Batangas State University

College of Engineering, Architecture and Fine Arts

ENGG 401 - INTRODUCTION TO ENGINEERING

MODULE 2
DESIGN THINKING

Dr. Elisa D. Gutierrrez

Engr. Janice F. Peralta
Engr. Danica Marie B. Mercado
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

ENGG 401 - INTRODUCTION TO ENGINEERING 1

Course Rationale and Description 1
Intended Learning Outcome 1
Criteria for Assessment 1
Supplemental Content 1

MODULE 2 - DESIGN THINKING 2

Introduction 2
Topic Outcome 2
Lectures 3
Design Thinking: Varied Definitions and Descriptions 3
A Design Methodology 3
A Problem-Solving Approach or Process 3
Phases/Stages of Design Thinking 4
Empathize 5
Define the problem 5
Ideate 6
Prototype 6
Test 6
The Non-Linear Nature of Design Thinking 7
Attributes of Design Thinking 8
Characteristics of Design Thinkers 9
Summing Up… 10
Activities 10
Supplemental Content 10
References 10
ENGG 401 - INTRODUCTION TO ENGINEERING

Course Rationale and Description

Introduction to Engineering is a course designed to teach students about the different

engineering fields and expose them to research opportunities, career possibilities, and
coursework that will challenge and engage them. Engineers must be problem solvers, creative
thinkers, and leaders in order to be successful in the profession. For this to happen, students
need to stay in engineering programs, be pleased with their choice of major, and develop
engineering identity. This introductory course provides a framework for the practice of
engineering. This framework is a broad outline of the tasks and responsibilities of an engineer,
and the use of disciplinary knowledge in executing those tasks. Further, this course aims to
stimulate students' interest and strengthen their motivation for, the field of engineering by
focusing on the application of relevant core engineering disciplines. The course also includes
personal and interpersonal skills knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are essential at the start of
a program to prepare students for a more advanced product, process, and system building
experiences.

Intended Learning Outcome

● ILO1 ​- Develop professional behavior and a code of ethics in areas like project
management, teamwork, and leadership.

● ILO2 ​- Demonstrate understanding in design thinking and engineering design

process to create effective problem statements, and design, build, test, and analyze
a simple prototype product that addresses realistic constraints and system
requirements while using basic project management techniques.

● ILO3 ​- Apply appropriate design process, prototyping, and modern engineering tools
in activity/project building.

Criteria for Assessment

Group Project (GP) 45%
Experiential Learning Activities (ELA) 25%
Self and Peer Assessment (SPA) 10%
Midterm Exam (ME) 20%

Supplemental Content
Course Information Syllabus (CIS) (​link​)
Introduction to Engineering Website (​link​)

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MODULE 2 - DESIGN THINKING

Introduction

Design Thinking is one of the more recent buzz words in the design community. In this module,
you will be well-informed what design thinking is and its main characteristics will be
investigated. The five stages of the design thinking process will be thoroughly discussed in this
section as well as its application in project execution. This module will also take a look at the
process and the methods associated with it.

The overall goal of this design thinking course module is to help you design better products,
services, processes, strategies, spaces, architecture, and experiences. Design thinking helps
you and your team develop practical and innovative solutions for your problems. It is a
human-focused, prototype-driven, innovative design process. Through this module ,it is hoped
that you will develop a solid understanding of the fundamental phases and methods in design
thinking, and you will learn how to implement your newfound knowledge in your professional
work life. This material will provide you practical examples, case studies, videos, and other
useful group activities, which will help you dive further into design thinking.

This course module contains a series of practical exercises and activities that build on one
another to create a complete design thinking project. With these activities, you’ll get invaluable
hands-on experience with the methods you encounter in this course. These learning activities
will help and teach you take your first steps as a design thinking practitioner. What’s equally
important is you can use your work as a case study for your portfolio to showcase your abilities
to future employers.

After going through this module, it is expected that you can systematically extract, teach, learn,
and apply these human-centered techniques in solving problems in a creative way in your
future design activities and businesses to come up with innovative solutions to real-world
problems.

Topic Outcome
1. Operate the five stages of Design Thinking Process : Empathize, Define,
Ideate, Prototype, Test
2. Describe the Design Thinking process as applied in project execution
3. Demonstrate the design thinking processes in developing practical and
innovative solutions to real-world problems

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Lectures

What Is Design Thinking, And Why Is It So Popular?

Some of the world’s leading brands, such as Apple, Google, Samsung, and General Electric,
have rapidly adopted the design thinking approach, and design thinking is being taught at
leading universities around the world. What is design thinking, and why is it so popular and
effective?

Design thinking is not an exclusive property of designers—all great innovators in literature, art,
music, science, engineering, and business have practiced it. So, why call it ‘design thinking’?
What’s special about design thinking is that designers’ work processes can help us
systematically extract, teach, learn and apply these human-centered techniques to solve
problems in a creative and innovative way — in our designs, in our businesses, in our countries,
in our lives.

Design Thinking is a design methodology and iterative process that provides a solution-based
approach to solving problems. It’s extremely useful in tackling complex problems that are
ill-defined or unknown, by understanding the ​human needs involved, by re-framing the problem
in human-centric ways, by creating many ideas in ​brainstorming sessions, and by adopting a
hands-on approach in ​prototyping​ and testing.

Design Thinking: Varied Definitions and Descriptions

There are various ways of teaching and practicing Design Thinking, and definitions and
descriptions vary accordingly.

A Design Methodology
Basically, Design Thinking is a design methodology. It differs from traditional design approaches
in specific ways. For example, some authors characterize Design Thinking as more creative and
user-centered than traditional design approaches.

A Problem-Solving Approach or Process

Design Thinking can be regarded as a problem solving method or, by some definitions, a
process for the resolution of problems. As a solution-based approach to solving problems,
Design Thinking is particularly useful for addressing so-called “wicked” problems. Wicked
means that they are ill-defined or tricky. For ill-defined problems, both the problem and the
solution are unknown at the outset of the problem-solving process (as opposed to “tame” or
“well-defined” problems, where the problem is evident and the solution is possible with some

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technical knowledge.) Even when the general direction of the problem may be clear,
considerable time and effort is spent on clarifying the requirements. Thus, in Design Thinking, a
large part of the problem-solving activity consists of defining and shaping the problem.

A Creativity Approach

Unlike analytical thinking, which is associated with the “breaking down” of ideas, Design
Thinking is a creative process based on the “building up” of ideas. Analytical approaches focus
on narrowing the design choices, while Design Thinking focuses on going broad, at least during
the early stages of the process.

A User-Centered Approach That Brings Design into the Business World

Design Thinking is a more creative and user-centered approach to problem solving than
traditional design methods. They point out that “Design Thinking defies the obvious and instead
embraces a more experimental approach.” The heart of the method is in understanding the
customer: All ideas and subsequent work stem from knowing the customer.

The Design Thinking methodology is not just applied to design problems. Design Thinking is
seen as a way to apply design methodologies to any of life’s situations. It is often used to
explore and define business problems and to define products and services. In other words,
Design Thinking brings the design approach into the business world. In this vein, Design
Thinking has been characterized as a discipline in which the designer’s sensibility and methods
match people’s needs, by applying what is technically feasible and by contemplating what a
viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity. As a
methodology or style of thinking, it combines ​empathy ​for the context of a problem, ​creativity in
the generation of insights and solutions, and ​rationality and ​feedback to analyze and fit solutions
to the context – All this helps derive a solution that meets user needs and at the same time
generates revenue, that is, drives business success.

Phases/Stages of Design Thinking

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We will focus on the five-stage Design Thinking model proposed by the Hasso-Plattner Institute
of Design at Stanford (d.school). d.school is the leading university when it comes to teaching
Design Thinking. The five stages of Design Thinking, according to d.school, are as follows:
Empathize, Define (the problem), Ideate, Prototype, and ​Test​. Let’s take a closer look at the five
different stages of Design Thinking. Understanding these five stages of ​Design Thinking will
empower anyone to apply the Design Thinking methods in order to solve complex problems that
occur around us - in our companies, in our countries, and even on the scale of our planet.

1. Empathize

The first stage of the Design Thinking process is to gain an empathic understanding of the
problem you are trying to solve. This involves consulting experts to find out more about the area
of concern through observing, engaging and empathizing with people to understand their
experiences and motivations, as well as immersing yourself in the physical environment so you
can gain a deeper personal understanding of the issues involved. ​Empathy is crucial to a
human-centered ​design process such as Design Thinking, and empathy allows design thinkers
to set aside their own ​assumptions about the world in order to gain insight into users and their
needs. Depending on time constraints, a substantial amount of information is gathered at this
stage to use during the next stage and to develop the best possible understanding of the users,
their needs, and the problems that underlie the development of that particular product.

2. Define the problem

During the Define stage, you put together the information you have created and gathered during
the Empathise stage. This is where you will analyze your observations and synthesize them in
order to define the core problems that you and your team have identified up to this point. You
should seek to define the problem as a ​problem statement​ in a human-centered manner.

To illustrate, instead of ​defining the problem as your own wish or a need of the company such
as, “We need to increase our food-product market share among young teenage girls by 5%,” a
much better way to define the problem would be, “Teenage girls need to eat nutritious food in
order to thrive, be healthy and grow.

The Define stage will help the designers in your team gather great ideas to establish features,
functions, and any other elements that will allow them to solve the problems or, at the very least,
allow users to resolve issues themselves with the minimum of difficulty. In the Define stage you
will start to progress to the third stage,

Ideate, by asking questions which can help you look for ideas for solutions by asking: “How
might we… encourage teenage girls to perform an action that benefits them and also involves
your company’s food-product or service?”

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 3. Ideate

During the third stage of the Design Thinking process, designers are ready to start generating
ideas. You’ve grown to understand your users and their needs in the Empathize stage, and
you’ve analyzed and synthesized your observations in the Define stage, and ended up with a
human-centered problem statement. With this solid background, you and your team members
can start to "think outside the box" to identify new solutions to the problem statement you’ve
created, and you can start to look for alternative ways of viewing the problem. There are
hundreds of ​Ideation techniques such as Brainstorm, Brainwrite, ​Worst Possible Idea​, and
SCAMPER​. Brainstorm and Worst Possible Idea sessions are typically used to stimulate free
thinking and to expand the problem space. It is important to get as many ideas or problem
solutions as possible at the beginning of the Ideation phase. You should pick some other
Ideation techniques by the end of the Ideation phase to help you investigate and test your ideas
so you can find the best way to either solve a problem or provide the elements required to
circumvent it.

4. Prototype

The design team will now produce a number of inexpensive, scaled down versions of the
product or specific features found within the product, so they can investigate the problem
solutions generated in the previous stage. Prototypes may be shared and tested within the team
itself, in other departments, or on a small group of people outside the design team. This is an
experimental phase, and the aim is to identify the best possible solution for each of the
problems identified during the first three stages. The solutions are implemented within the
prototypes, and, one by one, they are investigated and either accepted, improved and
re-examined, or rejected on the basis of the users’ experiences. By the end of this stage, the
design team will have a better idea of the constraints inherent to the product and the problems
that are present, and have a clearer view of how real users would behave, think, and feel when
interacting with the end product.

5. Test

Designers or evaluators rigorously test the complete product using the best solutions identified
during the prototyping phase. This is the final stage of the 5 stage-model, but in an iterative
process, the results generated during the testing phase are often used to redefine one or more
problems and inform the understanding of the users, the conditions of use, how people think,
behave, and feel, and to empathize. Even during this phase, alterations and refinements are
made in order to rule out problem solutions and derive as deep an understanding of the product
and its users as possible.

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The Non-Linear Nature of Design Thinking

We may have outlined a direct and linear Design Thinking process in which one stage
seemingly leads to the next with a logical conclusion at user testing. However, in practice, the
process is carried out in a more flexible and non-linear fashion. For example, different groups
within the design team may conduct more than one stage concurrently, or the designers may
collect information and prototype during the entire project so as to enable them to bring their
ideas to life and visualize the problem solutions. Also, results from the testing phase may reveal
some insights about users, which in turn may lead to another brainstorming session (Ideate) or
the development of new prototypes (Prototype).
It is important to note that the five stages are not always sequential — they do not have to follow
any specific order and they can often occur in parallel and be repeated iteratively. As such, the
stages should be understood as different modes that contribute to a project, rather than
sequential steps. However, the amazing thing about the five-stage Design Thinking model is
that it systematizes and identifies the 5 stages/modes you would expect to carry out in a design
project – and in any innovative problem-solving project. Every project will involve activities
specific to the product under development, but the central idea behind each stage remains the
same.

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Designers or evaluators rigorously test the complete product using the best solutions identified
during the prototyping phase. This is the final stage of the 5 stage-model, but in an iterative
process, the results generated during the testing phase are often used to redefine one or more
problems and inform the understanding of the users, the conditions of use, how people think,
behave, and feel, and to empathize. Even during this phase, alterations and refinements are
made in order to rule out problem solutions and derive as deep an understanding of the product
and its users as possible.

Attributes of Design Thinking

Table 1 below lists the summary of the Design Thinking ​core attributes​, together with their
descriptions. To provide a better overview of the attributes, some comments based on the
definitions were also given.

Table 1​: Core Attributes of Design Thinking

ATTRIBUTE DESCRIPTION COMMENT

Ambiguity Being comfortable when Design Thinking addresses wicked ,

things are unclear or when ill-defined and tricky problems.
you don’t know the answer

Collaborative Working together across People design in interdisciplinary

disciplines teams.

Constructive Creating new ideas based on Design Thinking is a solution-based

old ideas, which can also be approach that looks for an improved
the most successful ideas future result.

Curiosity Being interested in things you Considerable time and effort is spent
don’t understand or on clarifying the requirements. A large
perceiving things with fresh part of the problem solving activity,
eyes then, consists of problem definition
and problem shaping.

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Empathy Seeing and understanding The focus is on user needs (problem
things from your customers’ context).
point of view

Holistic Looking at the bigger context Design Thinking attempts to meet user
for the customer needs and also drive business
success.

Iterative A cyclical process where The Design Thinking process is

improvements are made to a typically non-sequential and may
solution or idea regardless of include feedback loops and cycles
the phase (see below).

Nonjudgmental Creating ideas with no Particularly in the brainstorming

judgment toward the idea phase, there are no early judgments.
creator or the idea

Open mindset Embracing design thinking as The method encourages “outside the
an approach for any problem box thinking” (“wild ideas”); it defies
regardless of industry or the obvious and embraces a more
scope. experimental approach.

Source: ​ (from Baeck & Gremett, 2011) with descriptions and comments

Characteristics​ of Design Thinkers

There is a certain overlap between the attributes of Design Thinking and the characteristics of
Design Thinkers, because the latter perform the former. Following are the characteristics of
design thinkers:
● Focus on human values and needs. Have empathy for the people, solicit user feedback,
and use it in their designs
● Make experimentation an integral part of the design process, are active “doers”,
communicate through meaningful artifacts
● Collaborate with people from various backgrounds and respects their viewpoints; enable
“breakthrough insights and solutions to emerge from the diversity”.
● Can deal with wicked problems, are curious and optimistic, are integrative (holistic)
thinkers who look at the bigger context for the customer.
● Are mindful of the overall Design Thinking process with respect to goals and method

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Summing Up…

Design thinking is essentially a problem-solving approach specific to design, which involves

assessing known aspects of a problem and identifying the more ambiguous or peripheral factors
that contribute to the conditions of a problem. This contrasts with a more scientific approach
where the concrete and known aspects are tested in order to arrive at a solution. Design
thinking is an iterative process in which knowledge is constantly being questioned and acquired
so it can help us redefine a problem in an attempt to identify alternative strategies and solutions
that might not be instantly apparent with our initial level of understanding. Design thinking is
often referred to as ‘outside the box thinking’, as designers are attempting to develop new ways
of thinking that do not abide by the dominant or more common problem-solving methods – just
like artists do. At the heart of design thinking is the intention to improve products by analyzing
how users interact with products and investigating the conditions in which they operate. Design
thinking offers us a means of digging that bit deeper to uncover ways of improving user
experiences. Companies are facing ill-defined and complex problems every day—and bringing
design.

Activities
ELA 0A - POEMS (Activity Guide [​pdf​])
ELA 0B - 100 uses (Activity Guide [​pdf​])
ELA 1 - Wallet Challenger (Activity Guide [​pdf​])
ELA 2 - Design Thinking Implementation (Activity Guide [pdf] )
Review Quiz 2 [​Google Form​]

Supplemental Content
Watch the following videos about “Design Thinking” in Introduction to Engineering
website [ ​link​ ]

References
Gerd Waloszek (2012), ​Introduction to Design Thinking,​
https://experience.sap.com/skillup/introduction-to-design-thinking/
Design Thinking: The Beginner’s Guide,​ Retrieved July 31, 2020, from
https://www.interaction-design.org/courses/design-thinking-the-beginner-s-guide
Rikke Friis Dam and Teo Yu Siang (2020, July 15). Interaction Design Foundation. ​What
is Design Thinking and why is it so Popular​?
https://www.interaction-design.org/newsletter/
The Basics of User Experience Design by Interaction Design Foundation
https://www.interactiondesign.org/newsletter

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