Design Thinking

One of the courses in my Master’s program was on design thinking. The class began with each student choosing a product/service that they wished to help improve and innovate and there was a 3 day-seminar where we were able to work in-person with our peers on the topics that were chosen. 

 

I was able to learn and implement IDEO’s design thinking process, which has served me well even outside of the class. I was able to use this in not only my academic but also professional and personal life in coming up with unique solutions for problems. Being able to collaborate and brainstorm with my peers was also a highly enjoyable and great experience. We were pushed to go through multiple iterations of all of our ideas and so had a great output as a consequence. 

 

The topic that I chose to work on was the university’s transportation (shuttle) services for its staff and students. I was then also given the challenge of integrating this topic with that of another peer, the university’s campus tours. Using the design thinking principles I was able to develop a prototype for a service that could be implemented by the university.