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

Designing museum exhibitions: Design thinking 
is used as a technique to optimize informal learning 
spaces for better user experience and learning outcomes. 
MacLeod, Dodd, and Duncan (2015) described the process 
of using design thinking techniques in a cross-disciplinary 
team to address specific shortcomings of an exhibition 
space: “the team was able to take each aspect of the visitor 
journey and ask questions about the uses encouraged 
by the physical spaces” (MacLeod et al., 2015, p. 330). 
Larson (2017) described the redesign of the exhibition 
galleries at the Palo Alto Art Center that leveraged design 
thinking as the methodology to create a solution for family 
engagement and interpretation.
Collaboration and service learning: Repeatedly, 
design thinking is a motor of collaboration between 
university students and local area educational 
organizations. Zuiker and Jordan (2019) describe a case 
study of design thinking to structure the collaboration 
of learning sciences classes and a zoo education 
program. Fontaine (2014) described a case study on the 
development of strategic thinking skills through the 
design of interactive museum exhibitions. In a regular 
class, students designed interactive exhibits for the Field 
Museum of Chicago. Each semester the museum’s Design 
Director presented a different exhibit theme, as well as 
the museum’s content outline, learning objectives, and 
relevant artifacts. Students designed several exhibits that 
include experiential learning components to help visitors 
learn about subtopics within the exhibit theme: “As a 
method for emphasizing design thinking, this challenge 
is well suited, since it is only possible to achieve the 
museum’s learning objectives with a focus on user needs” 
(Fontaine, 2014, p. 12). Gestwicki and McNely (2012) 
presented a case study on the design of an educational 
video game about collecting, curating, and other 
museum operations. During the fifteen-week seminar an 
interdisciplinary group of students (subject backgrounds 
included computer science, economics, music, history, 
art, psychology, theater, creative writing, animation 
and graphic design) employed practice-based research 
to design and develop an educational computer game. 
Leading the students through metacognitive exercises 
such as Sprint Retrospectives resulted in their recognizing 
the value and distinctiveness of the experience. The 
authors concluded: “Immersive learning experiences can 

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Design Thinking in Education: Perspectives, Opportunities and Challenges