Design Thinking Action Lab provided by Stanford University

A life-changing course. This summer I completed the free online class, Design Thinking Action Lab provided by Stanford University through NovoEd at https://novoed.com/designthinking. This six-week experiential course focused on the skills and mindsets of design thinking, a methodology for creative problem-solving used by companies and organizations to drive a culture of innovation. The class was set up to help students learn the design thinking process by tackling a real world innovation challenge. The challenge was to help someone who has a stake in the school-to-work transition, and defining a need related to the challenge. I explored the main design thinking concepts through short videos, each paired with brief activities to practice relevant methods and approaches. With participants from around the world we shared our experiences and exchanged feedback. The process helped to develop self-reflection habits through peers reviewing each other’s submissions. By the end of the course, I learned through experience the mindsets and basic tools for each stage of the design thinking process: 1. Empathize: understanding the needs of those you are designing for (ask the right questions, really listen, survey). 2. Define: framing problems as opportunities for creative solutions. 3. Ideate: generating a range of possible solutions (before I usually stopped at about 10 ideas, now I am encouraged to think of many more, like a goal of 50!). 4. Prototype: communicating the core elements of solutions to others (be sure to create the right solution and if you get it wrong, then try again and prototypes help creators & stakeholders to visualize ideas better). 5. Test: learning what works and doesn’t work to improve solutions (this helps to reveal if the solution is what is really needed).  In conclusion: empathizing, defining, ideation, creation of prototypes, and testing will cultivate my creative solutions in my personal life and with our library marketing challenges. How was it life changing? With every challenge that comes up I realize that there can many ways to perceive the challenge and many ways to satisfy a need. If you are interested, Stanford offers free classes at http://online.stanford.edu/courses.