Make It
What is the connection between design thinking and art?
Introduction
At Mia, we are passionate about supporting learning that focuses on process over product and encourages students to play, experiment, and fail as they learn to think critically, find connections, and come up with design solutions for problems posed.
All the artworks in our collection have something in common: they were made by human beings, from across the globe and across the centuries, who wanted to express meaningful ideas. Studying and learning from these artworks provide opportunities for us to build empathy and bring the world a little closer together.
In addition, every artwork is the result of an artist’s process of problem solving—whether it be to meet a community need (food storage, shelter, religious observance), to express an emotion or mood (through color, form, or storytelling), or to create something beautiful. Learning about our collection with an emphasis on making can encourage students to think big and find solutions to real-world challenges. Throughout the lessons in the Make It! unit, we will provide examples of projects that follow a design-thinking-process protocol adapted from the model created by the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University (Stanford d. School).
You will encounter this emphasis on the design-thinking process in the Make It Yours! sections at the end of each lesson page. This is also where we will suggest design-challenge ideas for your students. Throughout the lessons in this unit, we encourage you and your students to approach artworks from our collection with an emphasis on the creative processes of designing, making, and problem solving.
Mia's Adapted Design-Thinking Process
- 1
Empathize: Learn about and gain insights into the context, process, and intentions of the featured artist/designer/maker.
- 2
Connect: Relate to learners’ own lives and contexts, identify and articulate goals, and define the problems to solve.
- 3
Ideate: Explore and evaluate different design ideas to carry out the goal identified in the Connect stage.
- 4
Prototype: Develop a process for learners to build and create; sometimes repeated with a Test stage.
- 5
Test: Guide learners through a reflective evaluation of their creation. This is a great place to bring teams back together to act as peer reviewers. We encourage you to end this stage with a reflection by asking teams: “If you were to do this again, what would you do differently, and why?”