Learn creative thinking techniques and approaches in order to become “active thinkers” and challenge assumptions.
Develop visual thinking and communication skills. There will be an emphasis on learning how to communicate ideas visually.
Develop your skills as an observer of the world. Great designers observe the world with an active mind and see the possibility of change.
Learn how to develop problem statements that bound a problem within the known constraints.
Creatively generate solutions to the given problem and refine to one main idea.
Communicate the proposed solution to a broad group of stakeholders in an engaging way.
“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” —Tim Brown, president and CEO
Design thinking is a deeply human process that taps into abilities we all have but get overlooked by more conventional problem-solving practices. It relies on our ability to be intuitive, to recognize patterns, to construct ideas that are emotionally meaningful as well as functional, and to express ourselves through means beyond words or symbols. Nobody wants to run an organization on feeling, intuition, and inspiration, but an over-reliance on the rational and the analytical can be just as risky. Design thinking provides an integrated third way.
The design thinking process is best thought of as a system of overlapping spaces rather than a sequence of orderly steps. There are three spaces to keep in mind: inspiration, ideation, and implementation. Inspiration is the problem or opportunity that motivates the search for solutions. Ideation is the process of generating, developing, and testing ideas. Implementation is the path that leads from the project stage into people’s lives. (IDEO definition of Design Thinking)
