Why I Don’t Teach Design Thinking Anymore

❌ Why I Don’t Teach Design Thinking Anymore

(And What Galaxies Have to Do With Human Evolution)

For years, Design Thinking was my go-to framework.
It was elegant. Structured. Collaborative. Empathic.

I taught it in corporate boardrooms and university lecture halls. I helped leaders ideate with Post-its and prototype possibilities. For a long time, it felt like the perfect approach for solving human problems with human-centered tools.

But then something happened.

I started to notice that the people in the room weren’t just trying to solve problems anymore. They were breaking open. Coming undone. Crashing into the edge of their roles, identities, marriages, companies, and creative thresholds.

The frameworks were still good.
But they were no longer enough.

Because Design Thinking is a system. And what we needed — what I needed — was a way of navigating systems when they were disintegrating.

So no — I don’t teach Design Thinking anymore.
Not because it’s wrong.
But because it’s too small for the scale of evolution we’re in.

🌿 Design Thinking Is About Ecosystems

🌌 But Evolution Demands Galaxies

Let’s be clear: ecosystems are beautiful. Balanced. Efficient.

They teach us how to care for what is alive. How to build in symbiosis. How to create feedback loops and tend to the roots.

For a long time, that metaphor worked.
In fact, it shaped my early approach to Evolve X — a living community of people, programs, and partnerships all feeding each other in regenerative ways.

But here’s the problem:
Ecosystems are designed to sustain what exists.
Galaxies are built for what wants to emerge.

The humans I work with — founders, facilitators, parents, artists, healers — aren’t trying to fine-tune a stable world. They’re trying to survive its collapse and design something entirely different.

They’re not organizing sticky notes.
They’re organizing their souls.

They’re:

• Redefining power

• Breaking generational patterns

• Reclaiming their time, their bodies, their nervous systems

• Refusing to center productivity over purpose

Design Thinking doesn’t have room for that kind of wild truth.
But galaxies do.

🌀 Why Galaxies?

In a galaxy:

• Systems orbit purpose, not products.

• Stars explode and form new elements.

• Mystery is a feature, not a bug.

• There's movement, magnetism, and multidirectional flow.

Galaxies aren’t tidy. But they are truthful.

And they’ve become the new blueprint for how I help people design their work, relationships, offerings, and identities.

💫 What Galaxy Design Looks Like at Evolve X

We no longer start with “problem statements.”
We start with purpose gravity — what everything orbits around.

We design:

• 🌙 Memberships as moons — consistent, cyclical, stabilizing

• 🌟 Masterclasses as stars — short bursts of brilliance and expansion

• 🔥 Retreats as suns — central moments of deep transformation

• ✨ Books and media as stardust — stories that travel further than we ever could

• 🚪 Partnerships as portals — based on resonance, not extraction

In galaxy design, nothing is static.
Everything moves, spirals, evolves.
There’s room for contradiction. For chaos. For supernovas.

🖤 A Personal Supernova

This isn’t theoretical for me.

I stopped teaching Design Thinking around the same time my marriage collapsed, my business needed reconfiguration, and I was deep in the spiral of burnout and identity upheaval.

What I needed wasn’t another brainstorming canvas.

I needed permission to fall apart.
I needed to let a version of myself die so something truer could come through.
I needed new language for becoming.

And that’s what galaxy design gave me — not a process, but a pattern. Not a model, but a metaphor with enough magnitude to hold real human evolution.

🌠 What About You?

Maybe you’re a leader tired of building linear funnels for nonlinear humans.
Maybe you’re a mother unlearning the patterns she was raised in.
Maybe you’re a creative who can feel a new body of work forming but can't quite name it yet.

Maybe, like me, you don’t need a whiteboard session.
Maybe you need a telescope.

Ask yourself:

✨ What’s at the center of my galaxy?
✨ What’s orbiting out of habit, not truth?
✨ What needs to go supernova so something more honest can rise?

You don’t need a bigger system.
You need a deeper center.

💌 Final Thought: Let's Galaxify

At Evolve X, we’re not here to teach people how to optimize old tools.
We’re here to help them become new instruments of possibility.

So yes — I’ve stopped teaching Design Thinking.
And I’ve started activating Galaxy Thinking.

Not for the sake of strategy.
But for the sake of what’s still possible.

Because we’re not here to maintain the machine.
We’re here to become the stars.

✨🌌
With wonder always,
Sarah