Design Thinking

Design thinking is a single incalculable event carried out by a design team to meet up the user’s expectations and provide them with products that involve reconsidering problems and producing insightful solutions to the master model.

Evaluation

The evaluation may be defined as the organized resolution of a subject’s merit, price, and importance, utilizing a base governed by a set of standards. The chief purpose of evaluation and attaining insight into previous or subsisting initiatives, is to allow reflection and aid in recognizing upcoming changes.

The institutes globally traverse the findings after feedback, assessment, and evaluation and the perfect scheme to try these applications to the design thinking process for their educational curriculum.

The activities or gestures by oa person provides the other person with some kind of experience which is difficult to express in words. The same goes along when a person encounters new things like machinery, or an educational fair or VR- virtual reality, where he is exposed, experiences the thrill but is not able to express it in words. This may be termed implicit knowledge or implicit experience.

Design thinking thus is an ardent stimulant for involved thought and inspired action. Students apply their implicit experience in solving complex problems which are way beyond the potential to express or explain in words. Cautious organization and heedful assessment are required during the process.

Implicit Knowledge

As we understand from the word Implicit, it stands for unspoken or unexplainable. The things which are hard to express are difficult to convey. Implicit knowledge is an elemental medium for learning in the ambit of design thinking. Most of the candidates’ reserves of expertise about aesthetics, reorganization, and modeling of an object stem from previous experience and not through direct instruction. The master model or the prototype can be made through direct experience and by bringing into reality the practices learned.

Implicit learning or Tacit learning occurs naturally and unknowingly disclose their true potential and adroitness. Observations in day-to-day life, viewing documentaries, reading books and articles are the instruments of implicit or tacit knowledge. The base of implicit knowledge is expressing experiences that help the student divulge everything they know. Activities in educational institutes such as debate competitions, quiz contests, and public speaking are various ways to generate tacit knowledge. It motivates divergent thinking, which stimulates co-activation among the brain cells and helps create more such ideas and thoughts. The process of design thinking has been seen to introduce fervent thinkers and pioneers who are irrepressible, adaptable, and unstoppable. 

The renowned international institutes focus on extracurricular activities which persuade students to reach the pinnacle in the art of thinking and designing. Design thinking inspires students to admire and improvise the finished ideas, and come up with new ideas with respect to various fields. It provides students the opportunity to trespass their limits and deliver way above their potential.

Assessment and Evaluation

The design and thinking process needs some conditions in order to be fruitful, so the system of grading and evaluation must exist, which should be fair, unbiased, unprejudiced, and acceptable internationally. There are particular factors that should be taken into consideration before the Evaluation and Assessment process:

  1. i) Identifying problems: How was the scheme planned? What were the thoughts behind the planning? HowHow is it supposed to be executed? Were previous studies helpful in arriving behind the idea of the prototype? What was the success rate of such master models?
  2. ii) Solutions: Reference is the key to such kinds of products. Every new technology or product has been seen to be modified, improvised, or inspired from similar bases or types of products, so referring to notes and thesis for creating a new prototype is not new in finding solutions.

iii) Research: The design thinking team has to go through a number of researches which could take months before arriving at a specific decision. Then the analysis team does the review and finely examines the report prepared by the research team. A final audit is prepared by the research and analysis team before further proceeding.

  1. iv) Design Techniques: Which level of skills will be required, which technology, which software and applications are to be used in designing the master model? The demonstrated level of competency?
  2. v) Efficacy of solutions: knowing the capability of the solution with respect to the problem, knowing the complex processes involved in the solution, and finally, the student’s perception regarding the problem before arriving or providing a solution.

Both the evaluation and assessment are as important as the pre-project process. In design thinking, the assessment makes a lot of sense as it encourages the student to pin down problems, make a scheme, track thoughts, project shortcomings, improvise, and synthesize thinking.

In the modern world, design thinking has been encouraged globally in all the acclaimed institutes which have the sole motive of encouraging students to come up with bright ideas which help new innovations in all sectors. The design thinking enables the student to get into reality the dreams and thoughts which were developed due to tacit knowledge gained from the daily chores and experiences while traveling, studying in the institute, playing sports, and various other day-to-day activities. The design thinking has facilitated the inborn contemplation, ruminations, cogitations to come into reality with creating the prototype and finishing it to the final product. 

The design thinking process has been given in the past. It will continue to provide in the future to come with new-age scientists and innovators who would develop and innovate products that would be beneficial to mankind for all eternity. The process of evaluation and assessment, though regarded as one of the major events in the design process, has a vital role in the formation of a product. Research and analysis, which go down during the testing of a prototype, have a major role to play as it is the process that eliminates any shortcoming which may come in the final product to be launched. The testing has its role to play, which is clear that they have to get the master model tested for any error, be it mechanical, electrical, or physical depending upon the type of product. The design process may be termed a team effort that would only yield positive results when all the associated teams have carried on their work with great efficiency. 

Tacit knowledge or implicit knowledge is also gained during the formulation or creation of any product as the design process is an unpredictable monotonous affair. Challenging assumptions and reanalyzing problems need evaluation and assessment, which during the process of design has a separate team to monitor the evaluations. The assessment and evaluation are very suitable to intercept tasks and equations which are vague and not known.

Employing the process of Stanford model of design thinking with assessment and evaluation it was seen that the efficiency of the students had highly increased and kept them motivated for further new endeavors in the time to come. The design thinking process has the potential to unleash the true potential of a student and rejuvenate their commitment towards their duties fundamentally and polish their skills.