In recent years Design Thinking has gained legitimacy and popularity as a method to develop design and business processes. Design Thinking is based on few simple principles, such as learning by doing, learning by failing, collaborative thinking and solution-oriented approaches. Although in many cases Design Thinking has proved itself valuable, the design community has also raised doubts and objections to its unconditioned employment. This course investigates Design Thinking, but it also leavesspace to critically reconsider and improve its principles.
In recent years design thinking has gained legitimacy and popularity as a process for developping design and business to solve problems. Design thinking typically shares a couple of basic principles: namely human-centred, empathizing, prototyping, and testing. Although in many cases design thinking has proved itself valuable in both fostering creative culture and in generating and testing ideas, its ability to instantly enable anyone to solve problems creatively as advertised has been debunked. In this course we investigate design thinking, but it also leaves space to critically reconsider and improve its principles.
This course aims to enrich the design culture of the students with an introduction to different techniques and theories for facilitating the design process. Although the course is theoretical and lecture based, it adopts short collaborative workshops for the students to experience first-hand those techniques and processes, improve them and ultimately create their owns. Besides design, Design Thinking is often applied to other fields, such as science, engineering, politics and economics. Beyond trans-disciplinarity, multi-disciplinarity, inter-disciplinarity, this course aims to educated un-disciplined designers. Aims: 1.To learn about Design Thinking, its principles and review a number of references; 2.To learn and experiment collaborative design techniques, team building techniques and ways of presenting outcomes; 3.To create new techniques for research, team building, brainstorming, presenting and evaluating projects. Structure The course articulates in 15 classes, some of them are lecture based, some of them are short intensive workshops, and some of them are presentations. The first class serves as an introduction to the course and its participants; the last class is a recap and reflection of the course.
This course aims to simultaneously enrich and question students' understanding on the creative process of design. The course is half theoretical and half practical: students study, review, criticize, perform, and modify design thinking throughout the course. This course aims to educate designers and non-designers altogether, for the reason that design thinking is essentially intended as an anti-designerly way of designing. As we re-think design thinking, we certainly do not take design thinking as a norm: we rather try to stay neutral on the subject by covering both sides of the story. The little is known that design thinking is vastly misinterpreted and evangelized as a useful solution that can be applied to any kinds of wicked problems by anyone. The fifteen-class course aims to first learn what design thinking is; how it is advertized and how the advertizement is criticized; how it is beneficial; why it is so popular now; where it stands on the timeline of the transition of design theories and practices; and where it is heading with challenges it faces. The students then quickly share their thoughts on these topics in turn. Sixth class is to present the process and the outcomes of design thinking practice. The final class is to present their own reconstruction of design thinking.
The main language for the course will be English, so some basic knowledge of English is highly recommended. However, students can count on the support of other students and on the use of on-line translators, such as Google translate.
Non-designers are welcomed. The slides are in English; the lecture part and the discussion part depend on the preferences of the participants.
Being able to invent their own techniques and methods to trigger creativity and improve research skills
Being able to modify design thinking to their own design process that fits their way of thinking in general
Having an understanding of the existing literature in Design Thinking (i.e. Nigel Cross, IDEO, etc...)
Understanding the existing literatures in design thinking (i.e., Nigel Cross, IDEO, etc...)
講義（双方向）：Lecture opened to discussion and questions at any time.
Lecture opened to discussion and questions at any time.
実習・演習（個人）：Documents will be handed out for analysis and discussion from time to time.
Students present their own point of view on each of the subjects of the lecture in a couple of minutes.
実習・演習（グループ）：Group work and its presentation will be organized.
Students perform design thinking by themselves in group. The group then present their process and outcomes.
その他：Be collaborative. Try to take active role in the discussions. Take risks and experiment.
Be collaborative. Try to take active role in the discussions. Take risks and experiment.
Thinking. Some presentations might need some preparation out of lecture time.
Reviewing reference literatures. Major presentations (#6 and #15) need preparation out of lecture time.
15 classes total 1 documentary forum, 3 presentations, 1 fieldwork session, 3 theory classes, 5 hands-on classes, 1 introductory class, 1 final re-cap.
Starting with an introductory class, four classes are dedicated to learn (#2-3) and practicing design thinking basics in group (#4-5). #6 is to present the practice. Three classes are to exemplify the limits and challenges design thinking is currently facing (#7-10). #11 is an open discussion class on good and bad designs. Three classes are dedicated to investigating design thinking beyond its current state (#12-14). The final class is to present their point of view and final re-cap.
Introduction. Introduction to the course. Presentation of my own works and experience. Introduction of the students.
Introduction. Introduction to the course. What this course is and what it is not. Presentation of my own works and experience. Vote on the main language to be used. How the grades are evaluated. Introduction of the students.
Analysis of a design project. One existing project will be illustrated as a reference for Design Thinking. It will be analyzed in the processes, the people who took part in the project, their impact on the process, the outcome and the way it is presented.
The history and transition of design thinking. What design thinking is in specifics. How it evolved throughout the time. Presentation: how students think can achieve by studying design thinking.
Presentations Presentations of analysis of a design project chosen by the students. Open discussion.
Current criticisms on design thinking. How it is advertised, how it is harmful, what it actually can achieve and what it actually haven't been able to. Presentation: students' critical view on design thinking.
Literature Review. Introduction of authors and papers that wrote about Design Thinking. How design thinking evolved.
Practice design thinking (1 of 2). A problem to solve is presented. Students in group empathize with users, frame and define problems, and generate ideas. Presentation: the defined problem, hypothesis, and their ideas on its solution.
(Re)Thinking Design Research. Learning a number of techniques for creative research (i.e. cultural probes, internet tools, data visualization, etc.). Learning about each different technique’s pro’s and con’s.
Practice design thinking (2 of 2). Students in group prototypes their ideas and plan on testing the prototype. Presentation: how the prototype works, and how they plan on testing it.
Testing some Creative Research Methods. Each student will be assigned the name of another student to research upon. Each student will prepare some research materials (questionnaires, cultural probes, etc...) for the assigned student to undertake. On the nex
Present the outcomes. Feedbacks from test users. Critique from both the lecturer and the other students follow. Working prototypes and/or another iteration of refining the design is a plus.
Testing some Creative Research Methods. Collection and analysis of the completed research materials. Open Discussion. Based on the completed research materials, each student have to make a small gift to the assigned classmate he/she researched upon. This
Design thinking as a quasi-scientific method and how it can learn from scientific procedures. The analogous relationships between exploratory research and confirmatory research together with design and engineering is discussed. The ways to reframing the problem is introduced. Presentation: reflect on the last presentation and point out possible confounding factors of the problem. How one can improve the solution based on those insights.
Fieldwork Short trip to Aeon (Shinagawa Seaside) to observe the local context. After returning to class, students will be divided into groups. Each group will choose one aspect they could observe in Aeon and they will do further research on that particula
Design thinking as a conspicuous display. Findings from evolutionary psychology and conspicuous consumerism are introduced. Presentation: students' standpoints on design thinking are to be decided and the reasons why they think the standpoint is beneficial for themselves is presented.
Short Design Workshop. Based on their observations, the students will produce quick and rough concepts about their chosen topic.
Human-centred design, usability, sustainability and other ethical cores of design thinking are introduced. Presentation: pick a non-human-centred design and how they might re-design it.
Presentations Students will present their concepts. Open discussion.
(Ab)use of human-centred design. Its risk of overuse is discussed. Conflicting demands, addictive designs, and how design thinkers should frame the problem are discussed. Presentation: students' point of view on what 'good' design and 'bad' design should be defined as, and which 'goodness' should supersede another.
Objectified, the documentary. In this lesson, the documentary Objectified will be shown to the class. After and during the projection, comments and opinions will be shared.
Open discussion on the conflicting standpoints presented in the last class between students. Students present their own 'goodness' and question the others'.
Start-up Session. What is a start-up, how you imagine one, design it and pitch it to an audience. Divided into groups, students will have to come up with their own concept of a start-up, describe its business, create an identity and present it to the rest
Designs worth dying for. The basic ideas of memetics and cultural evolution are introduced. The lecturer's design-centred point of view, i.e., humans as a resource to the designs to replicate themselves, is introduced. Presentation: Refute the lecturer's point of view and defend the human-centred point of view.
Start-up Progress One more day to work on the idea of a start-up following a creative process. Some very short brain storming and creation techniques will be presented here, too.
Design thinking in real world context. The difference between classical design and design thinking is discussed. How design theories evolved over time is shown. Hype spiral of buzzwords, technologies, and their lifecycles are discussed. Presentation: buzzwords, research trends, and innovations in the students' field of major are plotted on hype cycle and how they predict their future is presented.
Start-up Presentation Each group will present their idea of a start-up. Open discussion.
Design thinking and beyond. how design thinking may get obsolete in the future is discussed. The concept of computational design is introduced. Statistical way of designing, testing, and generative methods by machine learning is introduced. How they are outperforming the existing human designers is discussed. Data scientists as the next generation designers. Presentation: where students think design thinking would be in the future. Where they want to stand in such future, in the best case scenario and the worst case scenario.
Final Recap and Farewell. *The gifts related to Class 7 research will be exchanged and presented. Questions and Answers about the course.
Design [re]thinking. With the classes students would have constructed the knowledge on design thinking, and then destructed by criticizing them from various points. Now is the turn to reconstruct and to improve it and modify so that it fits their point of view. Design thinking comes with its own limits and challenges: how might we redesign the process so that it can ever evolve? By doing so, students are asked to combine the existing design thinking process with ideas and processes proven effective outside design field. Actually implementing and testing the improved version is a huge plus.
There is no real final test. Students will present deliverables during the course. At the end of the course they are expected to exchange the custom-made gifts to their assigned classmate according to the information they collected.
There is no final test.
Assessment will be based on presence and participation to classes, on the quality of the group deliverables and of the individual deliverable.
The major presentations (#6 and especially, #15) and the discussion (#11) are given more weights than the usual small presentations in the other classes.
Lecture slides will be posted on LMS. And papers or articles will be shared. Please note: the classes program might see some changes according to the participants’ interests and workflow.
Lecture slides will be posted on LMS. References that are introduced in the lecture will be shared via Google Meet in the real time. The students are strongly advised to check these out after the class.
Feyerabend, P., Against Method, Verso (1993) Hustwit G., Objectified (video documentary), Swiss Dots Production (2009) Munari B., Design as Art, Penguin (2008) Rodgers P. and Milton A., Product Design, Laurence King Publishing (2011) Rodgers A. and Milton A., Research Methods for Product Design, Laurence King Publishing (2013) Sparke, P., An Introduction to Design and Culture: 1900 to the Present, Routledge (2004) Sudjic D., The Language of Things, Penguin (2009)
Miller, G. (2009) Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior. Viking Adult Hustwit G. (2009) Objectified. (video documentary), Swiss Dots Production Jen, N. (2018) Design Thinking is Bullsh*t. (video presentation), Design Indaba Brown, T. (2009) Change by Design. HarperBusiness Maeda, J. (2018) Design in Tech Report. (slide)