OWL's Position: Design Thinking in Schools

Owner: Accountable = Director of Orgazational Strategy & Learning (DOSL). Responsible = Director of Finance & Operations (DFO), with support and input from all Directors Audience: All OWL staff, partners, and stakeholders

Why Design Thinking Matters…for Schools and for OWL

At Open Way Learning, design thinking is not an occasional method or a trendy add-on. It is the backbone of how we help schools, districts, and networks move from abstract aspirations (“We want more student agency…”) to concrete changes in classrooms, schedules, policies, and community partnerships.

Our version of this work is what we call Open Design: an equity-focused, empathy-driven approach that blends the Stanford d.school design process with the open source way - transparency, inclusivity, collaboration, adaptability, and community. In practice, that means we design with students, educators, families, and community partners, not for them, and we treat every idea as something to be remixed and improved in the open.

In plain language: design thinking helps us and our partners start with empathy, name the right problems, and build small, testable solutions that can grow into sustainable systems change. It is often the starting point for deeper, more formal improvement work - such as Networked Improvement Communities (NICs) and PDSA-driven initiatives - because it surfaces what matters most to the people closest to the work.

This stance flows directly from OWL’s strategy: authentic innovation doesn’t come from chasing fads, but from building a culture where innovation is baked into a school’s DNA and powered by local talent, collective leadership, and the open exchange of ideas.

What We Mean by Design Thinking at OWL

We take our primary structural cue from the Stanford d.school’s design process - often framed as Empathize → Define → Ideate → Prototype → Test - while emphasizing that these modes are iterative and cyclical, not a rigid checklist. At OWL, we talk about design thinking as:

A human-centered, equity-minded process for understanding lived experience, framing the right problems, and co-creating iterative prototypes with the people who are most affected - out in the open.

Open Design is our specific adaptation of design thinking, influenced by partners like Duke University’s Open Design Studio and by the broader open source movement. It explicitly centers active inclusivity, transparency, and collaboration and treats every design as shared source code: visible, remixable, and improved together over time.

Every OWL design effort - whether a 90-minute lesson hack, a multi-day design sprint, or a system-level redesign - follows the same basic rhythm:

1. Empathize – Listen to and observe students, families, and educators; map what they say, think, do, and feel about current experiences.

2. Define – Turn messy insights into a clear point of view and “How Might We?” (HMW) questions that are solvable at a realistic scope.

3. Ideate – Generate multiple possibilities, including unexpected and unconventional ideas, before narrowing.

4. Prototype – Build small, tangible versions of ideas (sketches, lesson plans, schedules, new routines) that can be tried quickly.

5. Test & Learn – Try the prototype with real users, gather feedback, and refine. This often becomes the entry point into PDSA or NIC structures for sustained improvement.

Using our Open Design approach, we often group the above steps into four repeating, but non-linear moves: Understand (empathize + define), Create (ideate + prototype), Evaluate (test + iterate), and Share (reflect + connect).

In a typical OWL design sprint or asynchronous workshop, these modes show up through concrete tools - empathy maps and user journeys, needs statements, “How Might We?” prompts, divergent/convergent brainstorming, prioritization matrices, minimum viable (“skateboard”) prototypes, and simple test plans that lead naturally into PDSA cycles.

In short, we emphasize that design thinking is a living process. Teams frequently cycle back to empathy or reframe the problem as they learn more - especially when student feedback surfaces surprising realities.

Core Mindsets of OWL’s Open Design

These mindsets sit on top of OWL’s broader values - results through integrity, transparency and trust, adaptability and iteration, collaboration, collective leadership, and learning and growth - and translate them into everyday design habits. Borrowing from the Stanford d.school and our own extensive fieldwork using open design, we emphasize a small set of mindsets that are non-negotiable for OWL design work:

• Start with empathy. We begin by deeply understanding the experiences of those closest to the challenge - particularly students furthest from opportunity - and treat their perspectives as the primary data set, not an afterthought. We use tools such as empathy interviews, empathy maps (“say/think/do/feel”), and user journey maps to see patterns and pain points over time.

• Design with, not for. We co-create with educators, students, families, and community partners rather than designing solutions behind closed doors. Open Design sessions are spaces for shared inquiry and “coalitions of the willing,” not expert-only planning meetings.

• Active inclusivity. We deliberately invite voices that are often sidelined - students, paraprofessionals, front office staff, families, community partners - and design protocols (rounds, 3–2–1 jigsaws, gallery walks, “I like / I wonder / I bring”) that make it easier for everyone to participate.

• Transparency. We treat the work as visible and remixable: shared working docs, public prototypes, and open reflection. People can see how ideas evolve from messy drafts to more polished versions, and they can trace decisions back to user insights instead of guessing.

• Bias toward action & prototyping. Instead of over-planning, we help teams build small, concrete “skateboard-level” prototypes and learn quickly from real use, then grow them toward scooter → bike → car versions over time. This is our “go slow to go fast” approach: start small, learn hard, then scale with confidence.

• Show, don’t tell. We value tangible artifacts - lesson plans, student tasks, routines, schedules, prototype posters, waterline task plans - over abstract descriptions. Prototypes anchor conversation and make the invisible visible.

• Embrace experimentation & “perpetual beta.” We see every prototype as a draft. We expect learning, surprises, and intelligent failures along the way, and we build routines that normalize iteration: test, reflect, adjust, share.

• Center equity & belonging. We design for psychological safety, not just efficiency. We ask who is in the room, who isn’t, how power is showing up, and how we can redistribute voice, agency, and benefit in the design process itself.

These mindsets align with how OWL already operates across engagements: co-designed, context-specific, relationship-driven, and grounded in long-term cultural change rather than one-off events.

How Design Thinking Shows Up in OWL’s Work

Because design thinking is baked into our DNA, it shows up in nearly every type of OWL engagement:

• Design sprints & strategic planning. We use facilitated Open Design sprints - sometimes in a single day, sometimes spread over weeks - as an accessible on-ramp for learner-centered innovation. Teams move through empathy, problem definition, ideation, and prototyping around concrete challenges such as redesigning a school schedule, revamping a district mission/vision, rethinking advisory, or building a Portrait of a Graduate that actually lives in classrooms.

• Lesson & unit design (“lesson hacks”). Teachers bring existing lessons, and we guide them through a rapid design cycle to turn traditional tasks into experiential, standards-aligned learning experiences - for example, helping STEM teachers weave the science and engineering practices into daily instruction. Prototypes are built in-session so teachers walk away with usable plans, not just ideas.

• Student-facing design challenges. Students themselves use design thinking to tackle community-connected challenges - launching makerspaces across a district, designing climate resilience projects, co-creating mental health supports, or building local equity plans. Design thinking becomes both the content and the method: students learn by designing for real users.

• System & schedule redesign. When districts or networks want to reimagine structures (grading, scheduling, summer learning, alternative schools), we use Open Design to surface constraints and possibilities from diverse stakeholders before moving into more formal improvement tools like driver diagrams and NICs.

• Regional & networked initiatives. In projects like the Western North Carolina Resilience Project (WNCRP), Together We Learn (TWL), or other regional efforts, early convenings often take the form of design labs or sprints. These gatherings help teams build shared empathy maps, draft AIM statements, and generate early change ideas that later feed into improvement science structures.

In each case, the goal is the same: help teams learn by doing - through prototypes, tests, and reflection - rather than through abstract planning alone.

How Design Thinking Connects to ExL, CBE, and Improvement Science

Design thinking is one strand in OWL’s larger ecosystem of practice, tightly interwoven with:

• Experiential Learning (ExL): Design thinking helps educators design ExL experiences that are authentic, reflective, and iterative. The ExL Playbook then provides a robust framework for what powerful experiences look like across different models (PBL, place-based, profession-based, phenomenon-based, etc.).

• Competency-Based Education (CBE): When schools shift to mastery-based systems, design thinking helps them co-create competency frameworks, assessment pathways, and student-facing tools that are usable and meaningful - especially for students who have been underserved by time-based structures.

• Improvement Science & NICs: Design thinking and improvement science are complementary partners. We often use design thinking in the front-end of a change process (empathy, problem-framing, ideation, initial prototypes), then wrap successful prototypes in more formal Plan–Do–Study–Act (PDSA) cycles when teams are ready to test, spread, and scale with discipline over time.

A simple way we describe this to partners: design thinking finds and frames; improvement science tests and tunes; experiential learning brings it to life for students.

Guardrails: What Design Thinking Is Not for OWL

To keep design thinking meaningful - and avoid turning it into “sticky-note theater” - OWL holds several guardrails:

• Not one-size-fits-all. We never treat design thinking as a pre-packaged program or a one-time “innovation day.” Every design process is co-constructed to fit local context, assets, and constraints.

• Not a substitute for addressing power and equity. We don’t use design thinking to smooth over inequitable structures or silence hard truths. Instead, we ask who is in the room, who isn’t, and how we can redistribute voice, agency, and benefit in the design process itself.

• Not brainstorming without responsibility. Ideation is important, but we push teams to move ideas into prototypes, tests, and commitments. “Cool ideas” that never reach learners are not a success story for us.

• Not disconnected from learning science. Our design work is anchored in what we know about cognition, motivation, and transfer (e.g., retrieval practice, spaced practice, elaboration). Design thinking is a vehicle to embed those evidence-based strategies in real learning experiences, not a substitute for them.

• Not a marketing gimmick. We avoid superficial design sessions that showcase OWL more than they serve partners. We don’t evangelize a branded “8-step program” or lock resources behind paywalls. Instead, we prioritize open-source tools, honest scoping, and long-term cultural change over quick wins or repackaged fads.

How OWL Supports Capacity for Design Thinking

Across workshops, sprints, coaching cycles, and network convenings, OWL’s role is to build local capacity to use design thinking and Open Design long after our formal work ends. Concretely, we:

• Model the process in real time. We design every session - agenda, norms, activities - using the same Open Design process we want teams to use with students. Participants experience empathy interviews, journey mapping, “I see / I think / I wonder” routines, HMW framing, ideation, and prototyping as learners first.

• Offer open-source sprint tools for ongoing use. We share protocols, templates, and examples from our Design Sprint resources - such as empathy maps, user journey maps, needs statements, brainstorming prompts (“Tomorrow/Tough/Transformative”), affinity mapping, prioritization matrices, prototype canvases, waterline task planning, and reflection tools (Rose/Bud/Thorn) - under a Creative Commons license so teams can adapt them to their own context.

• Coach teams through early co-design cycles. We walk alongside school and district teams as they run their first design sprints or use design thinking to rework lessons, pathways, or systems. Coaching focuses on both the “moves” (what to do) and the “mindsets” (how to think).

• Connect design to data and stories. We help teams gather both quantitative measures and qualitative artifacts (student work, interviews, exhibitions) so design efforts are anchored in real evidence of impact, not just participant enthusiasm.

• Share examples across networks. When appropriate, we spotlight prototypes, stories, and tools across partner networks - so what works in one context can inspire others, while remaining adaptable rather than prescriptive.

Conclusion: Design Thinking as a Throughline, Not a Side Project

For OWL, design thinking is not a separate initiative to be slotted in "when there's time." It is a throughline that runs across our Experiential Learning work, our support for Competency-Based Education, our NIC and PDSA partnerships, and our broader commitment to open, collaborative, equity-centered school transformation.

In every setting—from a single school’s lesson hack to a multi-district resilience network—Open Design offers a practical way to start with empathy, co-design meaningful change, and learn our way forward together. Over time, that practice helps schools build the kind of culture OWL was founded to support: one where innovation is baked into the DNA of the community and every learner can see themselves as a designer of a better future.