Design Thinking: A Proposed Curriculum (1st draft)

Philosophy:
Design thinking equals innovation equals big ideas. Without ideas designers cannot communicate, express, share and ultimately solve big problems. They will be relegated to being skilled craftsmen without a voice. Instead the designers of tomorrow need to be brilliant thinkers and managers who not only embrace technology and design concepts but also think critically about real-world problems. Design thinking will engage, inspire, stimulate and provoke students’ imagination through a collaborative and multi-disciplinary process of learning.


Goals:
1. To introduce students to a human-centered approach to generating ideas by taking them out of their comfort zone and forcing them to confront and observe the problem first hand.

2. To motivate students to think clearly, questioning, reasoning and evaluating why and how they arrived at a solution.

3. To become more effective thinkers and recognize the different ways of looking at a problem by not censoring and limiting themselves.

4. To repeatedly experiment with ideas through rough samples and models with the intention of garnering an effective response and hopefully drawing closer to a working prototype.

5. To embrace and disseminate different views, personalities and concepts that will eventually lead to one common and collaborative idea.