Abstract:

Design thinking is a process for solving problems which involves consideration peoples’ needs, a focus on abductive thought and rapid prototyping. It is increasingly used to solve environmental issues and can involve students in a learning context, as well as citizens in the context of ecocitizenship development. Even if design thinking is used in sustainability education, research describing its strengths and limitations is still in its early stages. Our research shows that design thinking can be optimized for use in sustainability education, based on work done with university students and community citizens on different environmental problems, like plastic pollution, climate change and water safety.

Our findings show that design thinking promotes a broader understanding of environmental issues, while enhancing empathy towards people at the center of the process, motivating problem solvers, identifying real needs from the user’s perspective and leading to divers solutions. We also found that design thinking contributes to the mobilization of certain high level cognitive skills, such as complex problem solving, creativity, critical thought and communication, to name a few. Aside from these apparent advantages, our findings point to some challenges when applying design thinking to environmental problems. For instance, this process often requires more time, a more complex multidisciplinary approach and the application of multiple skills. Moreover, it can be restricted by limits in knowledge on the part of the problem solvers, by their often partial analysis of the problem at hand, by the emphasis placed on the human experience and by the often weak mobilization of certain key environmental skills, like prospective thinking, systems thinking and risk prediction.

To make design thinking a better suited approach to environmental education, we suggest ways to improve on this problem solving process. Such enhancement strategies include the use of various visual representations (so as to deconstruct and restructure issues), as well as the strategic mobilization of sustainable and design skills, chosen based on the complex nature of the environmental problems.

These recommendations come from our team’s findings around design thinking as applied to environmental problem solving in various settings in Canada and Morocco. For example, we worked with Moroccan women on finding solutions to flooding issues in their community. We also attempted to reduce plastics contamination of the Mediterranean Sea with another group of Moroccan women from the Al Hoceima Park. In Canada, we studied the problem of drinking water quality in Quebec City with education students from Laval University. We worked with education students to improve the quality of the environment on campus at the University of Ottawa. We also studied a drinking water contamination problem with engineering students from the Université de Moncton. In all case studied, qualitative interviews were used to better understand what the different problem solvers learned during their design thinking experiences as well as the individual and collective cognitive skills they mobilized while attempting to solve their given environmental problem. Finally, throughout most case studies, we assessed the creativity of participants’ proposed solutions and constantly compared results to recent scientific literature on environmental problem solving, innovative design and environmental competency development.

Keywords:

Design thinking, environmental education, sustainability education.