Influence Education Through Design Thinking

In the book Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors discuss the idea of the power of the environment to influence behavior. In chapter titled Change the Environment, the authors share the power of “things” on the environment and behavior, and how often we miss their powerful influence because of two reasons.

First, often the most powerful elements in our environment remain invisible to us.
“Work procedures, job layouts, reporting structures, etc., don’t exactly walk up and whisper in our ear.” The environment affects much of what we do, but we often fail to notice its impact.

Second, even when we do think about it, we aren’t sure we know how it is impacting us or we may not know what to do about it.

Students spend much of their waking youth in school. 12-13 years, 180 days a year, 6 hours a day, in school. More specifically, they spend this time in their classrooms, at their desks, sitting in a chair.

I have been thinking and reading a lot about Design Thinking. In his book Change By Design, author and IDEO CEO Tim Brown says that a prerequisite for creative cultures, “…is an environment—social but also spatial—in which people know they can experiment, take risks, and explore the full range of their faculties.”

He goes on to say that, “They physical and the psychological spaces of an organization work in tandem to define that effectiveness of the people within it.”

12-13 years sitting in a chair. Do you think the type of chair students spend the majority of their youth influences behavior? It is possible that the type of chair might impact the approximately 13,000 to 14,000 hours spent sitting in it?

The pinnacle of educational design seems to be the plastic chair. Does that chair say something about our educational system?

Maybe it says, “This as good as it gets.” Or it might say, “We do what we have always done because it works.” Possibly it says, “The reliability of the past is more important than the validity of our current situation.”

But what if we allowed design thinking to create a new chair, a new system? Which would make the most positive influence on behaviors in the classroom? Which one do our students deserve to spend the majority of their waking hours as a child? What is our school environment saying about our priorities? Which would you rather spend your time in learning?

Which would you rather sit in?

Or this?

Comments

[twitter.com/rotkapchen]

Actually, design thinking suggests that we first challenge the assumption that a chair is needed at all : )

And you've taken 'design' out of context. There are all sorts of factors involved, and cost is obviously one of them.

Your suggestion is one taken by many 'designerly' types -- but is not design thinking.

[Rob Jacobs]

The fact you are talking about the chair means you missed the metaphor the chair represents. I am not actually talking about a chair, but the system the chair represents. If education is a human process, then it needs a blend of the analytical thinking and intuitive thinking that Roger Martin describes in The Design of Business. Education is a human focus endeavor, it meets a human need. The current system does not meet the needs of the humans it is intended to serve, and is shaped by constraints and a status quo that must be overcome. That is at the heart of design thinking.