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

Wrong Priorities, Shallow Ideas: As Gestwicki and 
McNely (2012) observed “emphasizing the perspectives 
of the wrong stakeholder groups can lead a team in 
unproductive directions” (Gestwicki & McNely, 2012, p. 
25). Glen et al. (2015) pointed out that instructors need to 
intervene when teams prematurely converge on a single 
idea: “Students need to develop a healthy skepticism of 
rapid consensus, and be armed with techniques to test its 
veracity” (Glen et al., 2015, p. 189). 
Anxiety and Frustration: Glen et al. (2015) stated that 
students may experience confusion and frustration when 
engaging in design thinking projects for the first time, 
and “even those practiced in design thinking experience 
periods of frustration over the course of a project” (Glen 
et al., 2015, p. 189) The reason lies within the ambiguity 
of the process, which can turn into anxiety as the teams 
gather more information than they can make sense of. The 
authors warned that this feeling may not subside until 
patterns begin to emerge, and promising ideas take form 
as prototypes. Particularly students with a low tolerance 
for ambiguity may have difficulties embracing the design 
thinking process. Glen et al. (2015) recommended to 
strategically distribute such participants among teams.
Creative Over-Confidence: Taheri, Unterholzer, 
Hölzle, and Meinel (2016) observed that design thinking 
workshops can lead to creative over-confidence. The 
lack of critical feedback regarding the skills participants 
demonstrate, especially in short workshop settings with 
focus on productive outcomes and learning experience, 
results in a rather slow development of skill-based 
learning, especially for those who have no prior expertise 
(e.g., no prior experience with user research: “Neglecting 
the skill-based outcomes may lead to educating individuals 
with creative over-confidence, who lack the skills and 
knowledge to apply their creativity” (Taheri et al., 2016, p. 
10).