Music education projects often start with strong intentions: improving learning, supporting teachers, or influencing policy. However, too many initiatives struggle to make a lasting impact because they begin with their creators’ predetermined solutions for the problems they think exist, rather than a deep understanding of need.
What is Design Thinking?
Design Thinking has five interconnected stages: empathise, define, ideate, prototype, and test. At Music Education Solutions, we use Design Thinking as the basis of all our work because it offers a rigorous, human-centred framework for creating music education projects that are relevant, effective, and sustainable.
Empathise: understanding people before projects
Every successful music education project begins with empathy. This means taking the time to understand the experiences, challenges, motivations, and constraints of the people the project is intended to serve. For example, a teacher writing a new music curriculum might be inclined to move straight to the content phase – the ‘what’ of music education – when a better approach is to step back and look at the bigger picture. Why are you doing music in your school, what is it that you hope your pupils will gain from it, what does music mean to your school community?
Similarly, when an organisation is planning an advocacy campaign, empathy requires careful consideration of its audience. Policymakers, school leaders, and parents each respond to different evidence, language, and priorities. Without this understanding, even well-meaning advocacy risks missing its mark.
Define: clarifying the real problem
Once empathy work has been carried out, the next stage is to define the problem clearly. In music education, problems are often framed too broadly: ‘standards are low’ or ‘teachers lack confidence.’ There is a particular tendency for organisations and individuals to make sweeping statements about what is needed in music education based on their hunches rather than real facts; ‘schools don’t do music’ being a classic, and infuriating, example!
The define stage of Design Thinking encourages you to think deeply about the problem that you are trying to solve. Firstly, to ensure that it is indeed a problem, secondly to ensure that it’s not a problem caused by another deeper underlying problem (to avoid a sticking-plaster approach) – and thirdly to ensure that there aren’t bigger problems elsewhere that are more worthy of your attention (to avoid getting sidetracked from the more important issues.)
For example, say SLT at a school are concerned that students aren’t doing well in the composition component of their GCSE. Their initial thought might be ‘it’s because they can only work on their composition in lessons, they need to be able to access the software at home,’ and they go ahead spending money on remote licenses to provide at home access. However, results don’t improve, and they then discover that the software does not work well at school due to outdated tech, so the solution shifts to fundraising to buy new computers for the music room. More expense to fix the same problem. But then say new machines are installed, on top of the remote access also provided, but marks still don’t improve. Maybe the real problem is that the teacher feels under-confident in teaching composition, but nobody realised that because they didn’t think to ask them! A pretty extreme and hopefully unlikely example, but one that could have been avoided entirely by applying Design Thinking processes.
Ideate: exploring possibilities without premature decisions
Once the real problem has been identified, the ideate stage is about generating multiple possible responses. People and organisations have a natural tendency to move quickly to familiar solutions. Design Thinking deliberately slows this process down, creating space for creativity and challenge.
When a company is creating a teaching resource, ideation might involve exploring different formats, levels of scaffolding, or digital and non-digital approaches. The aim is not to find the perfect idea immediately, but to consider a range of possibilities informed by earlier empathy work. This openness helps avoid producing resources that are technically impressive but impractical in real classrooms.
Prototype: making ideas tangible
Prototyping involves turning ideas into something concrete that can be explored, discussed, and critiqued; prototypes might be draft curriculum units, sample resources, pilot training sessions, or early versions of campaign materials.At Music Education Solutions, prototyping is a vital part of our independent, research-led approach. It allows us to test assumptions early and refine our thinking before large-scale implementation. Prototypes do not need to be polished; in fact it’s better if they’re not, as it makes it less painful to leave them behind if they turn out not to be the solution that’s required!
Test and iterate: learning from real-world use
Testing involves placing prototypes into real contexts and learning from how people interact with them. Feedback from teachers, learners, or stakeholders is used as evidence to inform improvement. For advocacy campaigns, testing might involve trialling messages with small groups before wider release. For curricula or resources, it may involve classroom pilots and structured reflection. Iteration ensures that projects evolve in response to reality, rather than remaining fixed to initial assumptions.
Why Design Thinking underpins our work
At Music Education Solutions, Design Thinking reflects our commitment to excellence, expertise, and independence. It keeps our work grounded, ensures our guidance is practical as well as principled, and enables us to challenge existing practices thoughtfully and constructively. Most importantly it results in solutions that really work, to solve problems that actually exist!
Music education is complex, contextual, and often contentious! Design Thinking provides a framework that respects this complexity, helping projects move beyond good intentions to genuinely effective outcomes. If you want support using a Design Thinking approach for your next music education project, we would love to hear from you. Please get in touch to discuss your ideas.
Dr Liz Stafford, January 2025. Copyright © 2025 Music Education Solutions Limited. All Rights Reserved.
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