I teach because I believe in people.

Teaching design thinking and futures thinking is for me not just about equipping students with tools. It’s about enabling their agency. Many individuals today feel uncertain, disempowered, or unseen in systems that shape our lives and environments. My role as an educator therefore is to help them gain literacy–in futures, in design, in other areas, including tools–so they can imagine and articulate their own futures, especially those who are emerging voices or are often left out of mainstream narratives.

Whether they’re students, professionals, the unheard, unseen and un(der)represented, or simply curious minds, I want to help others reclaim their ability to participate in shaping the world. I see education as a quiet way to lay out activism possibilities. And in that sense, the classroom then is not just a space for knowledge, but for awakening these voices.

I discovered my passion for teaching from an early young age. Teaching was for me my way of learning. I decided to share this experience by others by going into teaching.

As a young boy, I was curious and wanted to know as many things as I could about the world, so I gradually developed interest in many fields. Today, I advocate for general studies/education and interdisciplinary learning. I suppose my exposure and a lot of rationalisation about interdisciplinarity really began with reading the work of Julie Thompson Klein and Rick Szostak.

I currently teach interdisciplinary design innovation at the Singapore Institute of Technology, as an associate faculty under the Business, Communications and Design (BCD) cluster. We teach critical design futures thinking and explore pedagogies such as Lego Serious Play. We also include the Design Your Life (DYL) component adapted from Bill Burnett’s & Dave Evans’ book Designing Your Life (2016) where we guide students with tools on life design.

My view is that students today regardless of level of education (and working professionals) need to be better equipped with design thinking and futures thinking literacy. It’s strange to me because as much as we know that the world is increasingly uncertain, complex, interconnected, turbulent, etc., all thanks to a plethora of studies and media outlets informing us about this, many of us don’t do or believe we can’t do anything about it. I acknowledge of course that there are contextual circumstances and structural forces constraining abilities and capacities. But the very least we could do is to have a better sense and understanding of what we could do to be better prepared, be proactive, so that we become more resilient. I suppose my call here is to give faith to humanity. Give us a chance.

So as much as I guide my students to create solutions to problems, artefacts of their desirable futures, for me, what’s more important is that I try to encourage and teach them first and foremost, to be curious, inquisitive, suspend bias and be open-minded, challenge assumptions and existing ‘what is’, reframe dysfunctional beliefs and adjust mindsets. Then the possibilities to unlock are endless.

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Selected Student Design Innovation Projects