Design Thinking Program

Design Thinking Program Overview

Design Thinking is a compulsory course for all first-year science students and an introductory course of minor in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. It is offered in spring, summer and fall semesters. As the first innovative course targeting only science students in China, Design Thinking combines both lectures and project-based learning. The goal of Design Thinking is to enable students to use scientific methods and critical thinking skills to cooperate with multidisciplinary team members and solve real-world problems through a five-step Design Thinking process of sensing, define, ideate, prototype, and test & iterate.

Currently, a full-time faculty member and two innovation instructors are leading the course. Each semester, four to five faculty members are involved in teaching; five to six industry experts will join workshops and project mentoring. All cases and teaching contents are self-developed by School of Entrepreneurship and Management. Students of different disciplines form a study group of four to six. They will solve real industry problems and design feasible solutions by applying technologies. After one semester, students will present and test their solutions among faculties, peers and industry experts to win a simulated investment.

Learning Outcomes

- EMPOWERING science students to solve human-centered problems with critical thinking;

- INSPIRING science students to build leadership during cross-disciplinary cooperation;

- ENCOURAGING science students to deal with uncertainty and face affordable failures.

Teaching Team

Partners

From 2018 to 2019, our guest speakers, collaborators, and mentors are from below organizations: