This semester, Ramsey High School’s Design Thinking course has soared to new heights. Design Thinking is a course that reflects the teachings of the Stanford University D-School program. The course adopts a philosophy that favors a user-specific design for the innovation of objects, ideas, and processes. A design thinker is persistent, empathizes, fails forward, collaborates, and uses creativity to solve any given problem. Using these mindsets, the design thinking process becomes a cycle where one must empathize with a user or group, define a problem as it is seen through the eyes of these people, and from there they begin to ideate, prototype, and test different solutions. This cycle, however, is not fixed. The design thinker must be flexible enough to recognize a failed proposal and return back to the drawing board.

Each semester since the course’s inception, Ramsey students have been paired with a company, organization, or person to offer insight from the mindset of a design thinker. This semester, Ramsey students have been working with New Jersey State Legislature Representative Holly Schepisi, and have been conducting research pertaining to state legislation to legalize the use of recreational marijuana. Looking to provide Assemblywoman Schepisi with insight, students have been studying the public’s knowledge of the matter. Interviews with doctors, mayors, police chiefs, principals, and citizens of varying demographics from all across the state have allowed students to understand and empathize with different groups of people with whom they may not have otherwise communicated. For example, students have reached out to those in charge of maintaining safe spaces, minorities, youth, as well as incarcerated citizens. The greatest problem identified on all fronts was a general public that was either uninformed or misinformed. In identifying the needs of these groups, the class worked to ideate and innovate in order to address this void of information present between lawmakers and citizens. Ramsey High School’s design thinking students were tasked and trained to solve this issue- a rare opportunity that promotes experiential learning and combines the lesson plan with real-world application.

By Christian Doherty, senior