challenge they are facing and then co-create solutions to that challenge.

Overview

I believe that the best way to teach design thinking is to engage students in a real design thinking exercise. There are many ways to conduct design thinking (Dell’Era, 2020). I am working with students and conducting a design thinking activity for the purpose of education. For these reasons I used a “sprint” which involves rapidly working through a complete design exercise in a short amount of time, and I used “participatory design” where the participants in the process take on the dual role of designers and end users.

There are now two versions of this workshop: the original design, which has been facilitated in a traditional classroom setting around ten times since 2016, and a virtual design that has been facilitated three times during the COVID-19 pandemic when the residential portion of the MA Leadership program was delivered fully online, in real time.

Table 1

Sample Schedule for Classroom Workshop (90 minutes, between 36 and 48 students)

Table 2

Sample Schedule for Online Workshop (Two Hours, plus a 15-minute break, between 21 and 48 students)

Reflection

When I first began introducing design thinking to students I used the Wallet Exercise that had been developed and published by the d.school at Stanford University (Kelley, 2019). The pace of the exercise was great but designing a wallet for a partner was a long way from the type of the challenge these students would be addressing in their capstone projects. I needed a new design challenge, one that was relevant to the students concerned and more like the challenges they would be facing in their capstone projects. In consultation with colleagues and using the “How might way …” approach (Berger, 2012), I introduced a design exercise that explored “How might we, the students in this cohort, support one another as we each work on our capstone projects?” It was a big success. The students had fun, they experienced a design exercise, they put into practice some of the ideas they came up with (although this was not the initial intention) and some of the students went on to use a design approach in their own capstone projects.

Adjustments have been made over time and the workshop continues to evolve. The most recent version experimented with the use of Mural ^[1]. The design challenges we have used has changed over time:

• How might we, the students in this cohort, support one another as we each work on our capstone projects?
• How might we, the students in this MA Leadership cohort, take action – individually, within our organizations, and collaboratively – to transform the unsustainable practices and ways of being that have led to climate change?
• How might we, the students in this cohort, individually and collectively contribute to the emergence of compassionate, eco-centric leadership in times of crisis?
• How might we, the students in this cohort, individually and collectively contribute to the emergence of compassionate, eco-centric leadership in the Canadian health system?
• How might we, the students in this cohort, make sense of and engage in ReconciliAction through our leadership?

For the COVID-19 pandemic, the workshop was delivered in an online format. To accommodate this, the workshop was extended from 90 minutes to two hours, and a 15-minute break was added. Feedback from the students suggests the online workshop was still impactful, but there have been fewer comments related to the engagement and energy generated. In every cohort that has been introduced to design thinking there have always been some students who have integrated this approach into their capstone projects.

References

Berger, W. (2012). The secret phrase top innovators use. Harvard Business Review.  https://hbr.org/2012/09/the-secret-phrase-top-innovato/

Brown, T. (2009). Change by design: How design thinking transforms organizations and inspires innovation. HarperCollins.

Dell’Era, C.,  Magistretti, S.,  Cautela, C.,  Verganti, R., & Zurlo, F. (2020). Four kinds of design thinking: From ideating to making, engaging, and criticizing. Creativity and Innovation Management. 29. 324– 344. https://doi.org/10.1111/caim.12353

Kelley, T. (2019). The Wallet Exercise. https://www.ideo.com/blog/build-your-creative-confidence-the-wallet-exercise

Kolko, J. (2015). Design thinking comes of age. Harvard Business Review, 93(9), 66-71.

Lipmanowicz, H., & McCandless, K. (2013). The surprising power of liberating structures. Liberating Structures Press. Also see http://www.liberatingstructures.com/

Martin, R. (2009). The design of business: Why design thinking is the next competitive advantage. Harvard Business School Press.

RRU (n.d.). MA Leadership program and Royal Roads University. https://www.royalroads.ca/programs/master-arts-leadership?tab=overview

Acknowledgements

This work would not have been possible without the support of my fellow teachers in RRU’s School of Leadership Studies, the amazing support staff who take care of the details so efficiently, and the formal leaders within the school who continue to model caring, courage, and creativity.

Appendix 1 – List of Prototyping Supplies

Tools – just need to be purchased once

• Scissors – at least 2 per table
• Little staplers (with extra staples) – at least 2 per table (these work much better than glue sticks)
• Rulers

Supplies – will need to be replenished

• Coloured craft paper in a range of sizes and colours
• Cardboard – assorted index cards as well as corrugated cardboard shapes from the craft supplies store
• Origami squares – assorted
• Pipe cleaners – assorted colours
• Lollipop/popsicle sticks
• Aluminium foil – for molding into shapes, it’s much cleaner than clay!
• Toothpicks
• Sticky tape, small rolls – at least 2 per table
• Felt/foam shapes
• Duct tape
• Sharpies – assorted
• String/yarn – assorted
• Ribbon – assorted colours
• Stickers – coloured dots, stars, rectangular labels, letters and numbers
• Post it notes – assorted
• Rubber bands
• Paper clips

The list above is based on experience and documentation from Stanford’s d.school.