e-Design Education Using a 3D Printer Based on Design Thinking at Primary School

In the field of business and education, "Design Thinking" has become popular over the last few decades. Design thinking is a methodology which seeks to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. In the case of business, it sets out to define how an enterprise creates, delivers and captures market value. The interrelationship between those three facets is a key to understanding how a business design model can be invented to define a new venture. In the case of education, on the other hand, design thinking helps learners develop a growth mindset and important problem solving, analytical and spatial thinking skills. In this paper, we introduce the concept of design thinking to a design class at primary school. Primary school students will be introduced to innovation skills such as creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, communication and collaboration through design thinking. According to the Stanford d.school, the design thinking process comprises five stages: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. However, our design thinking process for primary school students comprises four stages: Definition, Ideation, Prototype, and Test. In the Definition stage, three to four students form a group in the class. Then, a tutor provides two tasks related to 3D modelling. Each group chooses one task. In the Ideation stage, each student draws his/her image for the task on rough papers. The drawings are compared among students, and several drawings are selected by argument. In the Prototype stage, selected drawings are designed by the CAD software Autodesk Fusion 360, which is easy to use for primary school students. The students do not need to add colour on Fusion 360 as it is not important. After the design of the drawings on Fusion 360, these drawings are realised by a 3D printer. Then, students paint their 3D objects using paint-box and then these objects are compared and discussed. As a result of the discussion, they come back to 'Ideation' or 'Prototype', and modify the objects.