A Collaborative Development Funded project supporting academics from the universities of Manchester, Lancaster, and Leeds to explore how Design Thinking can increase collaboration capabilities, staff wellbeing and belonging, inclusion, communication, and enabling change.
We are convinced that Design thinking (DT) has huge potential to address the priorities identified in the Advance HE leadership survey: collaboration capabilities, staff wellbeing, inclusion, communication, enabling change, integrity, belonging. That said, DT isn’t a magic bullet. We have also experienced - and conceptualised - the barriers to applying DT within universities. Our project will develop, codify, and share approaches to supporting ‘ways in’ to DT. Because, while the overall principles of DT are proven and well established, many off the shelf resources are business-based and unrelated to HE. The PSF offers a vital framework to create DT methods which 'fit' to the activities, knowledge and values of HE staff.
Our process will exemplify DT, co-creating resources with our participants. They will be able to engage in workshops and online. We will make the process visible so resources will be continuously reviewed and improved through the educators’ practices shared in our collaboratory workshops and online. Moreover, we will model DT mindset and values and egalitarian leadership where everybody has a voice and agency to contribute. In doing so we hope to demonstrate the nourishing creativity and deep values of human-centred DT.
Further information can be found on the project website.
Collaborative Development Fund 2023-24
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Aims and objectives
Our aim is to make design thinking more accessible to those who work in higher education. Our vision is to model DT methodologies.
We will host three ‘collaboratories’, collaborative experimental laboratories, for experienced and ‘design-curious’ educators, which will employ co-creation, prototyping, testing, and iteration.
Outputs will be visible in online presence which will also allow asynchronous participation in our process. We will model visualisation as an enabler of collaboration, as it is a key DT competency we have identified as lacking in HE.
Project outputs
Our project outputs will articulate the processes and values of Design Thinking (DT) in the language of the PSF and provide ‘ways in’ for educators to embrace DT in a practical and pragmatic manner.
The intended audiences of the resources we produce are those engaged in reflective professional development and those who support university educators in their professional development (for example, through providing CPD), in recognition that “it is incumbent on us to nurture, develop and encourage effective leadership at all levels, across the full range of diverse talents available” (Advance HE, 2023 p.3) (The Advance HE 2023 leadership survey report). In effect, we will be acting as translators to make DT accessible to university educators.
The output will be a digital living prototype of downloadable ‘off the peg’ resources presented visually with easy-to-follow instructions that will enable educators to experiment with designed approaches to UKPSF implementation and embedding.
Project team
We are members of a global Service design in Education (SDinEd) network, co-founded by Radka Newton. The network’s vision is to support educators in developing human-centred design informed practices, including design thinking (DT). Our wealth of expertise and experience has led to a recent special issue of the International Journal of Management and Applied Research (ijmar.org) and a forthcoming anthology Human-centered design for Higher Education.
Sarah Dyer (PFHEA, NTF)
Sarah brings in-depth experience working with the UK PSF. She has led teaching on Advance HE-accredited PCAP) and contributed to a professional recognition pathway (mentor and panel member). She has previously undertaken HEA-funded work (SEP, 2014; HEA Associate, 2012-14). In leadership roles, including as inaugural Director of the Exeter Education Incubator and Manchester’s Associate Dean for T&L, she uses DT to support productive change and build enabling working environments.
Radka Newton’s (PFHEA)
Radka explores benefits of DT for continuous improvement in HE provision and student experience. She leads a university curriculum transformation theme, ‘Supporting and Developing Educators’, theme and is a founder of a university funded Centre for Scholarship and Innovation in Management Education. Radka has mentored over 100 educators across five institutions in the UK and globally in a human-centred design approach to student participation. She was an initiator of connecting two significant strategies of Innovate UK and the Design Council with the UK education sector involving over 100 educators from a variety of disciplines.
Dan Trowsdale (NTF, SFHEA)
Dan is an experienced educator and designer, is a member of the Professional Development & Recognition Oversight Group at his university. Dan’s experience in design includes 20 years as a practising product designer and working with the Business Link and Design Council as part of their design immersion activities. Dan’s scholarship focuses on collaboration in design-for-learning to support creative approaches to pedagogy and course design using visual and DT methods including, systems engineering and Lego® Serious Play®.
Iria Lopez
Iria has worked for the UK Design Council and run projects across sectors and industries (including Department for Education, local councils, community projects, health care). She has been collaborating with Leeds University for the past two years, where she has scaffolded the current design sprint process offered by the learning design agency to co-design new learning experiences with students, employers, alumni, academics and community members. Iria also initiated the Design Thinking community at Leeds, currently led by academics and professional service staff.
Tony Morgan (FHEA)
Tony teaches interdisciplinary and team-based innovation modules. He previously held senior innovation and technology roles at IBM. Tony's primary interests include design thinking, innovation and innovation management, emerging technology and student skills development. He's the author of multiple books, including Design Thinking for Student Projects.