Design Thinking Primer

Learning Goals

• Apply Design Thinking to a waterborne disease problem.

• Reflect on the implementation of design thinking to identify important attributes and steps in the cycle.

• Compare and contrast design thinking with the engineering design process.

Purpose of this Primer

This Design Thinking Primer is aimed to introduce students to the concept of design thinking to solve problems from a user-centered, creative, and collaborative perspective. Design Thinking is an integration of desirability, feasibility, and viability as shown in the diagram below.

This primer takes students through the steps/modes (Understand <-> Test) of the cycle developed by IDEO and adapts from their Design Thinking Bootcamp resources¹. The modes of the cycle are shown below and will be experienced through a waterborne disease challenge.

This primer gives an overview experience for students to reflect on Design Thinking as a way of conceptualizing problems. This idea will be expanded upon in the later units of the course. Hence, this primer will not provide all the methods of every step/mode of design thinking and will only have one iteration. The expanded modes of this cycle will be applied in later units so that students experience a fuller example of design thinking as shown in this Progression Chart.

Primer Activities and Student Accountability

The activities of this primer will be demonstrated by student writings in worksheets and post-it notes. It is suggested that students be in groups of three. The left side of each worksheet is for individual student responses, allowing for individual accountability. The right side of each worksheet is used to summarize a groups' responses or decisions. In addition, it is suggested that students in each group take turns facilitating different components of Design Thinking. When the students get to the Define mode, they will be directed to share the responsibility of who will facilitate each action for the subsequent modes (Ideate, Prototype, and Test) to ensure that facilitation responsibility is shared.

Primer Sections

Understand

1. Students are introduced to and research the challenge

Empathize

2. Students define the audience question guide and assign interview responsibilities

3. Students conduct interviews and develop an empathy map

Define

4. Students frame research insights into an actionable problem statement

Ideate

5. Students brainstorm ideas to cluster them into design concepts

Prototype

6. Students build low fidelity prototypes and identify test variables

Test

7. Students test prototypes and iterate on user feedback

Reflect

8. Students compare design thinking to the engineering design process and create Engineering Design Process Log accounts.