Thinking with a new purpose: Lessons learned from teaching design thinking skills to creative technology students

Abstract

This paper reports on the insights gained from introducing Design Thinking into the final year of a UK university course where students created positive behavior change interventions. The rationale for course design and teaching process is outlined, with a discussion of design as an engineering process versus an innovation process. The students followed Stanford University’s d.school 5-step approach of Empathize-Define-Ideate-Prototype-Test, and their journey is described in detail. We observed that initially students found the Design Thinking approach counter-intuitive and confusing, yet on further progress they recognized the strengths and opportunities it offers. On the whole, students reflected positively on their learning and the re-evaluation of their role as a designer of digital artefacts. Lessons learned from a teaching point of view are outlined, the most poignant being the realization that it was required to ‘un-teach’ certain design practices students had come to adopt, in particular the view of design as a self-inspired process where users are consulted for feedback but not as a source for innovation.