**Abstract**

This chapter illustrates the process of reforming the curriculum of a Japanese language course in a university through the process of design thinking and addresses its benefits and problems. Design thinking is a human-centered approach to problem-solving that involves processes of discovery, interpretation, ideation, experimentation, and evolution. By applying these processes, a curriculum reform led to the development of a prototype of a personalized flipped learning curriculum that addresses the diverse needs of students. The results of a survey conducted after implementing the new curriculum revealed areas that had improved and needed improvement, indicating that design thinking is an excellent guide for curriculum development. However, they also revealed limitations of applying design thinking, such as the difficulty of addressing the needs of students whose opinions were not able to be obtained.

**Keywords:** design thinking, curriculum development, personalized learning, flipped learning, world language education

### **1. Introduction**

The first semester of the Japanese language program, JPN101, the first semester of the Japanese Language Program, opens the door to the Japanese language for most students. Many of them arrive on the first day of classes excited to begin their new journey. However, as with many other courses, there are obstacles along the way, and for some students, they may be too high to overcome. As a result, they were unable to complete the course despite still having an interest in the Japanese language and culture. For example, in Fall 2017, 12 out of 60 students dropped out of the course for various reasons. There is no doubt that learning a new language, especially one that is completely different from English, can be difficult, but by reforming the curriculum, we may be able to lower at least some of the obstacles—this is how this project began.

As with any other subject, there are many variables in world language learning, and there is no one solution that works for every world language classroom. Therefore, it is important to design components that target specific students in specific environments, and that is where "design thinking" comes in.

Design thinking is not a new concept. It was first introduced in 1969 by Simon as a "way of thinking" in the design process [1]. Subsequently, Rowe [2] expanded on the concept and described the approach as "a method of creative action." The concept originated in architecture, design, and art; however, it has since been applied to the field of management [3].

Design thinking is a methodology that imbues the full spectrum of innovative activities with a human-centered design ethos [4]. It focuses on ideas and solutions (products, services, and systems) to "wicked problems"—the need to find viable and novel solutions for specific user groups [5]. Design thinking is an analytical and creative process that involves experimentation, modeling and prototyping, gathering feedback, and redesigning [6]. Innovation arises from a thorough understanding, through direct observation, of what people want and need in their lives and what they like or dislike about the way a particular product is manufactured, packaged, marketed, sold, and supported.

While the implementation of design thinking in learning and education is increasing, published research is still relatively limited [7]. Some examples in the literature where design thinking has been used in the development of new curricula and in curriculum reform are in the fields of medical education, professional education, industrial engineering, and entrepreneurship education, as well as in language education [8–12]. Crites and Rye [12] report on the results of an exploratory case study based on the implementation of design thinking in a university's language curriculum design process. They report that implementing DT has made the curriculum design process more collaborative, creative, and efficient. In addition, implementing DT from the earliest stages of curriculum design has allowed the DT philosophy to permeate future iterations of the course, leading to more consistent curriculum assessment and development [12].

Willness and Bruni-Bossio [13] introduce the curriculum innovation canvas, which is based on the principles of design thinking [13]. They claim that the canvas was created to provide a tool that promotes creativity and innovation, to provide a novel way of thinking about the curriculum development process, and to guide the planning and implementation of the resulting ideas rather than to perfectly match everyone's context [13].

Given the nature of the design thinking described above, it is clear that although design thinking is not currently a popular method of curriculum development for world language courses, it can be an excellent framework. This chapter will describe how design thinking was applied to reform a world language curriculum and how the curriculum reform affected the learning experience of the students in the course.
