Review Article Stefanie Panke* Design Thinking in Education: Perspectives, Opportunities and Challenges

Creating Flow / Verve: Primus and Sonnenburg 
(2018) conducted an empirical study to investigate flow 
experience at the individual and group level during a 
one-day design thinking exercise. Their findings showed 
that (a) the elements of individual and group flow 
experience were prevalent and highly correlated in the 
design thinking activities and (b) the nature of the design 
thinking task had an impact on the flow experience. 
Design Thinking also enhances the motivation to tackle 
difficult tasks and stay focused during the process. 
According to von Thienen, Royalty, and Meinel (2017), 
students experience design thinking verve when they are 
excited about their projects, work fast-paced, leave their 
comfort zones, allow for productive failure, trust the 
process, and share amazement.
Fostering Inter/Meta-disciplinary Collaboration: 
Multidisciplinary teamwork is a key requirement in 
the design thinking approach to innovation (Sonalkar, 
Mabogunje, Pai, Krishnan, & Roth, 2016). The approach 
seeks to bring together different areas of expertise and 
leverage concepts and tools sets from each domain to 
analyze, synthesize, and generate insights and new 
ideas (Melles, Howard, & Thompson-Whiteside, 2012). 

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Stefanie Panke
Functional teams are essential for design thinking’s 
effectiveness, and design thinking methods are geared 
towards reinforcing the significance of managing 
communication and emotion among team members 
(Camacho, 2018). This allows for diverse teams to function 
productively, and to break down boundaries: “One of the 
key characteristics of the project was the way in which it 
actively sought to break down boundaries between design, 
academia, and museums” (MacLeod et al., 2015, p. 338).