Most HODs who contact C-Academy for the first time come with a general sense of what they want — a design thinking programme for their students, sometime after exams, probably Secondary 3 or 4. What they are less sure about is how to communicate that clearly enough to get a proposal that actually reflects their school’s needs.
This guide is for HODs at that stage. It covers what a good workshop brief should include, the questions worth asking any design thinking workshop provider before you commit, and the signals that separate a structured, outcomes-driven design thinking course Singapore schools can rely on from one that will look good in an email but underdeliver in the classroom.
Why the Brief Matters More Than You Think
A vague brief produces a generic proposal. When a provider doesn’t know your school’s specific context — your student profile, your curriculum commitments, your learning outcomes, your constraints — they default to their standard package. That standard package may be well-designed, but it will not be calibrated to your school.
The brief is also your first signal about the provider’s programme quality. A provider who responds to a vague brief with a detailed, question-rich reply — who asks about your students, your ALP framework, your assessment priorities — is demonstrating the same user-centred thinking they claim to teach. A provider who responds with a price list is telling you something important about how they approach workshop facilitation.
The time you spend writing a clear brief is the most efficient investment you can make in the quality of what your students eventually experience.
[INSERT: Kimming or Yulia observation on the most common gap in school briefs C-Academy receives — what HODs typically omit that makes a significant difference to programme design]
What to Include in Your Brief
1. Student Profile
Not academic ability — learning disposition and prior experience.
- What year group is this for? (Secondary 1–4, or mixed)
- Have these students done any design thinking before, or is this their first exposure to the design thinking process?
- Are they generally confident in group work, or do they need more scaffolding to collaborate?
- Are there students with specific learning needs the design thinking facilitator should know about?
This information shapes everything from how the facilitator introduces the EDIT Design Thinking® methodology to how quickly they can move through the Empathise and Define stages. A facilitator walking into a Secondary 1 group with no prior experience needs a very different opening session than one working with Secondary 4 students who have been through a design thinking course before.
2. Learning Objectives and Outcomes
What do you want students to be able to do, think, or say differently after the programme?
Be specific. “Develop 21st century skills” is too broad to be actionable. More useful learning outcomes sound like:
- “Students should be able to conduct empathy interviews and synthesise the findings into a problem statement”
- “Students should experience the full arc of the design thinking process, from problem framing to prototype testing”
- “Students should develop communication skills and confidence in presenting their ideas to an unfamiliar audience”
If your school uses MOE’s 21CC framework — which includes adaptive thinking, inventive thinking, and creative problem solving — or has ALP learning outcomes, include those. A good provider should be able to map their design thinking programme directly to the competencies you are being assessed against.
[INSERT: example of how C-Academy mapped a programme brief to a specific school’s ALP learning outcomes — which outcomes were targeted, how the theme and session structure were adjusted accordingly]
3. Theme Preference or Context
C-Academy offers eight workshop themes: Community, Culture, Cyber Wellness, Human Futures, Reimagining Learning Spaces, Sustainability, XR Experience, and Youth Discovery. You do not need to arrive at the brief knowing which theme you want — but you should be able to tell the provider what context your school is working in.
Useful context includes:
- Any existing community partnerships or social causes the school is involved with
- Whether the school has a sustainability or environmental education focus
- Whether the programme is meant to connect to a specific subject area (Social Studies, Science, CCE)
- Whether the students have any strong interests or areas of discomfort the theme should account for
A provider who understands your school’s context can recommend the theme most likely to produce strong engagement and meaningful outcomes. A provider who jumps straight to a theme without asking about your context is guessing.
4. Timeline and Session Constraints
- How many sessions are available, and how long is each session?
- Are sessions on consecutive days, or spread across weeks?
- Is this during curriculum time, after school, or in the post-exam window?
- Are there any fixed deadlines (e.g., a presentation to school leaders, a showcase event)?
Session structure matters enormously in design thinking. A four-session programme spread across four weeks produces very different outcomes from four consecutive half-days. The provider needs to know which scenario they are designing for — and a well-structured workshop agenda should reflect the actual time available, not an idealised version of it. Experiential learning of this kind depends on continuity: students need to carry their empathy research into their ideation, and their ideation into their prototyping, without losing the thread between sessions.
5. Budget Range
You do not need to share an exact figure, but giving a provider a realistic range prevents wasted time on both sides. A school with a $3,000 budget and a school with a $15,000 budget need fundamentally different proposals — not just in scope, but in the number of facilitators, the depth of the Learning Journey, and the extent of post-programme assessment.
If your school is applying for MOE funding — for example through the Applied Learning Programme or a values education grant — say so. Some providers have experience structuring proposals and documentation to support funding applications.
6. Prior Professional Development Context
If teachers will be observing or co-facilitating the programme as part of their own professional development, say so in the brief. A provider who knows that staff are watching — and potentially learning facilitation techniques — can structure the sessions to make that learning visible. This is particularly relevant for schools that want to build internal design thinking facilitation capacity over time, rather than remaining dependent on an external provider for every programme.
Questions to Ask Any Design Thinking Workshop Provider
Before committing to a design thinking training programme, ask these questions. The quality of the answers will tell you more than any brochure.
“What does your design thinking methodology look like in practice?”
A credible provider should be able to walk you through a typical session — what students are doing, what the design thinking facilitator is doing, what outputs are expected at each stage. Vague answers (“we use design thinking principles”) are a red flag. You want specifics: How is the empathy stage structured? How do you build empathy maps with students? How do you facilitate ideation with groups who are stuck? What happens if a group’s prototype fails during user testing?
“How do you measure learning outcomes?”
Any provider can claim their design thinking course develops 21st century competencies. Ask how they measure whether that is actually happening. C-Academy uses a pre- and post-programme competency survey based on DesignSingapore’s Learning by Design framework, administered independently of the facilitating team. Across cohorts, the average improvement is 37% in overall design thinking competence. Ask any provider you consider for equivalent data.
“What does your workshop facilitation approach look like for secondary school students?”
Corporate design thinking facilitation and school-based design thinking facilitation are not the same thing. A provider with strong corporate training credentials may not have the classroom management skills, the student engagement techniques, or the understanding of Singapore’s school culture needed to run an effective programme for 15-year-olds. Ask specifically about their school delivery experience — not just their design thinking credentials.
“What happens if the brief changes?”
Schools change their minds. Students are unavailable. Venues shift. Ask how the provider handles scope changes, rescheduling, and situations where the original brief no longer applies. A well-run provider has clear, fair processes for this. One that hedges on this question may be less organised than their proposal suggests.
“Who will actually be facilitating?”
Some organisations sell a programme and then assign whoever is available. Ask to know who the design thinking facilitator will be, what their background is, and whether they have experience with your school’s year group and context. Facilitation quality is the single biggest variable in design thinking programme outcomes — more than the methodology, the theme, or the number of sessions.
[INSERT: C-Academy facilitation team detail — how facilitators are selected and briefed for specific school contexts, and what the quality assurance process looks like before a facilitator leads a school programme independently]
How to Evaluate the Proposal You Receive
Once you have submitted your brief, the proposal you receive is itself a quality signal. A strong proposal from a design thinking workshop provider should do the following.
Reflect your brief specifically. The theme recommendation should come with a rationale tied to your school’s context. The session structure should be designed around your actual timeline, not a generic workshop agenda. The learning outcomes should map to the objectives you stated.
Show evidence of the design thinking process in action. Look for case studies, outcome data, or specific examples from comparable schools. A provider who can say “at Sembawang Secondary School, students improved 56% in overall design thinking competence in a single programme cycle” is giving you something verifiable. A provider who says “students will develop empathy and creativity” is not.
Name the facilitator and describe their experience. Professional development in design thinking facilitation is a specific discipline. The proposal should tell you who will be in the room with your students and why they are qualified to be there.
Include a competency assessment component. Whether it is a pre/post survey, a design sprint debrief rubric, or a structured reflection tool, the proposal should show how the provider will measure whether the programme achieved its learning outcomes. Programme quality cannot be assessed without measurement.
Be honest about what is not included. A good proposal is clear about scope boundaries — what the design thinking training covers, what it does not, and what happens if the school wants to extend or adapt the programme after it begins.
Red Flags to Watch For
Generic proposals with no school-specific content. If the proposal you receive could have been sent to any school in Singapore without changing a single word, the provider did not engage with your brief.
Outcome claims without evidence. “Students will develop empathy, creativity, and collaboration” is not an outcome — it is a hope. Ask for data, case studies, or specific examples from comparable schools.
One-session programmes marketed as transformative. A single half-day session can introduce the design thinking process. It cannot deliver it meaningfully. Any provider claiming otherwise is either misleading you or has a very different definition of “design thinking” from the one Singapore schools need.
Facilitators with only corporate training backgrounds. Corporate design thinking and school-based design thinking facilitation require different skills. A facilitator who excels in professional development workshops for adults may struggle with the classroom dynamics, student engagement challenges, and communication skills required to run an effective programme for secondary school students.
No mention of assessment or learning outcomes measurement. Post-exam enrichment that produces no measurable outcomes is, from a school accountability perspective, hard to justify. A serious provider builds assessment into the design thinking programme as standard, not as an optional add-on.
No mention of digital transformation or future-readiness. Singapore’s education agenda is increasingly focused on preparing students for a world shaped by digital transformation, AI, and rapid change. A design thinking course that does not connect to these themes — through adaptive thinking, inventive thinking, or customer experience design — is missing a significant part of what makes design thinking relevant to students today.
What a Good Brief Produces
When an HOD provides a clear, specific brief — student profile, learning outcomes, theme context, timeline, and budget — the resulting proposal should:
- Recommend a specific theme with a rationale tied to the school’s context
- Outline a session structure and workshop agenda designed around the actual time available
- Map the design thinking programme to the school’s stated learning objectives or ALP outcomes
- Include a competency assessment component
- Name the design thinking facilitator(s) and describe their relevant experience
- Show evidence of programme quality through outcome data from comparable schools
If a proposal arrives without these elements, it is not a response to your brief — it is a standard package with your school’s name on it. That is worth knowing before you sign.
Singapore HODs who have worked with C-Academy consistently report that the pre-programme scoping conversation — the structured discussion that turns a rough brief into a detailed design thinking course design — is itself valuable. It surfaces questions the school hadn’t considered, clarifies what is achievable in the available time, and produces a programme that feels made for their students rather than adapted for them.
That conversation starts with a brief. The better the brief, the better the design thinking facilitation experience your students will have.
