A Platform for Teaching Design Thinking

Dr. Charles Burnette created iDeSIGN, a Design Thinking course for children. He freely shares this information on his website idesignthinking.com. The program began with a university course, Design With Kids, that placed design students in classrooms to help teachers conduct design projects related to their teaching goals.

Our podcast discussed teaching Design Thinking to both children and adults. In a recent blog post, A Teaching Resource for Design Thinking, I discussed the seven principles of Dr. Charles Burnette’s IDeSiGN.

I stands for intending
D stands for Defining.
e stands for Exploring
S stands for Suggesting
i stands for Innovating
G stands for Goal getting
N stands for kNowing

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Charles Burnette received his BA, MA and PhD degrees from the University of Pennsylvania where he was also a Research Associate doing research on the uses of information during design. A licensed, award winning architect, he became Director of the Philadelphia AIA, founding Director of the Center for Planning Design and Construction in Philadelphia, and Dean of the School of Architecture, University of Texas at Austin. He returned to teaching to become the Director of the Industrial Design Department at the University of the Arts, both while co-directing the Design Based Education K-12 Program. The graduate program was conceived and implemented to explore the design thinking model and to demonstrate its potential in a computer support system for interdisciplinary design.

Dr. Burnette has been a frequent speaker in European design schools and at the European Union’s Cumulus Program on Design Education, and is widely published on topics such as design management, design systems, ecological design and design education. He is now writing a book about the design model, its foundations in cognitive science and its application.