[EAS] Design Thinking

[Peter J. Kindlmann]

As the facets of engineering, and engineering education, continue to
multiply, it is increasingly difficult for students to grasp any
attractive central theme to attract them to engineering. Design is
such a theme, but it is possible to teach it well only with
experience not typical in much of academia.
Stanford's design program does it well, and is increasingly
recognized as supplying an exciting unifying theme despite highly
diverse engineering ingredients.  David Kelly is one of the founders
of IDEO <http://www.ideo.com/>, arguably _the_ design firm in the
world. Many complex technological products you see  at their site
were _entirely_ designed by IDEO, they are just marketed by the
companies  whose name you associate with those products.  --PJK

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(from INNOVATION, 21 September 2005)

THE POWER OF DESIGN THINKING
       The goal of Stanford's d-school is to train students to be
innovators, says co-founder David Kelley. The school takes a
multidisciplinary approach to teaching that uses "design as the glue that
can hold different disciplines together and uses design thinking as the
methodology
 What they learn is a new way of thinking and a new way of
solving interesting, challenging problems. The d.school will provide
students with design empathy in two ways: empathy for other disciplines and
empathy for the person who will benefit from the product, service or
environment they are designing for them," says Kelley, who touts the
importance of "design thinking" to innovation in business. "It's not just
for 'designers' in the traditional sense of the word. It is unique and
powerful because it's not content specific. It is a way of taking risks and
making creative leaps. It is the perfect complement to analytical thinking.
Design thinking is data and planning based. By applying both design and
analytical thinking together, the results are very different kinds of
innovation." (NextD Issue 7)
<http://www.nextd.org/02/07/03/index.html>

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