Last year I was lucky enough to be involved in Matthew Flinders Anglican College (MFAC) inaugural Design for Impact summit. This was a 2-day Design thinking immersion experience for all Year 5 students where they were set with a real challenge that impacted their local community. This year I was able to participate in the 2nd annual Design for Impact Summit and have again, seen first-hand, the benefits of teaching Design Thinking to school children, in particularly, primary school children.
Design thinking is a problem-solving process or problem identifying process. It is an iterative process that draws on creativity and innovation and focusses on the user to develop the best solutions to problems. Design thinking embraces dispositions such as empathy, collaboration, critical and creative thinking, adaptability, communicating and failing forward. Skills that are essential for our next generation of leaders to navigate future global issues. Skills that MFAC are developing in students from a young age.
In 2020, MFAC kick started a program called I-Impact, which embeds design thinking into the curriculum of all their Junior School classes. MFAC views these skills as essential to students’ education. The college recognises Design Thinking skills as transferable, scalable, and adaptable to all subject areas, year levels and areas of a child’s development and growth.
To provide an authentic experience, MFAC partnered with QUT’s Design Lab and CreatEd and challenged the Year 5 students to design and prototype the Maroochydore City Centre of 2050. The Maroochydore City Centre https://www.maroochydore-city.com.au is a real project under construction on the doorstep of where these children live. It is a place with which many of these children will interact, work in or visit as the next generation of Sunshine Coasters.
The Design for Impact Summit not only used a real project to challenge students’ thinking but engaged experts from the wider community to enhance the learning experience. Over the course of 2 days, students were lucky enough to listen to presentations from Architects, Town Planners and local Councillors. They got to work alongside peers, teachers, university lecturers and university students and a variety of experts from industry. Students’ thinking was disrupted, challenged to empathise with users and dared to think deeper about future needs. Students were empowered, as the future custodians of this precinct, to think critically and creatively about what the challenges, possibilities and solutions might look like in 2050. Over the course of the summit, students imagined, designed, prototyped and tested. They discussed, shared and redesigned. They negotiated with stakeholders, role played, worked in ministerial groups to abide by local design regulations and presented their solutions. The experience was an inspirational one for me and I’m sure one that the participants – old and young – will never forget.
As an advocate of design, I hold the strong belief that design thinking should be taught from an early age. Imagine students entering high school where empathising with others is second nature to them. Where students see failure as just their first attempt and using it to improve and solve the problem. If resilience and perseverance are the essential skills that students need, then design thinking is the way of their future. When students have the capacity and confidence to communicate with a range of people from different backgrounds, cultures or expertise; when they can value collaboration and flexibility, then we can be confident that the world’s future will be in capable hands.
