What Is Design the Future? Posted on June 26, 2016 by Renato Linares
Before this week I could not have answered that question. I imagined a group of students, well, designing things – right? Walking through the walls of d. school at Stanford University, I soon found this wasn’t the case. Design the Future, a DC Design program in collaboration with the d. school at Stanford, began by moving the minds and bodies of students with a bilingual call and response exercise. Right then and there I was immediately intrigued. This summer program focuses on the process of building and designing with the user at its epicenter, also know as the “design thinking process.” Diving right in, the students are paired into groups and given the challenge to redesign their partner’s morning routine.
DC Design host an array of workshops at Stanford’s d.school. Partner with us to schedule your next Design Thinking session. As the room fills with questions like, “What do you do in the morning?” “What time do you wake up?” “Do you eat breakfast? ”, the design thinking process reveals its first step –Empathy. By asking these questions the students develop an understanding of their partner’s needs and obstacles that they face in the early hours of the day. Expanding on the exercise, the mentors now ask the students, “How can you improve your partner’s morning?” This is where it gets interesting…. Keying in on what they’ve learned, they capture their findings and take a stand on the problem. Sharing their ideas and crafting their first prototypes, they use an array of supplies (glue, play dough, paper, pencils) and design a device that assists their partner through out their routine. Reflecting on the process, mentors ask the students, “What worked?” “Could you design your next model better?” These questions help the students learn and become aware of their own thought process. Design the Future is a program that not only teaches students the power of design, but also enriches their lives by providing the tools to define who and what they want to be while giving them a path on how to get there.