Generating Ideas: Bringing Design Thinking Best Practices into Instructional Design
For the past few months, I have been reflecting on how, as Instructional Designers, we can apply Design Thinking practices to support our work.
For those needing a refresher, Design Thinking facilitates human-centered design, meaning designers design to address the core needs of the individuals they are creating for.
There are five stages of the Design Thinking Process:
Stage 1: Empathize (i.e., uncover your users' needs through research)
Stage 2: Define (i.e., identify users' needs and problems)
Stage 3: Ideate (i.e., brainstorm potential solutions)
Stage 4: Prototype (i.e., bring a possible solution to life)
Stage 5: Test (i.e., test your solution to uncover what works and what doesn't before eventually launching the product or service)
Previously, I have written about how we can incorporate the empathize and define stages of the Design Thinking Process into Instructional Design. Now, let's turn our attention to the ideate stage.
Ideation
By the third stage of the Design Thinking Process, you will have discovered your user group's pain points and needs and defined your user group's problems that you will endeavor to solve. With a problem statement or question in hand, you can now figure out how you plan to tackle the challenge. This is where ideation comes into play.
For example, let's say that – during stage two – we came up with the following "How Might We?" statement: "How might we create a community in asynchronous courses?". During stage 3, we will begin developing an idea for how we may address this question.
During this third phase, you want to begin by thinking divergently – leaving hesitation at the door and coming up with as many ideas for addressing the problem as possible. No idea is off-limits.
Once you believe you've generated a sufficient number of ideas that you can begin assessing to determine which is the best fit to address your problem, you begin to utilize convergent thinking.
Tools to Support Ideation
Various tools can be used during the divergent and convergent thinking stages. I have previously written posts about each. Take some time to read these posts to learn more about what these tools are and how they can be applied to Instructional Design:
- Using Divergent Thinking to Generate Ideas for Instructional Design
- Using Convergent Thinking to Assess and Refine Ideas for Instructional Design
When Does Stage 3 End?
Ultimately, you will know you've reached the end of the ideation phase of the Design Thinking Process when you are confident you've arrived at a potential solution to your issue.
What strategies do you use to help you come up with ideas to tackle Instructional Design-related problems? Please share your experiences in the comments - I'd love to hear from you!
Source of images:
- Photo by Yan Krukau from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/happy-colleagues-working-together-7793730/
- Photo by fauxels from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/women-standing-beside-corkboard-3184296/