Design Thinking for Digital Projects

Catalog description

Design thinking as a strategy and toolkit is usually defined as having five stages: Empathize, Define the problem, Ideate, Prototyping, and Testing. A crucial step in effective use of this toolkit is learning how to use empathizing with an audience or public, and learning what questions to ask in order to ideate. Students in DIGC 2200 will build on critical thinking and technological context from DIGC 1200 and DIGC 1600 , applying these skills to understanding specific problems in digital spaces. We will examine case studies from this perspective, and unpack both the strengths and weaknesses of how each scenario was developed and executed, to build a lens students can apply to their own Design Thinking project, the culmination of the course. We will build on skills using an ethnographic approach to understanding communities and their diverse needs.