DESIGN THINKING AND DOING

What if  all Northwestern students had the opportunity to learn how to think like designers in a hands-on, project-based course?

Design Thinking and Doing is a introductory, studio design course for undergraduate students of all majors at Northwestern University. In 2015, Pam Daniels and I were asked to continue development of the new Segal Design course and put our own spin on it.

We designed a class where students uncover opportunities they find interesting, conduct research with real people, design a range of solutions across disciplines, build elegant prototypes, and explore new means of presenting the final projects. We encourage students to think big and have seen projects focusing on everything from mental health on campus to making recycling more fun.

Teaching students from a range of disciplines to flex their newfound design muscles.

One of the key pieces of Design Thinking and Doing is weekly "Flex" homework. We devised a weekly assignment to allow students to explore areas of personal interest that relate to their understanding of design. Students declare an area of focus for the week, (anything from designing and sewing a quilt, to creating a website), spend two hours working on their focus, and write a short summary about what they explored, what they tried, and showing the outcomes they created.

We feel strongly about the pairing of self-guided learning with team based projects. Oftentimes, the learnings from flex assignments inform teams as they work on their projects, but they definitely don't need to. Learning to knit a pink hat is just as valued as trying out a digital prototyping software. We're teaching students to be curious and to learn.

Understand and Create.

One of the core teachings of the class is that the idea that design really breaks down to two processes: creation and understanding. More often than not, students have the expectation that they should plan first, execute later. We push hard against this notion having students create early and often to inform their understanding, and engage with users late into the project continuing to inform what they create.

Low-fidelity prototypes, high-fidelity thinking.

Students in our class have a wide range of experience with making their ideas tangible. Some are comfortable sketching, some make amazing films, but most are not familiar with building physical prototypes. We push students to use what they know, but to stretch into what they want to learn. One key outcome of our class is clever, elegant prototyping presented in new and interesting ways.