New design thinking class to be offered

At the start of the 2014-15 academic year, Grand Valley announced its Design Thinking Initiative with the goal of ensuring students will be prepared for lifelong learning and careers in ever-changing work environments. One of the results of this ongoing initiative is a new course that will be offered at the beginning of the 2015-16 academic year.

“The course, ‘Design Thinking to Meet Real World Needs’ (LIB 323), will provide cross-discipline students the opportunity to experience and apply the design thinking process within the context of the complex problems existing today,” said John Berry, Design Thinking Initiative director. “One learns design thinking by doing, and this class will provide that experience.”

Design thinking is generally defined as an interactive, project-based, problem-solving process that combines empathy, creativity and rationality to meet user needs.

Hear Berry further discuss design thinking in the below video:

The new course is the first step in the initiative to incorporate design thinking into an explicit and credentialed experience for students at Grand Valley.

Danielle Lake, assistant professor of liberal studies, and Linda Chamberlain of Grand Valley’s Technology Commercialization Office will teach the course. Lake said students will receive the opportunity to address complex problems in the West Michigan community by working with local organizations and community partners.

“This course will help students develop the skill sets and tools that are essential for tackling our large-scale public problems, including empathic listeners, effective collaborators, adaptive innovators, capable organizers, fair facilitators, critical interpreters, as well as public and engaged problem solvers,” Lake said.

In addition to this new course, a Design Thinking Initiative task force consisting of students, faculty, staff and West Michigan business leaders has been established. The goal of this planning team is to develop new ways to bring design thinking to Grand Valley. Berry said the task force has discovered many courses at Grand Valley already unknowingly utilize the concepts of design thinking, without using the actual term.

“The values that Design Thinking brings to higher education include the students’ experiences of gaining insights from others, an ability to collaborate and the recognition that the most creative solutions result from dissimilar disciplines working on a common problem. Such values are key to active participation in our society today,” Berry said.

Berry explained that empathy is one of the values at the heart of the Design Thinking ethos. “Gaining an empathetic understanding of those who are most affected by whatever issue, situation, product or service is key to a good solution. So is being open to the opinions of others,” he said.

To help foster the empathy conversation, a special interactive workshop will be held on Thursday, March 19, from 4-6 p.m. in the Kirkhof Center Grand River Room on the Allendale Campus.

“A Design Thinking Initiative Activity: Understanding Empathy” will offer participants an opportunity to learn more about the foundations of empathy and tools to help foster a better understanding of others. Jason Kehrer of New North Center for Design in Business will lead the workshop.

This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. To register, contact Linda Stratton at (616) 331-2181 or [email protected]. Registration deadline is Monday, March 16.

For more information about Grand Valley’s Design Thinking Initiative, visit www.gvsu.edu/designthinking.