Thirteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

Design thinking exercises and practices provide a primary multidisciplinary framework for engaging, representing, and establishing dialogs for individuals working within new contexts and cultures. This paper reports on a Design Thinking Study Abroad academic program that offers specific scenarios for exploring material culture, comprehending cross-cultural experiences and collaborations, and developing the global citizen. It inculcates design thinking strategies as an initial course offering in a multi-disciplinary travel program in order to help engage, record, and study the examples of other culture’s complex social, political, economic, and environmental productions, and material artefacts. The course is based on three propositions. Design is ambiguous and can have multiple outcomes. Visually based design thinking practices regard reflexive thinking in situation and alternative as primary and seek to establish multiple viewpoints as a prime constituent in active decision making. Design thinking is not automatic is requires agency. It defines contexts that inculcate direct material and tactile pedagogical practices as modes of heuristic models of thinking, problem-seeking, and proposal. Design demands empathy. It requires the ability change the constitute frames of reference and develop contextual understandings as an initial operational part of any proposal. By introducing means and methods of problem definition, material ideation, and the discussion and testing of possible outcomes in situ; the course serves as a creative catalyst that builds transferable cultural capacities in research partnerships, develops methodologies of addressing complex global problems, and acts as a model or prism for understanding future collaborations and studies.