Carnegie Mellon University, Fall 2011
The term “design thinking” has captured the popular imagination recently, as evidenced in best‐selling books, influential blogs, and even new schools such as the “d school” at Stanford University. But thinking about design thinking has been going on for at least the past fifty years, and designers who think about design are likely to have a far richer understanding of design thinking. So it’s time we enter the fray.
This seminar‐discussion course will examine the notion of “design thinking”, which has become a commonly used term in business, engineering, industrial and product design, and, not least, architecture. It is widely asserted that design involves a different kind of thinking than is common in other disciplines, especially science and engineering disciplines. Is that so? And if so, how? And, what is it good for?