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

Summary: Table 1 summarizes the findings in 
an alphabetic overview of different design thinking 
processes, methods and tools that were identified in the 
literature review. 
4.4 R4: What are the limitations of design 
thinking?
What are the limitations of using design thinking in 
education? What potential negative outcomes should 
educators anticipate? One of the most surprising results of 
this literature review is how seldom design thinking case 
studies report negative outcomes, failures or unintended 
consequences. However, it seems to go without question 
that design thinking cannot be a magical fix that 
works for anything, anyone and in any context. As von 
Thienen et al. (2014) described it: “If design thinking is a 
means to solve problems – what problems is it good for? 
Obviously, it is not made to help physicists compute precise 
mathematical solutions” (von Thienen et al., 2014, p. 97). 
Clearly, there are both limitations to the applicability of 
design thinking, and challenges that can lead to (partial) 
failure of the overall approach or specific methods. This 
section presents obstacles and potential problems. 
Lack of Creative Confidence or Mastery: Ohly, 
Plückthun, and Kissel (2017) evaluated a university course 
that was developed based on design thinking principles. 
Their evaluation results revealed that although the 
course aimed at nurturing creative confidence, it was not 
effective in enhancing students’ creative self-efficacy. “We 
were inspired to be creative, but in the end most ideas were 
not really innovative”, as one participant commented. 
Valentim, Silva, and Conte (2017) conducted a qualitative 
observation study with 17 postgraduate students in 
the context of mobile applications design. They used 
grounded theory coding for analyzing the data. Based on 
their observation data, they identified several difficulties 
for participants, i.e., understanding the purpose of 
the design thinking activities, thinking creatively, and 
producing project results in a fairly short time frame.