Design Thinking: Beyond the Bounds of Your Own Head

This class aims to extrapolate some of the claims Design Thinking makes about the externalization of ideas and “getting out of your head". Design practices that seek to externalize ideas—such as empathy mapping, sketching, prototyping, concept mapping, etc.—are rooted in the idea that thinking happens outside the head, which is based on earlier work within psychology, cognitive science, and philosophy. This class aims to bring these connections to the surface in order to fully understand them. It will focus on how a deeper understanding of cognition embodied in the world can contribute to better design practices.

Design Thinking stresses the importance of cultivating empathy for end users, interpreting and framing problems they experience, creative solution generation, and continuous prototyping and testing. Embedded within Design Thinking is the assumption that we must think “outside ourselves.” Great design doesn’t happen within the four walls of a studio or office. It happens in the real world.