Design Thinking and Innovation - This course focuses on the integration and application of design processes and design thinking to enhance innovation.
Students will engage in a multidisciplinary exploration of design theory and practice, specifically applying design ideas, principles and approaches to innovation and entrepreneurship.
The course emphasizes the role of user-centered research, divergent thinking, and iteration among others to enhance innovation.
The main objective of this course is to help you think more like an insightful expert designer. Expert designers bring a specific set of mental habits that enhance the different phases of their design process.
But, at the heart of their work, the expert designer is shaping the user-product interaction.
How the individual uses a product or service - and the uses and emotions that product affords - will determine how they think, act, and feel; and ultimately how much they value the product. As entrepreneurs understand, the heart of a successful, sustainable venture is the value proposition - how much others value the product or service you offer.
Course Objectives:
Knowledge
1. Explore and understand the breadth of design across fields of practices, eras, styles, and other design experts.
2. Understand the nature, nurture, and application of design thinking as both disposition and processes.
3. Understand design as a complex, iterative process.
4. Explore and experiment with the influential power of design principles, which directly addresses the user-product interaction.
5. Understand the role of leadership in creating conditions for and facilitating innovation at both the individual and organizational levels.
Skills
6. Develop individual mental habits (dispositions) that enhance ability to see differently, and thus be more creative.
7. Develop individual design thinking dispositions that enhance each specific phase of the design process.
8. Acquire and develop tools and techniques to more effectively identify and influence the user- product interface.
Attitudes
6. Appreciate the value and applicability of design thinking as an integral element of successful entrepreneurship and innovation.
7. Become empowered to act as a creative leader, facilitating and guiding yourself others to greater entrepreneurial success.
The future of successful organizations will depend on individual's ability to creatively see beyond problems and create conditions that encourage innovation.
Assignment : YOUR Design Thinking Development - A Plan, Some Action, A Report
At the start of this semester you will assess your design thinking capacity, and decide on which disposition to further develop in yourself.
You will craft a developmental, behavioral plan to build this disposition, adding to and/or adjusting that plan as necessary over the course of the semester.
At the end of the semester, you will prepare a 2-page summary report of:
1. What disposition/s you focused on developing.
2. Your plan, with alterations.
3. The results - what did you learn, develop, acquire - and what in your plan worked and did not.
4. Your reflections/insights about yourself as a design thinker and innovator.
Be prepared to share with your colleagues.