Girls In Tech

Follow me @AlliStrouse

This weekend, I participated in a Design Thinking Worship at the d school at Stanford University. The d school started five years ago with the mission to bring people together to teach the design thinking method and create an environment for people work together to solve big problems.

This Saturday, from 9am to 2pm, Stanford design school students taught a group of 85 people from all walks of life (engineering, medicine, business, the humanities, and education…both university and non-university affiliated) the process of design thinking….

1. Empathy

2. Define

3. Ideate

4. Prototype

5. Test

We applied the above design thinking method to bring improvements to the airport boarding process.

1. Empathy: Groups of 5 participants interviewed a handful of people who had both good and bad flying experiences

2. Define: We huddled and brainstormed what the main issues were by analyzing what the interviewees said, did, thought and felt. We narrowed this down to one main issue for us to solve

3. Ideate: We came up with ideas to solve the problem

4. Prototype: We created a physical prototype of what our solution would look like

5. Test: We shared our prototype with our interviewees and got their feedback

It is rare to be in an environment where you are encouraged at all times to think creatively and have no boundaries in your ideas for innovation. Anyone who wants to tap into their creative minds and brainstorm with other creative people, I encourage you to look into workshops at the d school Click here to learn more about the d school workshops.

Here are some photos from the event: