Year 8 Design Thinking Award

Design Thinking is a human-centered, iterative process that designers use to tackle problems. All Year 8 students complete an Award in Design Thinking, which is accredited by EduQual and was designed with the University of Warwick and the Design Thinking consultancy company, Sprint Valley.

Workplaces increasingly require the skills of empathy, collaboration, creativity, and the ability to prototype and respond to feedback. This ground-breaking Award allows students to demonstrate these skills, which can be applied beyond the physical design process to all types of design thinking. This approach has been successfully used in organising campaigns, marketing, and charitable projects. McKinsey’s 2018 report suggests that Design Thinking is one of the most requested skills from new employees and Year 8 at Warwick School are the pioneers of the first school’s accredited course in this subject.

Aims

To encourage students to be compassionate, curious and collaborative in their thinking. To foster and hone their creativity. To develop the future-ready meta skills that pupils need for the world of work.

Impact

Learners must meet all assessment criteria to pass the unit. Pupils are assessed on a final project which tests their ability to do the following:

Understand and research the challenge

Interpret data gathered from interviews

Generate and refine ideas

Get feedback

Refine ideas based on feedback

Give a presentation on their work

Pupil Involvement

Year 8