SPEC 16
Liberal Arts for Epic Challenges: Design Thinking for Social Change Winter 2020

This is not the current course catalog

A workshop that will involve learning and applying design thinking techniques to develop creative human-centered solutions to a significant, complex social problem, like loneliness in the community or transforming travel around small towns. The actual topic will be one of several proposed in a global competition from London’s Royal Society of Arts; course projects will be submitted against students from around the world in March. Work will occur in two teams; the experience will emphasize techniques for creative confidence, learning to take risks and advance from failures, creative collaboration, and focusing problem solving on human-centered solutions-similar to how innovation is explored in design firms, start-ups, government agencies, and NGOs. The workshop will meet twice a week for 3 hours. There are few readings (mostly manuals on techniques from leading consultancies), but will involve ethnographic research in observing and exploring how real people perceive the problem and solution and team meetings between classes to brainstorm ideas. For more on design thinking, see Williams.edu/designthinking.