Curriculum · The Design Thinking & Entrepreneurship series
A design thinking curriculum for every classroom.
Most courses teach how to get from a problem to a solution. This book spends longer on the step before: working out what the problem really is, and what is worth asking about it. Students start with themselves, turn to other people, then to whole cultures, and only then build something.
The idea
How you look decides what you solve.
So the question comes before the build. Every module serves that one sentence.
01
Self
How do I know what I know, and where does that mislead me?
02
Other
How do I understand someone whose life isn't mine?
03
Culture
What changes when the group changes?
04
Application
Find the real problem, then build something for it.
05
Return to self
What did all this questioning change in me?
Eight modules
Eight modules. Eight questions.
| Module | The question it asks |
|---|---|
| 1 · Foundations | Why does the question come before the build? |
| 2 · Learning to Question | How do I know what I know? |
| 3 · Understanding People | Who am I designing for? |
| 4 · Execution, Part One | What is the real problem? |
| 5 · Widening the Lens | What changes when the group changes? |
| 6 · Execution, Part Two | What do we build? |
| 7 · Building for a Market | Who will choose it, and why? |
| 8 · Reason and Empathy | What did this change in me? |
Next: business design
From an idea to an MVP, then to a venture.
Once students have turned an idea into a minimum viable product, the business design chapters take it further: who pays, how it reaches people, and whether it can last. These chapters are in development.
Inside every module
The same five parts, every time.
Students always know where they are. Teachers always know what comes next.
01
Explanation
Short enough to read aloud in class, or set as reading.
02
Case study
A real story, read through three lenses: usability, human-centred design and sustainability.
03
Exercise
Paper and pen. Most fit inside a single class period.
04
Reflection
Tasks to choose from, plus the same four check-in questions at the end of every module.
05
Glossary
The module's key terms, in plain words.
The daily habit
The Question Page.
Every day, students write down three questions about anything they came across: something they saw, heard, read or wondered about. No answers required.
By the last module, they read back through it, and see for themselves how their questions changed.
For teachers
You don't need to be a design expert to teach this.
You need only to do what the book asks of your students: ask questions before giving answers.
No special room
Paper and pen
The exercises need nothing more. Any classroom works.
No extra periods
One class period
Most exercises fit inside a single lesson, so the book slots into your timetable.
Your real job
Stay alongside students
Check in often. Ask what they've noticed, what surprised them, what they'd ask next. Short conversations do more than a long correction at the end.
Case studies
Real stories, from India and the world.
- The India ReportCharles and Ray Eames, 1958. A brief that asked for a training programme, and questions that produced the National Institute of Design.Module 1
- The Average BodyCrash-test dummies built around one 'standard' body, and the question nobody asked: whose body are we testing for?Module 2
- The Jaipur FootA prosthetic foot designed for how people in India actually sit, squat, walk and work.Module 3
- Kuch Meetha Ho JaayeHow a brand read a cultural tradition precisely, and the harder questions that raises.Module 5
- GoonjRedesigning giving, from charity to dignity, and making it work at scale.Module 8
Free sample
Read Module 1: Foundations.
How we see, whose view it is, what design thinking really is, why the question comes first, and asking questions in the age of AI. With the Eames India Report case study and the first exercises.
The book
Introduction to Design Thinking and Innovation.
- SubtitleAn Entrepreneurship Curriculum for Indian High School Students
- SeriesDesign Thinking & Entrepreneurship for Indian Students
- AuthorsDr Deepak John Mathew, Jacinta Bell and Mathew Sebastian
- PublisherDIC Academic & The Institute of Human-Centred Design
- ISBN978-81-689910-4-0
- Used inHCD School, HCD Lab @ School and the school immersion at DIC Hub, IIT Hyderabad, India→
The authors
Written by people who teach it every week.
The book grew out of years of running design thinking with students, teachers and institutions at DIC Hub, IIT Hyderabad, India and HCD Institute.
Dr Deepak John Mathew
Professor, IIT Hyderabad, India · Head, Design Innovation Centre (DIC) Hub, IIT Hyderabad, India · Founding Board Member, HCD Institute
AuthorDIC Hub, IIT Hyderabad, India ↗
Jacinta Bell
Interaction designer · Researcher, DIC Hub, IIT Hyderabad, India · Fellow, The Institute of Human-Centred Design
AuthorGlossary
The words this book uses, in plain language.
Key terms from each module, defined the way students meet them. Modules 4, 6 and 7, and the business design chapters, will be added as they are written.
Module 1 · Foundations
- PerceptionThe process by which the brain interprets information from the senses, drawing on what it already knows to decide what something is.
- Blind spotThe small area in each eye's field of vision where no light is detected, which the brain fills in without our noticing. Used more broadly to mean anything we fail to see because of where we are looking from.
- PerspectiveA particular way of seeing something, shaped by a person's experiences, background and position.
- LensA way of looking that brings some things into focus and leaves others out. Everyone has lenses they did not choose.
- Personal knowledgeWhat a person knows from their own experience, practice or observation.
- Shared knowledgeWhat a group knows and has agreed on together, built over time by testing and comparing many people's personal knowledge.
- Design thinkingA method of approaching problems that prioritises understanding people and context before proposing solutions. It is not limited to any single profession.
- Systems thinkingAn approach that examines how the parts of a larger social, economic or environmental structure interact with and influence one another, rather than looking at a single problem in isolation.
- AssumptionA belief taken to be true without having been tested or checked.
- Banking model of educationPaulo Freire's term for teaching that treats students as containers to be filled with knowledge, rather than as people who can question and create it.
Module 2 · Learning to Question
- Knowledge claimAny statement in which someone asserts that they know something, or that something is true.
- Ways of knowingThe broad routes by which people come to know things, such as sense perception, reason, emotion, intuition and language.
- Sense perceptionKnowing through the senses: what we see, hear, touch, taste and smell.
- IntuitionKnowing something without being able to fully explain how, often drawing on past experience faster than conscious reasoning.
- Procedural knowledgeKnowing how to do something, as opposed to knowing that something is true. Often learned through practice and hard to put into words.
- Value judgementA statement about whether something is good or bad, better or worse, based on a set of values rather than on observation alone.
- Metaphysical statementA claim about the fundamental nature of reality, often one that cannot be tested through observation.
- Cognitive biasA tendency to favour one perspective, idea or group over another, often without realising it; the predictable mental shortcuts behind tendencies such as anchoring or survivorship bias.
- Confirmation biasThe tendency to notice, remember and believe information that supports what we already think, and to overlook what doesn't.
- EtymologyThe study of the origin of words and how their meanings have changed over time.
Module 3 · Understanding People
- User experience (UX)Everything about a person's experience of a product, service or place, from first hearing of it to long after using it.
- User researchThe study of the people you are designing for: their needs, behaviours, frustrations and context.
- EmpathyIn design, the deliberate practice of trying to understand another person's experience from their point of view.
- Informed consentA person's agreement to take part in research, given after they have understood what it involves and that they may stop at any time.
- Leading questionA question worded in a way that suggests the answer the asker wants to hear.
- PersonaA fictional character, built from real research, who represents a group of people with similar needs and behaviours.
- User journey mapA step-by-step picture of how a person goes through an experience, including what they do, think and feel at each stage.
- TouchpointAny moment where a person interacts with a product, service, place or person during their journey.
- Pain pointA moment in a person's journey where they experience frustration, difficulty or discomfort.
- Fundamental attribution errorThe tendency to explain other people's behaviour by their character, while explaining our own by our circumstances.
Module 5 · Widening the Lens
- AnthropologyThe study of human beings: how we live, believe and organise ourselves, and how this varies across time and place.
- EthnographyA research method in which a researcher studies a group by spending time among them, observing and taking part in everyday life.
- CultureThe shared, learned and constantly changing ways of living of a group of people, including habits, values, language, rituals and ideas of what is normal.
- Participant observationObserving a community's life while also taking part in it, to understand it from the inside.
- EmicAn insider's view: how members of a culture understand and explain their own practices.
- EticAn outsider's view: how someone outside a culture describes it, often using categories from elsewhere.
- Thick descriptionA description that records not only what happened but what it meant to the people involved, in its context.
- EthnocentrismJudging another culture by the standards of your own, and assuming your own ways are the natural or correct ones.
- Cultural relativismThe practice of trying to understand a culture's practices within their own context before judging them.
- Back-translationTranslating a question into another language and then, separately, back again, to check that its meaning hasn't changed.
Module 8 · Reason and Empathy
- ReasonThe ability to think through ideas step by step, give reasons for beliefs, and evaluate the reasons others give.
- Myside biasThe tendency to look for and favour reasons that support our own views, while being far more critical of reasons that support other people's.
- Argumentative theory of reasoningThe idea, proposed by Mercier and Sperber, that human reasoning evolved mainly to produce and evaluate arguments in social settings, rather than to find truth alone.
- Identifiable victim effectThe tendency to respond more strongly to a single, identifiable person in need than to a larger number of people described as a statistic.
- Rational compassionPaul Bloom's term for caring about others while using careful reasoning to decide how best to help them.
- Intellectual humilityRecognising the limits of your own knowledge and perspective, and staying open to the possibility that you are wrong.
- DignityA person's sense of their own worth, and the respect they are owed by others.
- CuriosityThe desire to ask, learn and understand, especially before assuming the answer is already known.
- ConvictionA firmly held belief that can be explained clearly and honestly, and defended from more than one direction.
Research behind it
Every classroom teaches us something.
The book keeps changing. What happens in classrooms goes straight into the next draft.
Study
Measuring what changes
Students write ten questions about one object in Module 1, and again in Module 8. The difference is the book's own before-and-after. Any data is collected only with consent.
Feedback loop
Learning from every cohort
Each cohort shapes the next draft. Earlier cohorts asked for more guidance through the process and more work between teams, so both are now built in.
Strategy
Towards an innovation curriculum for every school
What we learn feeds a shared approach to teaching design thinking and innovation, in the UAE, India and beyond.
FAQ
What schools ask us.
What makes this book different?
Is it only for students who want to study design?
Does it fit UAE schools?
Do our teachers need training?
Do we need a lab?
What about business and entrepreneurship?
Can we see it first?
Adopt the book