Integrating a Design Thinking Paradigm

The Design Thinking Paradigm is an interesting concept that Jacquie introduced us to at the beginning of term and that we have recently revisited. I was quite intrigued by this idea and it has got my creative side going. As I was reading the "Introduction to Design Thinking", I could not help but compare it to the the Logic Model for nutrition education that I learned about during my undergrad. The model includes inputs, outputs, and outcomes and the particular steps in the model are 1) analyzing the needs and behaviors of the population 2) identifying relevant potential mediators 3) selecting theory, philosophy, and components 4) stating educational objectives 5) designing theory based strategies and activities and 6) designing evaluations.
Even though the Design Thinking Paradigm can be applied to many different settings and disciplines and the logic model I mention is more narrow in application, I could not help but draw parallels between the two. I feel that #1 and #2 can be linked to EMPATHIZE, #3 and #4 can be related to DEFINE and IDEATE, #5 would be PROTOTYPE, and #6 would be TEST. The first step of empathize is a very important one since it's not only important to understand the needs of an individual or group but also to have empathy for who they are and what is important to them in order to design interventions that will be most effective for them.

As I worked on my final paper, I explored the ideas in the following article: Food and eating as social practice - understanding eating patterns as social phenomena and implications for public health. Even though this article can't be exactly molded into the Design Thinking Paradigm, I will attempt to follow the flow of the paper through this paradigm.

EMPATHIZE The article talks about the subject's needs through a review of some of the current literature and theories; however, I do not think that the authors truly empathize with the subjects well being or make and emotional connection with the reader. The paper was more scholarly and I felt it read a bit like a call to action. It talks about the importance of a sociological perspective to changing population patterns as being more successful than behavior based nutrition education approaches. Even though the obesity crisis has been linked to obesogenic environments and social trends, interventions so far have mainly focused on the behaviour of individuals.

DEFINE The article defines eating as a behavior versus eating as a social practice. The article then goes on to discuss Anthony Gidden's Structuration Theory and linking social structures with social interaction.  Gidden addresses  dualism in social theory, where there are two orientations for the explanation of social life - either the product of actor's voluntary action (agency) or as a product of structure (social processes) determining agency. Specifically, the authors look at family feeding practices and how feeding a family is central to family life.

IDEATE The article uses a theoretical framework to analyze a study about youth feeding practices at school and how different groups of students interact differently with the rules and resources of the school context (for example, the school lunch program and the students that participated in it, versus the habits of the students who could afford to go an buy lunch outside of the school). The article proposes application of more theoretical frameworks in public health to guide understanding of population eating patterns.

PROTOTYPE As mentioned, the article applies the theoretical framework to study feeding practices. The intent of the paper is to apply social theory to population healthy, specifically in the area of obesity; however, even though the paper recommends applying this frameworks to public health it does not go through the design of a specific intervention program, but merely provides the background and reasoning for it.

The article quotes Patricia Crotty writing that "the act  of swallowing divides nutrition's "two cultures" the post-swallowing world of biology, physiology, biochemistry and pathology, and the pre-swallowing domain of behaviour, culture, society, and experience". I actually quite liked this quote, so the question remains how do we bring the two cultures together?

Without revealing too much of my paper, an idea that I would like to propose is the following. In order to help bring social interactions, education, and personal choice together, I think it would be beneficial to make an addition to the secondary school curriculum. All high schools have a foods or cooking class and I think this class should be made mandatory for all students in perhaps grades 9 or 10. I feel that reworking the curriculum for this class to include more than just cooking would be beneficial to the overall goal. Some of the additions I propose include introducing a nutrition and food origins component to the class as well as discussion of food industry and media influences. Other components could be taking care of a school garden and picking vegetables from the school garden for the recipes that will be made for class, as well as grocery shopping together for the needed ingredients. Stay tuned for more of my ideas and their reasoning :)