Design Thinking links strategy and execution to catalyze innovation. This article identifies one aspect of Design Thinking called Making Thinking Visible – a user-friendly framework to overcome issues separating people tasked to work in teams so they are able to think, make decisions and execute together. It is a strategy for giving and receiving immediate assessment and feedback.
The article is an update of one presented at AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) FutureHistory Conference, Chicago, 2004. The current version adapts emergent academic research for business.
Introduction
It was on a plane coming home from a visit to the Reggio Emilia, Italy schools for young children that I was taken by the possibilities of what might happen if the model of documentation I had just witnessed fell into the hands of design students.
This came to pass as I developed a curriculum, The Teaching and Documentation Project at California College of the Arts (CCA), San Francisco. Simply put my students documented their design and teaching of an art/design project at a site in the neighborhood.