This paper explores the interrelationship between educational design research, design thinking that guides the design process, and the unique opportunities that mobile learning enables. As an example we outline the design thinking principles and processes that informed the development of wireless mobile presentation systems (MOAs) designed to create a flexible infrastructure to enable the exploration of new pedagogies in different educational contexts. The project used design thinking within an educational design research methodology to provide an in house solution to creating a supporting infrastructure to enable the implementation of a new framework for creative pedagogies and curriculum redesign. We reflect upon example implementations of using mobile social media and MOAs as a catalyst for our framework for creative pedagogies, and propose collaborative curriculum design principles for integrating the use of mobile social media within new pedagogical paradigms.