Marketing Education Review

ISSN: 1052-8008 (Print) 2153-9987 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/mmer20

DESIGN THINKING AND DIGITAL MARKETING

SKILLS IN MARKETING EDUCATION: A MODULE ON
BUILDING MOBILE APPLICATIONS

Kristen Schiele & Steven Chen

To cite this article: Kristen Schiele & Steven Chen (2018): DESIGN THINKING AND DIGITAL
MARKETING SKILLS IN MARKETING EDUCATION: A MODULE ON BUILDING MOBILE
APPLICATIONS, Marketing Education Review, DOI: 10.1080/10528008.2018.1448283

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10528008.2018.1448283

Published online: 26 Mar 2018.

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 DESIGN THINKING AND DIGITAL MARKETING SKILLS IN MARKETING
EDUCATION: A MODULE ON BUILDING MOBILE APPLICATIONS
Kristen Schielea and Steven Chenb
a
International Business and Marketing Department, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA, USA;
b
Department of Marketing, Mihaylo College of Business and Economics, California State University, Fullerton, CA, USA

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how marketing educators can utilize the design-
thinking process to create an engaged, high-impact learning experience for students. The guidelines
of the assignment outlined in this article show how marketing students can utilize the design-
thinking process in order to create a mobile application that meet the needs of target consumers.
This adaptable assignment was tested in two types of marketing courses, and findings indicate that
students improved in the areas of empathy, creativity, communication skills, technology skills,
critical thinking, and collaboration.

INTRODUCTION specificity as it relates to actual frameworks and exercises

More and more practitioners are utilizing a designer’s
approach to generate innovative ideas by empathizing
with the consumer experience (Dunne & Martin,
2006). Leading firms like IDEO have developed bespoke
design-thinking approaches to innovate products and
services for clients such as Steelcase, Bank of America,
and Kaiser Permanente. Following in the footsteps of
practitioners, vanguard educational institutions, such
as Stanford University and the University of Toronto,
have developed popular executive programs that inte-
grate business and design.
Design thinking refers to the mental and physical pro-
cesses that help firms achieve creative design outcomes
(Chen & Venkatesh, 2013). Multiple approaches to design
thinking exist, although many will incorporate stages of
problem identification, ideation, concept development,
and concept implementation (e.g., Best, 2015; Design
Council, 2015). In marketing pedagogy, design thinking
is steered toward improving the originality and usefulness
of students’ creative outcomes, especially in a product-
design setting (Love, Stone, & Wilton, 2011). While mar-
keting education scholarship identifies the need for inte-
grating design thinking with marketing, it offers little
Address correspondence to Kristen Schiele, International
Business and Marketing Department, California State
Polytechnic University, 3801 W. Temple Ave, Pomona, CA
91768. Email: krschiele@cpp.edu
(Dunne & Martin, 2006; Glen, Suciu, & Baughn, 2014).
The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how
marketing educators can use the design-thinking pro-
cess in their course curriculum. Specifically, the article
provides a design-thinking exercise that can be inte-
grated into marketing courses.
CONCEPTUAL BACKGROUND
Marketing scholarship has long recognized the impor-
tance of product design in augmenting firms’ marketing
strategies (Bloch, 1995). From the vantage of firms, design
is a way to visually differentiate products from those of
competitors (Homburg, Schwemmle, & Kuehnl, 2015).
For consumers, design is a source of aesthetic value
(Bloch, Brunel, & Arnold, 2003), a determinant of pro-
duct choice (Creusen, 2011), and a means by which they
express their self-identity (Kumar & Noble, 2016). But the
mere recognition of design’s value is different than
“doing design,” and that is where the domain of design
thinking comes in.
Design thinking refers to a variety of methods that aid
in the development of products and services (Chen
& Venkatesh, 2013). The implementation of design think-
ing can occur throughout several stages, and the number
of stages may depend on the specific model of design
thinking. For instance, the Stanford D. School, which
offers executive design education, articulates a five-stage
model: Empathy, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. In
the Empathy phase, students seek to understand people in

Marketing Education Review, vol. 00, no. 00 (2018), pp. 1–5.

Copyright Ó 2018 Society for Marketing Advances
ISSN: 1052–8008 (print) / ISSN 2153–9987 (online)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10528008.2018.1448283
2 Marketing Education Review
the context of a consumption experience through obser-
vation studies. In Define, students concretize design pro-
blems that were discovered in the previous step. In Ideate,
students engage in brainstorming sessions to design a
solution to the problem. In the Prototype phase, quality
ideas are selected and mocked up through wireframes,
storyboards, or 3-D models. Finally, in the Test phase
students seek feedback on their ideas from target consu-
mers. Other models include the Double Diamond (Design
Council, 2015) and Best’s (2015) three-stage model.
As practitioners increasingly adopt design thinking to
achieve innovation, business educators have followed in
kind and have begun to integrate design thinking into
business curricula to enhance students’ creative skills.
Yet, outside of a few notable exceptions (Love et al.,
2011), research in marketing education is largely prescrip-
tive—identifying the need for design thinking, but falling
short of providing actual models or exercises (Dunne
& Martin, 2006; Glen et al., 2014). Design thinking is
recognized for its effectiveness in organizational
innovation, and there is a natural connection between
innovation skills and essential design-thinking elements
such as empathy, listening, collaboration, and experi-
mentation (Lee, 2016). For the purpose of fostering inno-
vative problem solving, this article adopts design
thinking as a pedagogical approach to teaching critical
thinking in marketing curriculum.
Figure 1
Empathy Map with Examples
DESIGN-THINKING ASSIGNMENT
For this assignment, teams of four to five students used
the design-thinking process to solve a problem facing
new university students. Each of the following steps was
completed in a single class session, with the exception of
focus groups, which were completed outside of class. All
of these steps took approximately 30–60 minutes to com-
plete during five class sessions throughout a 10-week
quarter. Steps 1–4 were worth 25 points each and were
graded on completion by due dates. Step 5, the final
presentation, was worth 100 points.
Step 1: Create an Empathy Map to Discover the
Needs of the Target Market
The first step is to create an empathy map, a collabora-
tive tool used to gain a more thorough understanding of
the consumer and their real needs (Ferreira, Silva,
Oliveira, & Conte, 2015). For the empathy-mapping
session, the students were given 30–45 minutes in class
and the professor provided each group of students the
following prompt and a blank empathy-map handout:
What would new students say, do, think, and feel? The
groups answered questions in the quadrants of the
empathy map. Figure 1 shows an example of a com-
pleted empathy map.

Step 2: Define the Problem of the Target Market
and Brainstorm How to Solve it With a Mobile
Application
The prompt in this step was for teams to identify pro-
blems that new students face by analyzing the empathy
map and grouping items into problem categories. For
example, one group’s empathy map identified new stu-
dent problems, which included not knowing where to
go, getting lost on campus, and the inability to locate
their classrooms. The group organized these items as
one specific problem category, and determined that
their application would solve the problem of helping
students navigate the campus.
After groups decided which specific problem they
wanted to focus on, they determined how the problem
could be resolved using a mobile application. This idea-
tion phase is a creative process where students are
prompted to create a list of various innovative options.
During a 30–45 minute brainstorming session, the teams
used critical thinking and creativity to step beyond
obvious solutions to increase the innovation potential
and leverage the collective perspectives and strengths of
all the group members to explore solutions.
Step 3: Create a Wireframe Prototype of a
Mobile Application
Next, students created a prototype of the mobile
application. To assist them in designing a prototype,
another in-class brainstorming session was conducted
where the groups were asked to reflect on what mobile
applications have personally helped them in the past.
Before working on their own prototype, groups spent
15–20 minutes discussing applications they have used in
the past, and then how to incorporate relevant aspects into
their own application. Then the instructor provided stu-
dents handouts of blank mobile application wireframes.
Students were given 30–45 minutes to work on a prototype
in class. Wireframes are essentially mock-ups of what each
page of the mobile application will look like, notes on what
features are available on each page, and directions on how
the buttons on each page will take the user to other pages.
Step 4: Test the Mobile Application—Get
Feedback from Peers and Refine the Prototype
Focus groups were conducted outside of class and ran for
60–90 minutes. Each team presented their prototype to
Summer 2018 3
a focus group consisting of seven to ten new students at
the university. Teams communicated the features of the
prototype and received feedback on the user experience
and app features. The students posed a series of open-
ended questions that moved from general (i.e., what
problems are you currently having?) to more specific
questions based on responses given by the participants.
Before students conducted the focus groups, however,
the instructor gave a lecture on how to use several pro-
jective techniques (i.e., metaphors, third-party projec-
tions, role playing, word associations) to receive more
in-depth feedback from participants. For example, by
showing the focus group a picture of a new student on
campus and asking the group to describe what is hap-
pening in the picture, they can uncover deeper mean-
ings and problems that may be less accessible by direct
questioning (McGrath, Sherry, & Levy, 1993).
Based on feedback, the teams collaborated to redefine
their prototypes on new wireframes that showed the
modifications. One modification example was from a
team trying to solve the problem of “meeting new peo-
ple.” The team’s original prototype was an app to give
students updates of activities happening on campus so
they could attend and meet new people. But focus-group
participants said they would first prefer to connect with
people online before meeting in person, so the team
modified their app to include a chatroom and newsfeed
where students could interact before attending events.
Overall, most focus groups confirmed that the apps were
helpful in solving new-student problems, so only minor
changes were needed, such as the placement of buttons
and the navigation from one page to another, which
made the application more user-friendly.
Step 5: Presentation of the Final Prototype in
Class
At the end of the term, each group created a 15-minute
PowerPoint presentation and communicated their
design-thinking process and final prototype to the pro-
fessor and their classmates. The presentation included
visuals of what was created in each step, such as the
empathy map, wireframes, and updated wireframes.
Students also included the themes discovered during
their brainstorming sessions to display their creativity
and critical thinking throughout the project. During
the presentations the students also discussed their
focus-group findings and what they learned from
being a part of this project and collaborating as a team.
4 Marketing Education Review
METHODOLOGY AND DISCUSSION
Qualitative, open-ended follow-up assessments were
administered at the end of the term to 75 juniors and
seniors in three course sections of Consumer Behavior
and Digital Marketing. The instructor administered
assessments for students to reflect on their overall experi-
ence using design thinking and to evaluate whether the
assignment helped them meet learning objectives.
According to student assessments, many students
reported they had heard the term “design thinking”
before, but this was the first time they actually used the
process. Additionally, the module was students’ first
experience creating a mobile application. Learning how
to design an application was one of the students’ biggest
challenges, but it was also the most rewarding part.
Students indicated that they learned how to apply the
needs of a target consumer to product design. Students
self-reported that they improved in the areas of empathy,
communication skills, technology skills, critical think-
ing, and collaboration.
Marketing education scholarship recognizes the
importance of integrating design thinking into the
classroom to enhance students’ creative outcomes
(Dunne & Martin, 2006; Glen et al., 2014). This article
contributes to the literature by explicating a multistep
design-thinking assignment, centered on the develop-
ment of a mobile application. After this assignment,
students reported that they had improved in four ele-
ments of learning: critical thinking, communication,
collaboration, and creativity. In Steps 1–3, students
used critical thinking to think through consumer
needs and articulate their problems. In Step 3 they
used creativity skills to determine how to solve a pro-
blem with a mobile application. In Steps 1–3 they used
communication skills to discuss ideas with teammates,
and in Step 4 they communicated mobile app capabil-
ities with a focus group. In Step 5 they communicated
their ideas to the professor and the class in their final
presentations. Throughout the project (Steps 1–5) stu-
dents collaborated with a team to create a final proto-
type and presentation. Our results are based on student
assessments, and for future assignments and research
we recommend that instructors administer pre- and
posttests to students to rate their skills on a five-point
scale in order to further measure student outcomes.
The assignment is adaptable and can be modified in
a few ways. For a consumer behavior course this project
can be spread out throughout the entire term, with
steps broken up over time and a final presentation at
the end. Another adaptation is for students to work on
this assignment in one class session, with all steps
being followed (except for conducting a focus group
to test and refine the prototype), and students would
give short presentations at the end of class. This project
can also be implemented in a digital marketing course,
where groups can create mobile applications using a
free development program available online (e.g., Wix).
CONCLUSION
This article shows how marketing educators can utilize
design thinking to create an innovative learning experi-
ence. The course curriculum is different from existing
instruction methods, and it creates a memorable hands-
on student experience. When students work in a group to
solve a problem and produce a product, they actively
participate and collaborate with their team. This assign-
ment is novel because it demonstrates the possibilities
associated with conducting design-thinking projects in
marketing courses.
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