The Principle and Method of Design Thinking for Innovation is a course offered to university students for the purpose of increasing their innovation awareness and improve their capabilities of creative practices, systematically teaching the methodological system of design thinking for innovation. The instructional design of this course will guide the students to learn about origin and development of design thinking, and understand the principles, ideas, methods and diverse tools of design thinking for innovation. It will also guide the students to know how to understand backgrounds of problems through interviews and surveys in combination with the design thinking procedures for innovation. Then, focus on defining core problems, to perform divergent thinking, give insight into opportunities and ideate. Then, proceed to prototype making, testing, validation, feedback and iteration. Finally, present and deliver systematic processes of the "products". Gradually perform innovation and entrepreneurship practices, to solve realistic problems. The course also helps the students understand how to put design thinking in practices, and fosters their abilities to understand others with empathy and transposition thinking. It supports the students to perform people-oriented designs, think over solutions from the perspective of system innovations, match technical feasibility and business strategies with user needs, integrate and create actual value.
The characteristics of this course are reflected as follows:
1. Integrate principles, methods and other knowledge of design thinking with professional learning and innovation practices based on the idea of specialty and innovation integration, to inspire students to give play to their expertise in innovation practices with design thinking methods, and promote systematic thinking training through innovation practices.
2. Pay attention to capability training, and lead students to pay attention to real-life scenarios in combination with case-based teaching and group cooperative learning, to foster their creative thinking abilities and improve their confidence in project practices in a problem-driven manner.
3. Introduce ideological and political education into the course. Based on the course content, integrate value cultivation in combination with the people-oriented concept of design thinking and abundant case materials on satisfaction of user needs by embedding, penetration and extension, to cultivate students' humanistic spirit and initiatives for making innovations.
In a new era, everyone has the chance to foster their innovation potential and give play to their creativity. Design thinking highlights the people-oriented value concept. It is open, diverse, associative and integrative, so it is helpful for stimulating the initiatives for innovation. Guide university students to combine real problems and social needs in the real world with professional learning, actively explore social networks for cross-domain cooperation, think creatively, act efficiently, actively face opportunities and challenges in the real world, and better adapt to the needs of the era for today's innovation-driven development.
