The Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at the University of Cape Town hosted yet another creatively charged Design Thinking Dash on 10 May 2023. The design thinking blitz is a highly concentrated version of the d-school Afrika’s full design thinking courses.
Aiming to introduce design thinking methodology in a fun, fast-paced, hands-on workshop, the Design Thinking Dash guides participants through the key stages of the design thinking process, including empathising with users, defining the problem, ideating potential solutions, prototyping and testing. Makaziwe Radebe, a fine arts student, said of the programme: “I gained consciousness of being mindful of other’s inputs, which links to the mindset of being human-centred.”
During the Design Thinking Dash, participants worked in small teams to apply design thinking methodology to a real-world problem. In this case, the task was to create a student management tool, which is a system that allows students to mitigate challenges that they encounter in their academic careers. Reflecting on the lived value of the process, Evan Robinson, a coach at the d-school said that “design thinking means questioning your mindset and thinking with tangible things.” He explained that this means using objects to find solutions, these can be Lego pieces, building blocks etc – anything that aids in developing a prototype for a solution. Later, Evans advised students to not be afraid to start with something awful, but continuously test it.
This intense, condensed programme is, by design, highly interactive and deliberately pressurised, forcing participants to work together without hesitation, and to prioritise action and movement over careful deliberation – offering a dose of what it's like to work in a design thinking team. Shaakira Davood, an environmental sciences student, mentioned that she appreciated that the “design thinking process is applicable to any life situation and that it is adaptable.”
During the activities the participants were surprised to see Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis pop in for a visit. Mr Hill-Lewis had been touring the newly built three-storey d-school sustainable building and was privy to part the workshop. Observing the students ideating in action, he commented, “If you are not thinking with the person you are trying to serve in mind, first and foremost, and what their experience of the service or product is, then you are planning to fail. The more people that we can get to understand design thinking, the more impact we can have in the world.”
Jessica Ilunga will accept the title of “urbanist”, albeit reluctantly. Speak to her for only a few minutes and you’ll understand why – the term doesn’t capture her professional ambitions nor the heart with which she’s pursuing them. Soft-spoken, she’s nevertheless a vocal champion of better, more just urban spaces – spaces that incorporate the disenfranchised and tell a more complete story of the people and histories that made them.
Jessica is a qualified civil engineer and city planner, but her path hasn’t been straightforward. Born in a small town in Tokyo, Japan, where her family had moved to support her father’s studies in the country, these early years set the scene for a layered life story.
After spending her formative years in Japan, Jessica and her family returned to their native Democratic Republic of Congo. The return was short-lived, however, as the ongoing civil war prompted her parents to explore a more stable life in post-apartheid South Africa. By ten years’ old, she had lived in three vastly different countries and had fragments of Japanese, French and English swirling in her head.
It was through an English lesson activity in primary school, where each learner had to write their autobiography, that her unusual start to life began to make sense to Jessica – simultaneously igniting within her a passion for writing and storytelling. “When I came to South Africa and had this long period of stability in my education, I found the most comfort in writing and storytelling,” she said. “I was obsessed with English, not so much the language but the storytelling aspect. I think that marked the ways in which I connected my different experiences.”
Seemingly paving the way for tertiary studies in language or creative writing, Jessica’s parents encouraged her to take a more financially secure route and study engineering instead. Jessica tried to make it work but felt stuck. She spent her first two years at the University of Cape Town (UCT) agonising about changing degrees, but unclear about the alternatives. In her third year, thanks to her Social Infrastructure Engineering elective, Jessica’s perspective began to shift, and her mind was opened to the potential of an adjacent academic path.
“The course asked us to reflect on what we think about human-centred engineering designs, to think about and interrogate what community means and the people who are going to be impacted by our engineering… It asked us to interrogate power and privilege,” she said. “Because in engineering, we were told ‘We are the gods of Earth’... then here’s this social infrastructure course that’s asking, ‘But who are you to do this? And how does it impact other people?’”
So transformative was her experience that Jessica completed her studies with a new-found desire to reimagine engineering curricula. She wanted to overhaul the system and started by volunteering to tutor for the course.
Shortly after, during her Master’s studies in City and Regional Planning as a recipient of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation (MRF) scholarship, Jessica had her next definitive experience: an encounter with design thinking.
While planning her first solo trip to Japan, and overwhelmed by its significance, Jessica’s partner, an alumnus of Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at UCT, applied the design thinking process to help Jessica curate her itinerary. She was impressed – struck by how he guided her through defining a problem statement that captured her precise anxieties, marking the beginning of her colourful journey with the approach.
She describes her experience with the d-school Afrika’s Foundation Programme in Design Thinking as intensive but life-changing. The course introduced her to the key mindsets, values and problem-solving techniques of design thinking that changed how she viewed challenges in her work and life. Enrolling in the Foundation Programme mid-master’s enabled Jessica to enrich her studies and her involvement in UCT’s Global Citizenship Programme (where she was the course convenor), all while interning at MRF.
During her internship, she designed and co-facilitated MRF’s Second Year Leadership Development Programme using design thinking. She made such an impression that the foundation asked her to come on board as a programme design consultant where she could explore social justice education more intently.
A research fellow at Meiji University and currently pursuing a PhD in Engineering specialising in Urban Design through Keio University, Jessica’s résumé speaks to her nimble mind and unflagging drive. But what stands out is her ambition to give other students positive, empowered academic experiences all while applying an empathetic, community-centric, design-thinking-inspired approach to urban design and planning.
As a storyteller-urbanist, Jessica hopes to positively influence the future of others and those that continue to be designed – all in the pursuit of spatial equity.
The Africa Tech4Democracy Venture Day, a competition for startups developing technologies that reinforce democratic principles and values, was held on March 7 at the HPI d-school building at the University of Cape Town’s middle campus. Tech4Democracy is an IE University initiative in partnership with the U.S. Department of State and with the strategic support of Microsoft.
Trustur, from FloodGates Limited (Ghana), received the award for the best democracy-affirming startup in the continent. Trustur provides users with a verifiable and secure digital identity and promotes inclusion by simplifying access to government and other services. The other four finalists that pitched their innovations were Deaftouch (South Africa), Legal Standpoint (South Africa), Ongea na Demokrasia (Tanzania) and Uamuzi Foundation (Kenya). All finalists will receive up to 150,000 USD in Microsoft cloud credits, free productivity software and GitHub Enterprise access and mentoring from business and technical experts.
Trustur, from FloodGates Limited (Ghana), was crowned best Democracy-Affirming Startup in Africa at the Tech4Democracy Africa.
Trustur secured a spot in the Tech4Democracy Global Final that will take place in Washington, D.C., during President Biden’s Summit for Democracy at the end of March, where all the winners of the five continental Venture Days (Europe, South America, North America, Asia-Pacific and Africa) will compete for a monetary prize.
The jury was composed of a diverse group of experts from the entrepreneurship, academic and corporate sectors in Africa, namely: Andrew Bailey, Senior Manager: Innovation, University of Cape Town; Buntu Majaja, CEO, SA Innovation Summit; Zanyiwe Nthatisi-Asare, CEO, Digitally Legal; Richard Perez, Founding Director, Hasso Plattner School of Design Thinking Afrika, University of Cape Town; Vanessa Ramanjam, Program Manager, Solutions Space, Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town; and Dikatso Sephoti, entrepreneurship consultant.
During the event, Irene Blázquez, Director of the Center for the Governance of Change at IE University, stressed that “it is crucial to illustrate a democratic and liberal vision of technological development that upholds the values that explain us as a society.”
Richard Perez, Founding Director of the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at the University of Cape Town, stated: “It was a great honour to have played a role in this important initiative and to acknowledge our continent’s innovations. Design-led thinking and human-centred design, with its emphasis on empathy and collaboration alongside creativity and rigour, offers the world a tried and tested framework to work on the complex challenges and problems that we face.”
U.S. Consul General Todd Haskell shared that “the United States has made significant commitments to ensure technologies work for, not against, democracies. That is why the United States is working to expand access to technology that fills gaps and helps citizens, activists, lawyers and judges to work together to continue to build their democracies and hold their institutions accountable.”
The event also included Microsoft’s Digital Advisor Khaliq Dollie and a keynote address on how technology can reinforce democratic values by technology entrepreneur Melvyn Lubega, founder of the first South African unicorn.
In a post-pandemic context, with countless definitions of the ‘Future of Work’ bombarding students – and adding to their growing angst around future employability – it becomes difficult for graduates to discern which skills to pay attention to and develop further.
In its Future of Jobs Report, the World Economic Forum lists attributes like “analytical thinking and innovation,” “complex problem-solving,” and “creativity, originality and initiative” amongst its top 10 professional skills required by 2025.
Design thinking as an academic offering nurtures these essential skills from the outset of its programmes and courses, such as those offered by the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at UCT.
“With design thinking being an approach to complex problem-solving, rooted in human needs analysis and understanding, as well as applied through collaborative creativity, incorporating design thinking exposure into a graduate’s skills arsenal can only be beneficial,” says Lucille Roberts, Head of Programmes at the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at UCT.
Lucille continues, “Design thinking can also enhance a graduate’s ability to navigate uncertainty, thereby further strengthening their competitive advantage in a crowded job market.”
Putting people and context at the centre
Recognising people – including their needs, contextual constraints and parameters, aspirations and preferences – is at the core of design thinking. Therefore, this human-centricity, underpinned by empathy, is the determining criteria for a given design thinking solution’s suitability or efficacy.
Consequently, this further solidifies design thinking as a top consideration for further skills development, with human-centred skills such as “leadership and social influence” also listed on the World Economic Forum’s top-10 skills.
“Our courses are designed to build communication and collaboration skills in diverse team settings,” says Lucille. “In this context, diversity isn’t narrowed down to only consider cultural and disciplinary diversity, but also actively seeks out neuro- and contextual diversity in the team makeup to further inform and enrich the solutions teams might propose as part of the design thinking process.”
As the philosophy underpinning design thinking clearly states, diversity in every spectrum - from race, culture, world view and perspective to skills, experience and insights - is vital for addressing the complex challenges faced by contemporary society.
Collaboration in diverse, multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary teams is a characteristic of design thinking in action.
Responsiveness to context - the ability to deeply connect with local realities and appreciate local knowledge and systems - is necessary to develop appropriate and effective solutions.
Building creative confidence towards personal mastery
Listed fourth on the World Economic Forum list, “Creativity, originality and initiative” is another key skill to be nurtured amongst graduates entering the workforce. Building creative confidence is central to what schools like the Hass Plattner d-school Afrika do and nurture in the students that enrol for their programmes.
The fast pace of scientific and digital progress, combined with socio-political and economic uncertainty, requires a mindset that can imagine the future to create solutions that are not only based on data and certainty.
In the case of business, design thinking’s relevance has been noted across sectors and in a range of contexts. For example, according to McKinsey & Company, design thinking “can deliver a compelling end product and be disruptive enough to transform a company’s culture.
“The methodology is based on the insight that optimising individual touchpoints is insufficient to deliver a truly satisfactory overall journey—what is required is an end-to-end redesign. It is also informed by the understanding that consumers today do not separate products or services from the experience of buying and owning them. As a result, the entire “package” needs to be carefully designed.”
Starting the design-led journey
Design Thinking is more than a process or method used to solve a set of challenges. It's a mindset, a way of thinking that can be applied over again to new challenges in any setting. Design thinkers learn how to see real-world problems and use tools and techniques in a way that leads to innovative solutions no matter what their location or context.
The Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika's Foundation Programme in Design Thinking offers students a deep dive into the Design-led thinking mindset. According to Richard Perez, founding director of the d-school Afrika, "Students gain life-long skills for the future world of work and increase their likelihood of employment as we enable them to create human-centred solutions to real-world problems."
During this course, students will be introduced to working in culturally and cognitively diverse teams from various disciplines, discovering innovative digital learning tools, and building creative confidence.
Join the class of 2023. Apply for the Foundation Programme in Design Thinking today: https://dschoolafrika.org/learn-design-thinking/academic-student-courses/foundation-programme-in-design-thinking/
Africa's first d.confestival - a design thinking conference-meets-festival hosted by the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at UCT in October - brought together a boisterous mix of change-makers from business, government, education, and social development to celebrate the success of design thinking globally and explore its potential for dialling up Africa's creative potential to solve complex problems across the continent.
For George Kembel, entrepreneur, educator, investor, and co-founder of the Stanford d-school in the US, design thinking has almost nothing to do with thinking as we know it. “If you look into them,” he says, “most of the design thinking practices are invitations to a different way of being, a more embodied way of being — helping us to feel another person, to use our emotional intelligence to understand the needs that really matter.” For him, design thinking seeks mostly to harness empathy.
Kembel was a keynote speaker at this year’s d.confestival, held in October at the new HPI d-school building at UCT’s middle campus, one of the greenest academic buildings in Africa.
Hosted by the d-school Afrika and the Global Design Thinking Alliance (GDTA), the conference-meets-festival hybrid event celebrated design thinking’s global successes while exploring its potential application in Africa. A major focus was on design thinking’s ability to deliver value in an uncertain, volatile future. Will its experimental, iterative, creative, and empathetic nature still work for complex problem-solving in the complex world of tomorrow?
For some, design thinking’s potential, at least for Africa, lies in its spirit of empathy, which it shares with the African philosophy of ubuntu.
“Ubuntu offers design thinking a complementary lens for looking at teamwork and collaborative, participatory processes,” says transdisciplinary industrial designer, educator, researcher, and consultant Mugendi M’Rithaa who also spoke at the conference. “By its very nature, ubuntu seeks to build consensus.”
For Hoda Mostafa, Center for Learning and Teaching Director at the American University in Cairo, who hosted a session called Creative Problem Solving and Innovation in Cross-Cultural Contexts, design thinking is authentic and familiar to people in Africa. “It’s reflected in how we tell stories, invite conversation, and work together as communities.”
A first-of-its-kind event, the d-convestival married the rigour of an academic conference with the boisterous, interactive experience of a cultural festival, giving international innovators, design thinkers, and change-makers from business, government, education, and social development a novel opportunity to try out the design thinking approach within an African context.
The d-school was officially opened at a gala reception on Thursday, 13 October, with the unveiling of the plaque ceremony for the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika building. In attendance were d-school founder, Prof Dr Hasso Plattner, UCT Vice-Chancellor Prof Mamokgethi Phakeng, Director of the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at UCT Richard Perez, and Andreas Peschke, German Ambassador to South Africa. Once the formalities were concluded, guests took to the dance floor to celebrate well into the night in the company of house trio Mi Casa, and DJ Rene The Frenchman.
“I am convinced that design thinking is the best mindset and toolset for solving complex problems,” says Uli Weinberg, GDTA president and director of the School of Design Thinking at the Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam. “Its implications for Africa are staggering, for designing what really matters on the continent.”
“It’s all about the students,” says Prof Dr Hasso Plattner. “Whether they come from Cameroon, Nigeria or the suburbs of Cape Town, it doesn’t matter. The idea is that we can educate them to trust themselves that they can innovate.”
Ralitsa Diana Debrah, design educator and researcher at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana, believes that design thinking, once taken into African communities, will unlock local creative resources. “Once we shift this tool into local communities,” she says, “it will give us the chance to actually address local problems using untapped indigenous knowledge systems, a strength within the African context.”
This is one of many strengths Paul Steenkamp, founder and chief executive officer of Jack Frost, a problem-solving consultancy, says can now be amplified and built upon with design thinking. “There is this opportunity to consolidate and acknowledge all that makes us African,” he says, “and channel it into solving our greatest problems.”
Director of the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at UCT, Richard Perez, says that design thinking is incredibly effective and has significant potential to be scaled up in Africa precisely because it feels familiar.
“And that is key if we on the continent want to respond to the challenges we face locally and globally by unlocking our collective creative potential by using this ubuntu-like approach,” he says. “It seems only natural.”
The d-school Afrika is a member of the GDTA, an alliance of 22 educational institutions dedicated to teaching, researching, and developing the methods and mindsets of design thinking. UCT is also one of only three institutions in the world to have design schools. The other two are Stanford University in the United States and Potsdam University in Germany.
Day three of the d.confestival started with the clicks, claps and stamps of a storm, even though the sun was shining in Cape Town. Participants engaged with each other through a cultural connection led by creativity facilitator Colin Skelton, where the crowd moved as one, mimicking the sounds and patterns of rainfall and thunder. This non-verbal communication and collaboration were exemplary of the day, as designers, entrepreneurs and practitioners sought to learn from and with each other.
George Kembel, co-founder and executive director of Stanford’s d.school, started the day’s learning journey through a discussion on the ‘move to mastery’. Inspired by the passing of the torch in Buddhism from one Dalai Lama to the next, Kembel shone a light on what it means to surrender to a deeper understanding of the world, and our connections with each other, beyond our thinking minds:
“Our unconscious, emotional mind has so much more horsepower than our rational conscious mind. We just haven’t grasped how to harness that power yet.”
He went on to describe our inner workings as being like a weather system, with its own patterns and energy, which we don’t fully understand nor know how to predict. It drew attention back to the collaborative pitter-patter of rain that started the day as participants connected on a level beyond the rational.
This emotional connection was most evident through the afternoon’s World Café exploration, replicating and reimagining the power of spontaneous conversation of informal coffee shop chat. Participants shared stories and insights in the name of the biggest challenges and opportunities of teaching and learning in design thinking across corporate business, youth entrepreneurship, social development and the public sector.
These insights were synthesised into a meaningful and practical platform of words and actions to be taken up by all after the d.confestival ended. Hoda Mostafa, Director at the Center for Learning and Teaching at the American University in Cairo, and a key contributor on the day crystalised the importance of this sentiment, marking the true junction of Afrika’s design thinking story:
“This won’t be the end of the conversation; it is just the beginning, and hopefully, we can take this forward to change Afrika for the better.”
UCT Vice-Chancellor, Mamokgethi Phakeng, grabbed this torch and continued the ambition of everyone in the room, as well as those attending online, highlighting the power and value of what was discussed, shared and felt over the three days:
“The underlying objective of design thinking is to change the world. We have to embrace this through understanding our relationship with our environment.”
It was a challenge, and an invitation, for all to take on, symbolizing why design thinking matters now.
Watch the highlights of the three days below:
The second day of the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika's d.confestival kicked off with even more energy and vibrance. The day's discussions delved even deeper into some of the complex challenges society and businesses face today while celebrating the role design thinking plays in these arenas.
Interrogating what leadership design could look like for the future
The first keynote dialogue included JP Morgan's Sam Yen, HR executive and business coach, Jeanett Modise, and Jack Frost-founder Paul Steenkamp, discussing 'New leadership mindsets that enable creativity, innovation and motivation in a life-centred world of work'.
"In our current business leadership structures, line managers are the toughest nut to crack," observed Paul Steenkamp. "In practice, this business community is the most influential, and their buy-in is imperative in getting things done in new, more innovative ways."
Ubuntu inspired leadership
In the following panel discussion, 'I am because we are: Charting an Ubuntu-inspired roadmap for inclusive, responsible design leadership', Ulrich Meyer-Höllings facilitated a diverse panel of leaders examining the case for non-hierarchical leadership models with the Afrikan philosophy at its core.
"Ubuntu offers design thinking a complimentary lens on how to look at teamwork, collaborative and participatory processes," says panellist and Transdisciplinary Industrial Designer, Educator, and Researcher Mugendi M'rithaa. He further proposed a revised version of the Ubuntu philosophy's definition for the business and societal context as: "I participate; therefore, I am."
Seeing design-thinking in action
Speakers delved deeper into the discipline's various real-world applications in the four parallel sessions themed Design Thinking in Practice. In one of the sessions, practitioner Colin Skelton unpacked how the human body could be used as a design tool. "Our bodies are domains of learning," says Skelton. "Through design thinking, we're able to celebrate the body as a mobile laboratory."
As these sessions concluded, delegates were taken on d.safari tours to various destinations in and around Cape Town, including Montebello, the V & A Waterfront and Mitchell's Plain, to immerse themselves in ongoing innovation projects with design thinking at their core.
An opening night to remember
The day ended on a high note with the official opening and unveiling of the plaque ceremony for the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika building with Prof Dr Hasso Plattner, UCT Vice-Chancellor Prof Mamokgethi Phakeng, Director of the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at UCT Richard Perez, and Andreas Peschke, German Ambassador to South Africa.
"This is all about and for the students," says Prof Dr Hasso Plattner. "This institution has the potential to become a lighthouse of creative thinking on the African continent", says Andreas Peschke.
Guests took to the dance floor into the night with sounds from house trio Mi Casa, and DJ Rene The Frenchman.
The final day will look at Teaching, and Learning Design Thinking in Afrika and weave insights from World Café-style sessions and conclude with a call to action beyond the d.confestival.
The Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika opened the doors to its new home on the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) middle campus with the launch of the d.confestival on 12 October. This three-day conference-meets-festival, themed “Design thinking matters now!”, is the first of its kind on the African continent", and is accessible to participants streaming virtually, together with live delegates and contributors coming from as far as Germany, Egypt, Kenya, Brazil and Ghana, to name a few.
The event kicked off on a high and musical note, with a “Creative Connection” session facilitated by Peter Schaupp and the Boomwhackers Orchestra. This was followed by the keynote dialogue with the founder of the Hasso Plattner Institute and the Hasso Plattner Foundation, Professor Hasso Plattner, who was in conversation with Richard Perez, director of the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at UCT. Prof Plattner discussed what he anticipates for the future of design thinking and human-centred design in business, science and society. "Government projects alone cannot solve challenges and social injustices in Africa. Society has to solve it…Trust yourself that you can innovate", he said. Perez added, "We all have the capacity to be creative. Design is too important to be left to the designers only. We all need to be involved".
The Cape Town d.confestival is also a celebration of the Global Design Thinking Alliance's (GDTA) fifth anniversary. Founding members of the GDTA, including George Kembel, Bernie Roth, Richard Perez, Claudia Nicolai, and Uli Weinberg, participated in a fireside conversation focused on the growth and impact of design thinking as a global movement. A birthday celebration followed with design thinking-themed cupcakes and the singing of the birthday song in a language of each delegate’s choice.
A panel discussion, titled Creative Problem-Solving and Innovation in Cross-Cultural Contexts led into parallel sessions that allowed virtual and in-person delegates to connect in small breakaway groups to explore design thinking in different contexts. In one of the sessions, delegates explored a case study from Chile, where human-centred design is used to help local farming communities carry out government-funded projects. Jenni van Niekerk, d.confestival programme curator, who facilitated the discussion in Spanish and English explained that language need not be a barrier to collaboration, adding, “We have so much more in common between Africa and South America than in Africa and Europe, which is where we look to for so much of our knowledge base. While we are developing our knowledge base, how much more would we have access to if we collaborated and shared solutions with continents with similar economic and social challenges and a shared history of colonialism? There's so much that can be done.”
Throughout the day, delegates enjoyed entertainment and experiences that allowed them to connect through music, dance, and food with a distinctly ‘Afrikan’ theme.
There are two days of the conference remaining. Day two includes d.safari tours across Cape Town's innovation ecosystem to witness design thinking in action and the official opening of the HPI d-school building, home to the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at the University of Cape Town.
Stay tuned for more highlights of the festivities! Subscribe to keep up with the latest news, insights and programmes from the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at the University of Cape Town.
You’ll know the names and faces of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. In fact, you probably won’t be able to escape them. Their fame, influence and notoriety feature across the magazines we read, the TVs we watch, and the podcasts we listen to. Can you think of equivalent characters in Africa?
Local heroes and winners in Africa are not iconized like these towering figures in the Western World. This is not due to any lack of talent or influence. It’s a consequence of how people on the continent engage with one other. Africans embrace collaboration; individual success is secondary to the success of the community. The golden thread of this connectedness is best captured in the concept of Ubuntu – something which is currently inspiring designers and innovators tackling some of society’s most intractable problems around the world.
Putting people back at the centre of the problem-solving process
The spirit of Ubuntu can be summed up in the phrase: “I am because we are, and because we are, I am”. Instead of centralising respect and recognition towards individuals, Ubuntu requires us to appreciate our interconnectedness, and therefore, acknowledge how our success is a result of communal support and engagement. This exemplifies a mindset of cooperation over competition. And it is this emphasis that global problem-solvers are hoping to co-opt.
The concept of human-centred design is not a new one. It has been around for decades and is embedded in a problem-solving approach known as design thinking which has risen to prominence in the past 15 years or so. Design thinking’s fresh, effective and easy to grasp approach has made it popular for a range of applications.
Perhaps most famously, AirBnB used design thinking tools and ideas to help scale exponential growth and address user experience challenges on its platform.
But while many saw early successes such as AirBnB as a validation of a human-centred design approach to problem-solving, there has been concern in recent years that the design-led approach has been turning away from the principle of putting people first. Technology companies, for example, have misused some of the core principles for user experience improvement to collect more and more data, invading the privacy and integrity of the individual.
A global community of design-minded changemakers working in 150 organisations around the world, calling themselves Design at Business, are now looking to use this moment of reckoning to imbue a new discourse around design thinking and reshape the narratives defining its approach. The African ideal of Ubuntu will also be at the core of the upcoming design-thinking d.convestival – half festival, half conference – which, significantly, will be taking place on African soil for the first time this year.
Ubuntu-led design thinking in practice
Across Africa, design thinkers are already mainlining ubuntu into their approaches, with startling results. In Soweto, the engineering consulting firm Zutari – ranked first in the Top 225 International Design Firms in Africa – is working with local communities to co-create solutions to the challenges they face. Monique Cranna, Technical Director for Urban Planning, recently said, “What we have found is that the local community knows exactly what their issues and problems are and is willing to engage with an organisation like Zutari to articulate these issues and problems and co-create value-adding solutions”.
A similar community-led approach undertaken by the City of Cape Town in partnership with the City of Cape Town and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) has helped solve the persistent and nagging problem of waste management in the Doornbach informal settlement that is now being rolled out to all informal settlements in the area.
This community-centred approach, embodying the principles of Ubuntu-led design thinking, is working its way into the world of finance too. Typically, banks only provide credit scores for individuals, as it is easier to formulate a risk profile that way. But this approach neglects the shared family units that ripple across the African continent. These family clusters often share the financial burden of monthly income and expenses, and hence banks have been pushed to innovate risk solutions that take family unit credit scores into account. The process requires adapting to the community, rather than forcing the community to adapt to the process.
Breaking down siloes to unlock fresh solutions
A new life-centred approach, backed by the philosophy and spirit of Ubuntu, has significant potential to provide a framework for how human beings could interact with each other, as well as how to relate to the natural environment supporting them, to build a better future.
A key aspect of this will be the imperative to collaborate; to step beyond our siloes and to embrace a range of stakeholders from communities on the ground to leaders at the highest level as well as across sectors. Although the private sector may be best positioned to embrace the innovation associated with design thinking, the public sector has the experience of working on large, multi-stakeholder projects. Together, they have the power to unlock fresh solutions.
We’ve seen the power of this approach – this is not just an abstract or academic theory – and there is real hope that it can now be scaled. The more people and organisations who embrace the wisdom of community and collaboration, keeping human well-being firmly at the centre of the problem-solving process, the more likely we can successfully address our shared socio-economic and environmental challenges.
Ends
Ulrich Meyer-Höllings is the Co-founder at ThirdSpaceAfrica, and the Design at Business chapter lead for South Africa. He will be facilitating a discussion on how ubuntu impacts design, innovation and entrepreneurship at the upcoming d.confestival. Find out more https://dschoolafrika.org/events/d-confestival/.
Crucial educational indicators on the African continent are lagging. And this is despite huge improvements in pre and primary school enrolment since the turn of the century, and the high percentage of African countries’ GDP investment in education, which is on par with the highest in the world. And now, as the worst of a global pandemic subsides, Africa confronts an aftermath, in which educational gains have been reversed, and fissures have grown wider.
The basic building blocks of quality education must be addressed, and urgently. Equal access for genders, equipped teachers and decent resources are essential – especially if Africa is to tap into the wealth of human capital that exists in its burgeoning youth population. But while we work to improve these key markers, it’s also important to ask ourselves: What future is education preparing us for?
“Preparing for the world of work can be a nerve-wracking experience in this day and age,” says Richard Perez, founding director of UCT’s Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika, who explains how technology, globalisation and the rapid rate of environmental change are transforming our basic understanding about what we need to know and the skills that will be essential to thriving in the future. “The most relevant skills today take a human-centred approach that is big on problem exploration, empathy and co-creation, understands the value in connecting with local realities, knowledge and systems, and recognises the power of creativity and wild ideas.”
"We must focus on future learning skills: collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity. And we can even take it a step further by including the Design Thinking mindset in education programmes built on empathy experimentation and engagement principles to ensure inclusivity”, adds Claudia Nicolai, Academic Director of the HPI School of Design Thinking.
Global design thinking for global education
In a global community effort, the d-school Afrika is joining 12 Global Design Thinking Alliance members in tackling the topic of basic education challenges in Africa and beyond and the future outcomes of education. As we co-develop solutions, we’ll keep in mind the targets of the fourth United Nations sustainable development goal of quality education, including equal access, affordability and relevance.
The Global Design Thinking Alliance is a network of institutions that teach, research, and further develop the methods and mindsets of Design Thinking. Bringing together Design Thinking schools from 12 countries on four continents, the Global Design Thinking Challenge focuses on sustainable learning in schools in Africa and beyond.
From a design-thinking perspective, we wish to challenge established notions of what education must look like and instead centre learning. We hope to build on the principles of experimentation, engagement and empathy to impact the learning environment in all its facets, whether we are looking at challenges related to students, teachers, administrators, policymakers or the system as a whole.
“The goal of this global impact initiative is to challenge current educational systems, bring the Design Thinking mindsets to schools, and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all," says Programme Lead Sherif Osman.
Multidisciplinary student teams from each institution will collaborate in their local contexts and apply design thinking to develop innovative solutions ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education. This way, we work together to connect a global problem with meaningful impact at the local level.
Our learning approach is to combine Design Thinking from a life-centred perspective with human-centeredness and systems thinking. We apply life-centred design to an innovation process; we keep in mind the entire planet. We zoom out to view the big picture, and we zoom in to discover even the most minor details. We look far ahead into the future and consider all possible consequences when developing a solution to a problem. The Global Design Thinking Challenge runs for four weeks, kicking off at the Design Thinking ImpAct Conference on September 15th at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany. The winning teams have the opportunity to present their most inspiring solutions at the d.confestival in Cape Town on October