Abstract:

Design Thinking is a process, a mindset, and a human-centered approach to creativity, innovation and collaboration that has become popular in the past two decades. This has been reflected in a global trend of adopting its methods and experiential teaching techniques at universities, private organizations and governments. While this adoption growth has been well-documented in the West, especially the US and Europe, little is known about how Design Thinking is being perceived and practiced in other regions of the world, such as Arabic-speaking countries. This paper focuses on the “Arab world”, more specifically on 22 Arabic-speaking countries. It presents the results of an online survey conducted to explore people’s understanding of Design Thinking, when and where they studied, taught, practiced or facilitated Design Thinking, and in which sectors is this approach most widely adopted. This study complements a social media analysis of people tweeting on Twitter about Design Thinking in Arabic or from the Arab regions, and it was followed up with semi-structured interviews about Design Thinking in Arabic-speaking countries. Here we report findings from the survey . Participants recruited via an open invitation on social media channels, namely Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The online survey was completed by 312 participants. As one topic of inquiry, the survey introduced four Arabic terms that were coined as potential translations of Design Thinking in the social media analysis. Overall, survey findings reveal that Design Thinking seems to be primarily practiced in the education sector in the Arab region at present. Indeed, 70% of the survey respondents who are familiar with Design Thinking are affiliated with the Education sector. Among those persons who work with Design Thinking, many do not have a long track record of working with the approach. Moreover, correlating the amount of time that people report to have spent with Design Thinking and indicators of people’s familiarity with the approach indicate that peoples' self-reported Design Thinking experience does not necessarily point to high level of Design Thinking knowledge. At least, people who work with Design Thinking in Arabic-speaking countries appear to practice approaches that are not fully coherent with approaches taught in the US and Europe. The survey also asked an open question, whether respondents would like to add anything concerning Design Thinking in their region or country. Some respondents reply that Design Thinking almost does not exist in their region, or it is still in an early stage. Other respondents advocate for more training to be offered in Arabic. Some respondents wish that Design Thinking should be included in the curricula of Arabic schools and universities more generally. Overall, findings from this survey are compared with outcomes of the social media analysis, resulting in the view of Design Thinking is still a young and sparse practice in Arab region, yet an approach from which much is still expected. This is a significant opportunity for educational institutions to develop and diversify their offerings in Design Thinking, and build on their current leadership position in driving adoption and content localization.

Keywords:

Arab countries, creativity, design thinking, education, innovation, professional training, survey, teaching.