12.0.0 Designing Social Change

This course offers a transformative journey to help you create solutions for everyday challenges and become an innovative problem solver. This powerful approach, also known as "design thinking," begins by putting people at the heart of the process, ensuring solutions are tailor-made for their specific needs.

Your journey starts with the Inspiration phase, where you cultivate deep empathy by immersing yourself in people's lives to truly understand their needs and aspirations. This involves engaging in one-on-one conversations, observing daily experiences, and seeking insights from diverse users to fuel your creativity.

Next, the Ideation phase becomes your "big idea party," where you generate tons of ideas without judgment. You'll synthesize learnings into actionable insights and inspiring "How Might We" questions, then brainstorm freely. Crucially, you'll engage in rapid prototyping, making ideas tangible to test assumptions and learn from every experiment, viewing "failure" as a powerful tool for discovery. Whether it's a simple model or a role-play, you'll gather real-world feedback quickly.

Finally, the Implementation phase focuses on bringing your innovative solution to life and to market. Through live prototypes and pilots, you'll test desirability, feasibility, and viability in real-world conditions, continuously gathering feedback and iterating. This ensures your solution truly fits needs and achieves long-term impact and sustainability.
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The course aims to unlock your creative confidence—the belief that you have big ideas and the ability to act on them. You'll gain improved collaboration, effective community engagement, and a fresh perspective, making problem-solving more fun and helping you get "unstuck".

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Section 1 Objectives
By the end of this topic, students should be able to:

• explain the central concepts of Human Centered Design
• discuss the benefits of working collaboratively and cooperatively
• understand the stages of design thinking and the design process
• understand the role creativity, empathy and innovation plays in design thinking
• list common applications for the human centered design process
• summarize the inspiration phase of human centered design
• summarize the ideation phase of human centered design
• summarize the implementation phase of human centered design
• list and define the different mindsets of a human centered designer
• apply the principles of design thinking to solving a variety of challenges
• understand the importance of practical application of human centered design
• welcome and accept differing viewpoints and perspectives from others
• summarize the characteristics of a thoughtful, personal interview
• apply note-taking skills as interviews as part of the interview process
• define the term “prototype” as it relates to the design process
• list and explain a wide variety of forms of a prototype
• recognize the importance of offering quality feedback and reflection
• recognize the importance of sharing research results with others

Section 2 Objectives
By the end of this topic, students should be able to:

• summarize the inspiration phase of the human centered design process
• understand the criteria for selecting a challenge suitable for the design process
• identify and resolve constraints or barriers to a variety of design challenges
• understand the role of the intended audience in any design challenge
• recognize how trust will impact the validity of any design challenge
• list a variety of methods of collecting information for a design challenge
• summarize the characteristics of a thoughtful, personal interview
• apply note-taking skills as interviews as part of the interview process
• conduct secondary research on a variety of different topics
• identify objectives of a design challenge and use them to guide research
• recognize the importance of offering quality feedback and reflection
• recognize the importance of sharing research results with others

Section 3 Objectives
By the end of this topic, students should be able to:

• summarize the ideation phase of the human centered design process
• identify themes and insights from observations and research
• define the term “synthesis” as it relates to the ideation phase
• understand the importance of freely sharing ideas within a team
• list the types of details that should be captured/shared during the ideation phase
• explain the role of active listening during the download process
• explain the role of providing visual markers during the download process
• apply a variety of organizational strategies to categorizing information
• discuss the techniques of finding themes, relationships and connections within a large body of information
• use HMW questioning to generate new insight innovate new solutions

Section 4 Objectives
By the end of this topic, students should be able to:

• summarize the ideation phase of the human centered design process
• define “prototyping” as it relates to the ideation phase of human centered design
• define “iteration” as it relates to the ideation phase of human centered design
• list and discuss the five steps of the prototyping process
• understand the role that failure plays in the ideation phase
• identify key elements of a productive brainstorming session
• list specific rules for effective brainstorming
• summarize techniques for identifying, bundling and selecting promising ideas
• list and explain a wide variety of forms of a prototype
• explain how prototypes will help teams share ideas
• define “user experience” as it relates to the ideation phase
• explain the importance of testing and seeking feedback
• summarize traits needed to receive honest and useful feedback
• use feedback to evaluate and evolve a prototype

Section 5 Objectives
By the end of this topic, students should be able to:

• summarize the implementation phase of the human centered design process
• understand the impact a solution might have on an audience
• predict likely outcomes of implementing an innovation
• discuss using the 2x2 Matrix in finding a balance of solutions
• explain the differences between revolutionary thinking and incremental change
• create an appropriate action plan implementing change
• list and discuss the five key elements of creating an action plan
• summarize the process of launching a solution into the marketplace
• apply a variety of techniques to gathering quality feedback
• discuss the importance of measuring and evaluating performance
• understanding the steps of scaling a project up for wider impact

Section 6 Objectives
By the end of this topic, students should be able to:

• explain the central concepts of Human Centered Design
• discuss the benefits of working collaboratively and cooperatively
• understand the stages of design thinking and the design process
• understand the role creativity, empathy and innovation plays in design thinking
• list common applications for the human centered design process
• summarize the inspiration phase of human centered design
• summarize the ideation phase of human centered design
• summarize the implementation phase of human centered design
• list and define the different mindsets of a human centered designer
• apply the principles of design thinking to solving a variety of challenges
• understand the importance of practical application of human centered design
• recognize the importance of offering quality feedback and reflection
• recognize the importance of sharing research results with others​