ECE553 Design Thinking

• What is design thinking
• Problems in design processes and how these are addressed through design thinking
• What are the benefits of design thinking to entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship?
• Human centred design processes
• How design thinking contributes to more effective design of products, services, and processes
• What is a empathy
• Empathy processes, deploying observation, engagement with users, experiencing the user environment
• What is the definition of a problem statement
• Processes for effectively building a problem statement that accurately reflects actual and not perceived needs
• What is ideation
• Ideation processes for the generation of a multitude of ideas for addressing a given problem
• What is prototype design
• Processes for building effective prototypes that, when deployed by users, can generate effective feedback on the suitability and effectiveness of a proposed solution
• What is evaluation
• Evaluation processes that produce effective feedback that reflects the user’s experience and feelings when being exposed to a proposed solutions
• Design thinking cases
• Design thinking projects

Upon completion of the course students will be able to:

• Understand design thinking and related concepts
• Understand the applications of design thinking in entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship towards designing products, services, and processes that more effectively address user needs
• Understand design thinking approaches and steps such as empathy, problem statement definition, ideation, prototyping, evaluation
• Be able to apply design thinking principles and approaches in practice in human centred design activities that can bring change to the industry and society