Lesson Plans

Introduction to Design Thinking: Empathize, Define, Ideate, & Pitch 

Developed by Dr. Heather Braun, Associate Professor of English, University of Akron

The Design Thinking Unit developed by Dr. Braun can be used in its entirety or broken into separate units to be incorporated into existing lesson plans. The Design Thinking Unit is divided into three parts: Introduction to Design Thinking, Empathize and Define, and Introduction to Ideation. 

This guide begins with an outline overview of the three parts then breaks each part into complete lesson plans. The lesson plans provide the complete script for each slide in the accompanying Design Thinking slide decks and corresponds to the audio in each video. Facilitators are prompted to stop the video to introduce and complete activities. 

Teacher Overview 

Part 1: Introduction to Design Thinking- (Total Time: 26 minutes)

Summary

1. Topic: Introduction to Design Thinking
2. Purpose: To introduce students and educators to design thinking tools and mindsets in order to increase engagement, inspire creative confidence, and build collaborative, problem-solving skills in traditional and virtual educational settings.
3. Learning Objectives

Part 1 Sections

1. What is Design Thinking?(3:00)
2. Design Thinking Mindsets (3:00)

1. Creative Confidence 
2. *Teacher-Led Activity: One-Word Story 

3. Steps of Design Thinking (15:00)

1. IDEO Shopping Cart video example (12:00)
2. Review of Steps / Q&A (2:00)

4. Closing Activity: Key Takeaways (5:00)

Part 2: Empathize & Define (Total Time: 35 minutes)

Summary

1. Topic: Empathize and Define the Problem
2. Purpose: To understand the importance of empathy and active listening in defining a problem fully before attempting to solve it. 
3. Learning Objectives

1. What is Empathy?

1. Empathy vs. Sympathy
2. What is Active Listening?

   II.     Empathy Interview

1. Interview a Teammate
2. *Teacher-Led Activity: How to Make an Empathy Map  

   III.     Define the Problem 

1. Reframe Problem
2. *Teacher-Led Activity: Construct a “How Might We…” Statements

   IV.      Closing Activity & Takeaways

Materials 

1. Printed Empathy Map/Problem Statement Worksheet and writing utensil.

Part 3: Introduction to Ideation (Total Time: 35 minutes)

Summary

1. Topic: Introduction to Ideation 
2. Purpose: To show students how to move from empathizing with another person and defining a problem they have to begin ideating for a potential solution. This process requires participants to defer judgment and encourage fresh ideas in order to select the best idea to pitch and prototype. 
3. Learning Objectives:

Part 3 Sections 

1. Warmup (7:00)
2. *Teacher-Led Activity: Ideation Session (15:00)
3. Selection of Ideas (7:00)
4. *Teacher-Led Activity: Pitch Your Idea
5. Closing Activity (5:00)

Materials 

1. Printed Ideation Activity Worksheet, writing utensil, and post-it notes.

Part 1: Introduction to Design Thinking

1. What is Design Thinking?

1. Teacher: Start Intro to Design Thinking Slideshow
   

(Slide 1) Welcome to Introduction to Design thinking. I’m Heather Braun. And today, I’m going to show you a problem-solving method designed to tackle messy problems in uncertain times. This method begins with fully understanding a problem and who it affects most directly: in this case - it’s you! While this approach may seem obvious, other problem-solving methods start with an idea, design the idea, and then pitch it to customers. Design thinking is different in that it offers a way to understand people and their problems before developing creative solutions. 

(Slide 2) Before we go deeper into the design thinking process and try it out for ourselves, here’s a quick review of other familiar ways to tackle problems:

Engineering Thinking (Solving) is useful for what we call tame and bounded problems that have been solved in the past. If you’re building a bridge – other bridges have been built, and if you know the length of the bridge, the materials, the load it needs to carry, you can use existing equations to solve your way forward. Once the bridge is built, the problem is solved, and you could solve that same problem again in the future.

Business Thinking (Optimizing) is useful when we want to solve problems with optimal solutions. When you use business thinking, you have known objectives and criteria to find the optimal solution.

Research Thinking (Analyzing) is an approach that uses hypotheses and relevant data to analyze with the intention of understanding patterns and trends. 

Design Thinking (Building) places empathy at the center of commonly adopted research methods and encourages fast-paced, high-energy data collection, synthesis and prototyping as a framework for solving human-centered, messy or “wicked” problems. This flexible, iterative process often means failing fast to succeed sooner and learning from extreme users of a product, process, or system before working to improve it.

(Slide 3) In a sentence, design thinking is a process and a mindset for understanding people and their problems before developing solutions. 

2. Design Thinking Mindsets 

(Slide 4) Before we try this out, it is important to consider how the following mindsets are key to the design thinking process.

1. Empathy is the first step of design thinking: who is the person you’re trying to help and what is the problem they actually want to solve?
   

1. Optimism and Curiosity are important for tackling messy or wicked problems, ones that don’t have simple or single solutions. 
   

1. Embracing Ambiguity means becoming more comfortable moving forward, even when you don’t know where you’re heading.
   

1. Make It. DT invites you to draw a road map, create a game plan, or design a storyboard to help explain your ideas visually as well as verbally. 
   

1. Learning from Failure. This is a big one. Design thinking encourages playing with many ideas at once and not being afraid to let go of one that isn’t working. 
   

1. Iterate: DT is a non-linear process - we can move easily back and forth between steps when we need more information to improve our idea. 
   

1. Finally, Creative Confidence: Design thinking is built on the belief that we are all creative, even when we’re unsure about how to proceed. All of these design thinking mindsets are tools for building creative confidence. 

1. Creative Confidence

(Slide 5) David Kelly, the founder of IDEO and Stanford’s d. School defines creative confidence this way: “With creative confidence, we become comfortable with uncertainty and are able to leap into action. Instead of resigning ourselves to the status quo, or what others have told us to do, we are freed to speak our mind[s] and challenge existing ways of doing things. We act with greater courage and have more persistence in tackling obstacles.”  Kelley, Creative Confidence (10). In other words, Creative confidence is “having the freedom and courage to fail and take creative risks and the knowledge that all of the ideas you create have value.” 

(Slide 6) When asked about the favorite project of his entire career, David Kelley responded, “The next one.” Part of creative confidence is embracing uncertainty and learning from our mistakes. In his TED talk, Kelley gives the example of a doctor who noticed that his young patients were frightened by the experience of having an MRI. After speaking directly with these patients, this doctor redesigned the MRI machine to look like a pirate ship adventure in an effort to make his patient’s experience more comfortable and fun. One little girl asked her mother after trying out this pirate ship MRI, “Can we come back tomorrow?” 

(Slide 7) Building creative confidence means embracing a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset: a growth mindset embraces uncertainty as a challenge and sees failure as an opportunity to learn. Unlike a fixed mindset, which sees mistakes as a reason to give up, a growth mindset helps us become more optimistic and confident about our ability to solve problems over time rather than all at once. 

B. Teacher-Led Activity: One Word Story (Total Time: 3:00)

(Slide 8) Let’s try out some of these design thinking mindsets with a short, painless exercise called the One Word Story 

1. Groups of 3-4 students 
   

1. 1 piece of paper–assign a recorder.
   

1. Assign each group member one number (1,2,3) 
2. Then, going as quickly as you can in this order, telling a story one word at a time: each person adds one word to the story until you arrive at an appropriate stopping point. If the story sounds ridiculous, keep going for about a minute or until you reach a stopping point and then congratulate yourselves. 
3. Write down each word as it is spoken.
4. (Slide 9) Share Out: Now that we’re back, tell me what it was like telling a story one word at a time. Did your story make sense? What was difficult/ fun/surprising? 

You all just embraced ambiguity by going with it and hopefully let go of the fear you’d make a mistake. 

III. Five Steps of Design Thinking

(Slide 10) We’ve warmed up using some design thinking mindsets - you all just embraced ambiguity by going with it and hopefully let go of the fear you’d make a mistake. Now, we’re going to look at the process of design thinking. The five basic steps in this hexagon show this process as iterative rather than linear: you may begin in about the same place, but you often return to earlier steps throughout the process. 

1. The design process is grounded in empathy, which means the ability to share and feel with another person. You want to immerse yourself as much as possible in their lives and understand more fully their emotions and needs. In the case of product design, you are empathizing with the user and trying to understand their challenge and what they need to solve it. 
2. Next, you’ll look at the problem from a user centered POV. Defining the problem is essential to solving the right problem. This stage is all about determining the shape and size and characteristics of the problem you want to solve.
3. Once we know what problem we actually need to solve, we can begin to ideate broadly and wildly, stopping ourselves when we’re tempted to judge or second- guess our ideas. In this stage, we’ll go for volume, which makes it easier to choose our best ideas. 
4. Once your group has selected an idea you’re excited about, you’ll need to make a simple prototype of it to share with your user. In product design, this means building our way forward, failing fast to learn and iterate and get the data we need for the next prototype or iteration. 
5. Finally, you’ll need to test your prototype to make sure it works. In product design, this means taking the prototype to the user, having them use the product and then give you feedback about their experience. Now that they have something to react to, they can envision how they will use it. With this information, you can continue making your product better. 

A. IDEO Shopping Cart Video: (10:00) (Slide 11) Now it’s time to zoom out to examine these steps in action. This short video from IDEO shows all five steps of the Design Thinking process in improving the design of a basic cart.

(Slide 12) As you watch this video, write down the individual steps of the design thinking process you see from the hexagram I just showed you: empathy, define, ideate, build, and test.

 

1. Teacher: Play IDEO Shopping Cart video: (Slide 13) When you’re ready, go ahead and play this video here or at the URL in the Slide Notes: 
   

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M66ZU2PCIcM

B. Recap of Five Steps (2:00)

1. (Slide 14) Now, which steps of the design thinking process did you identify while watching this video? 
   

1. Can you see ways in which you might apply these steps to solve a problem that affects you? 
   

IV. Closing Activity (2:00)

1. (Slide 15) Before we go, please fill in the blanks for yourself i the sentence:
   

Before this unit, I thought __________.  Now I think ______________. 

Part 2: Empathize & Define 

1. What is Empathy?

1. Teacher: Start Empathy & Define Slideshow

(Slide 1) What is Empathy and why is it important to design thinking and solving for the right kind of problem?

(Slide 2) Before we can solve a problem, we first need to learn more about it from the people who experience it directly. We then use that information to reframe and define what the problem is before we begin to brainstorm for ways to solve it. It can be tempting to jump straight to solutions to a problem. But these first two steps - empathy and define - are crucial to making sure you understand what problem you’re trying to solve. 

A. Empathy vs. Sympathy 

(Slide 3) The best way to understand Empathy is to see it as something distinct from Sympathy. 

Brené Brown is an expert in the areas of empathy and vulnerability. She defines empathy as the ability to feel with someone rather than for their situation. To hear Brown’s description of what makes empathy different than simply, click here to watch a short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HznVuCVQd10&feature=youtu.be

(Slide 4): With this definition of empathy in mind, let’s look at how we empathize in an empathy interview:

1. First, put aside your own ego. This gets in the way of hearing good ideas not our own
2. Encourage storytelling: “Say more about that" or "can you repeat that?".
3. Ask one open-ended question at a time to avoid confusion.
4. Listen more than you talk: this is important for your to actually observe:

1. What is the person doing? (observable facts) 
2. How is the person doing that? (what emotions and techniques are present?) 
3. Why is the person doing that? In that specific way? (what inferences or surprising insights can take away from this behavior)

B. What is Active Listening?

What does active listening look like? (Slide 5) In an empathy interview, your main goal in listening to your partner is to understand their problem, need or pain point. Sometimes this means staying silent. Other times this means asking deeper questions. Your job is not to judge but to notice the various ways in which people tell stories about themselves. 

(Slide 6) First, we need to determine whom we are empathizing with? The best place to start is with extreme users - these are the people most directly impacted with the problem you’re tackling. For example, an air travel design challenge might include extreme users such as a family flying with young children; someone who is scared of flying; someone needing the wheelchair services. Today, all of you are extreme users: you are all facing challenges, and you’re going to talk about one of these challenges with one other person. 

II. Empathy Interviews

(Slide 7) Before we break into pairs, we’re going to try out these skills by doing an empathy interview with one member of your team. This is an opportunity to engage with people on a deeper level, to get personal stories that will help you identify a problem before you begin solving it. Your guiding question will be: How might I design a tool to help this person directly with a problem they’re facing using a product, service or system in their everyday lives? It may be helpful to recall the shopping cart video: in this case, one person you might want to interview is a parent about their experience putting their child in this cart. 

1. Interview a Teammate (Total: 6 minutes)

(Slide 8) There are at least 3 levels to every story: Explicit: surface/What is visible; Implicit: backdrop; Meaning: What matters to you: in this case, what problem do you want to solve? 

The challenge is that we often embed meaning beneath the surface of the stories we tell. This is why we want to encourage people to tell stories and why we need to listen actively to them.

We’re going to try to get to this third level of conversation depth, meaning, by doing an empathy interview with one member of your team. This is an opportunity to engage with people on a deeper level to get at personal stories that will help you identify a problem before you begin solving it. 

To get the deeper story: we will keep the focus on the speaker, Ask broad "Why” questions.

Listen without judgment.

1. Teacher-Led Activity
   

1. Interviewing Your Partner
   

1. Briefly let your partner describe a problem or challenge they have with a product, a process, or a service that they use often or daily. (3 minutes) 
   

1. Pay specific attention to what they say, think, do, and feel. 
   

1. Ask open questions that will help your partner talk about the specific problem they’re facing and what they still need to solve it. (Your goal is to get at this deeper meaning below the surface that the person may not even be aware exists.)  Here are some questions you might consider asking: 
   

1. After 3 minutes, switch roles with your partner and repeat the process from the opposite perspective. 
   

1. Share out.  What surprised you?  What did you learn?  
   

Teacher Tip: If you have an odd number of students, one team can be made up of three students and given two minutes each to tell their partners about a problem they are facing with this product process, or service. 

 

B.  How to Make an Empathy Map 

(Slide 9) Using your Handout as a guide, you will fill in your blank Empathy map. Collect information from the person you are interviewing, paying specific attention to what they say, think, do, and feel. As you add information to each quadrant, your empathy map will look something like this (Slide 10) once you’ve placed the information from your interview onto your blank map. 

(Slide 11) Now we’re ready to give it a try! In your pairs, decide who will begin describing a specific need or challenge with a product, system or service you use daily (3 min). While this person is talking, the listener will ask questions and take notes on what this person is thinking, seeing, feeling, and doing in order to understand a challenge, pain point, or need they face right now. After 3 minutes, switch roles with your partner and repeat the process from the opposite perspective. 

III. Define the Problem 

A. Reframe a Problem

(Slide 12) Now, pairs will come together to form groups of 4 (one group of 5 if there is an odd number). As a group, you must first select the problem from your group you want to design for. In order to have a productive brainstorming session, you will need to make sure you framed a specific need with an actionable solution moving forward. This may sound obvious, but it can be trickier than you might think. One way to save time is to go back to the verb or need that one person in your group has. You want to make sure that you don't frame the question so broadly that there's no clear starting point; it also shouldn’t be anchored on a single solution before you begin to ideate. 

A strong question starts with a phrase like this:

(Slide 13) How might we help (name of person interviewed) __________ find a better way to _______________ (specific actionable need) because/ in order to (surprising insight)?

Well-framed questions will allow for the most creative and innovative ideas in the next stage of the design thinking process, Ideation. 

(Slide 14) Here’s an Example of a Problem Statement Reframe from the example of the MRI machine for kids in our intro to design thinking: 

How might we help Dr. Smith find a better way to design the MRI machine as a fun experience because/ in order to make his young patients less frightened and more entertained during this experience? 

(Slide 15) Now it’s your turn to create a How Might We statement with your group: 

B. How Might We Activity

1. Teacher-Led Activity

2. Now, pairs will come together to form groups of 4. 
   

1. Use Empathy Map from part I.

How might we help (name of person interviewed) __________ find a better way to _______________(specific actionable need)  because/ in order to  __________________________________________________(surprising insight)?

1. Once your group feels good about this statement, write it down and bring it with you to our Ideation session. 
   

IV. Closing Activity (2:00)

(Slide 16) Before we go, let’s share some takeaways from these empathy interviews: listen actively and openly, stay flexible and empathetic, be willing to reframe your question and change your mind at any point of the process. How about you? What did you learn from your empathy interview? 

Part 3. Introduction to Ideation 

I. Rules of Brainstorming 

1. Teacher: Start Ideate & Pitch Slideshow

(Slide 1) Welcome back. Before we begin to ideate for the problem that you selected from your empathy interview, let’s take a minute to think about our experiences with brainstorming up until this point.

(Slide 2) Before today, what have your brainstorming sessions looked and felt like? If you’re on the quieter side, maybe you don’t get the chance to share ideas. Or, if you share an idea, maybe it was ignored or replaced with someone else’s. Before we start today, think about what worked and didn’t work during these brainstorming sessions. 

(Slide 3) The main goal of our brainstorming session today is not to make a wall of used Post-It notes. Our goal is to extract new information from doing this activity together. For ideation to be most effective, we must first silence our own inner critic, the one that tells us not to share ideas that may seem off the wall. Then, we have to listen actively and remove our egos as we did when we completed our empathy interview. It might be helpful to think about this as a sharing of as many ideas as possible without trying to own or get attached to a single one. 

(Slide 4) To get as many ideas out there as we can, we are going to follow these basic rules of brainstorming:

1. Defer judgment. For ideation to be most effective, you must defer judgment. When people in the group feel criticized, they aren’t likely to give their best ideas. 

2. One idea at a time. Otherwise, some ideas just won’t get heard or recorded

3. Similarly, you want to go for volume. In study after study, it turns out that having lots of ideas gives you more ideas to choose from. It doesn't matter if they're good ones or bad ones. The more you have the more you have a chance of coming up with something truly innovative.

4. Hence, you want to build off the ideas of others using the improv technique - yes, and.... What somebody has said, you say yes and then you build it and you take it to the next step.

5. Finally, try to encourage wild ideas and new ways of thinking. This is how we move beyond familiar and traditional ways of thinking. And the purpose of brainstorming is to help uncover fresh ideas.

(Slide 5) Encouraging wild ideas is one way to do this because it helps to free lots of good ideas that might otherwise be contained. This helps your team move far beyond the ideas that you had when you first started in order to get past the obvious and into the innovative and weird and interesting, which is where I hope we can get to today.

 

(Slide 6) Before we begin, let’s just go over the basic process of Brainstorming. Today, we’ll follow 4 basic steps, one of which you have already done!

1. First, you need to frame a good problem before brainstorming to solve it. This ensures you’re actually brainstorming to solve the right problem. You already did this when you created your “How might we” questions in the last session. You’ll use these today for our brainstorm session. 

2. Then, you need to warm up, to get yourself into a space where you can let go and create without judgment or other barriers.

3. Next, we’re going to generate lots and lots of ideas. 

4. Then, we’ll select from our ideas based on specific criteria such as the most delightful or craziest one. 

5. Finally, we’ll extract insights from those ideas to create a short pitch for the larger group. 

1. For more information on brainstorming, you can show this video: Introduction to Brainstorming Video

II. Warmup: Plan a Party (Slide 7)

2. Teacher-Led Activity

(Slide 8) As a you plan your party in small groups, remember the rules of Brainstorming: defer judgment, go for volume, build off the ideas of others, and encourage wild ideas, you're going to get a huge selection of really interesting ideas that we then down select from in the choosing process.

1. First you need to pick a reason for this party: will this be a graduation party, a goodbye party to coronavirus? What do you want to celebrate? You decide, but there are no rules/no budget. 
2. The only rule is you’ll need to work together to embrace all ideas with ridiculous optimism. Instead of asking questions or expressing doubts, everyone will respond supportively with YES!...And….building upon each person’s idea.
3. After 3 minutes, debrief for a minute about ideas you had. How would this session have been different had someone in your group responded “Yes - BUT…” instead of “Yes, And...”? 

III. Ideation session 

1. Teacher-Led Activity (Slide 9)

3. Materials: A large piece of paper, pens, and post-it notes 
4. In this same spirit, let’s try this exercise with the problem statements you created from the Empathy interviews. 
5. Groups of 4 (from part II of Empathy activity).

(Slide 10)

1. Begin by writing your problem statement (identified from empathy activity part II) at the top of your paper.
2. Collect as many ideas as possible related to this question. 
3. Keeping in mind the rules of brainstorming, let’s begin Round 1
4. Start Timer (play music for timing) - STOP after 3 minutes.
5. Count ideas.
6. Quickly debrief on what's working/not working.
7. Now it’s time to vote! With dots or check marks next to post-its, VOTE for top 2 Wildest Ideas.

(Slide 11) 

8. Keeping in mind the rules of brainstorming, let’s begin Round 2
9. Start Timer (play music for timing) - STOP after 3 minutes.
10. Count ideas.
11. Quickly debrief on what's working/not working.
12. Now it’s time to vote! With dots or check marks next to post-its, VOTE for top 2 Most Promising Ideas.

IV. Selection of Ideas to Prototype

2. Teacher-Led Activity

1. Use the same groups of 4.
   

(Slide 12) Return to your Round 1 Brainstorm: 

1. Examine your Wildest Idea (2 min)
2. Discuss & identify what insight(s) are to be found in that wild idea.
3. What next steps could be taken to follow up on that insight?
4. Ask for better, feasible idea, pen an area for further research (empathy), or redefine your problem or goal (reframe)

Now, return to your Round 2 Brainstorm (2 min)

1. Examine the Idea with the Most Promise
2. Discuss & identify what insight(s) are to be found in this most promising idea.
3. What next steps could be taken to follow up on that insight?
4. Ask for better, feasible idea, pen an area for further research (empathy), or redefine your problem or goal (reframe)

5.  (Slide 13) Total Up your votes: as a group, decide which one will you Pitch. How excited is your team about this idea? How innovative is it? And how practical would it be to prototype. If someone would like to share one idea from their session, please share it now. 

(Slide 14) Next, we’ll use these insights to create something for this person to help them. This idea will be what you pitch with your group. What excites you about this idea?  What makes it innovative and practical? What next steps could be taken to follow up on that insight? get some better, feasible ideas? open an area for further research (empathy)? or, redefine your problem or goal (reframe)?

(Slide 15) Before we move to your Pitch, let’s share some takeaways from our brainstorm session with the larger group. Here are some examples: generating ideas is a skill, practice helps, the key is to get new and actionable insights, and to design your best idea, you need them all. As Kelley explains it, “you need some wild ideas to get to the really innovative ones.”

IV. Pitch Your Idea

(Slide 16) To finish, each group will create a short, 1-minute elevator pitch: this will be the prototype you make to share your idea with the group. It doesn’t need to be fancy. But here are some guidelines for what to include in it. 

1. Teacher-Led Activity

1. (Slide 17) Write an “elevator pitch” (3 sentences max) summarizing your entire plan.

1. Your pitch must define a problem & solution in the simplest terms possible

2. Your pitch should identify the needs of your target audience (whose problem does this pitch try to solve?) 

3. Arrange your ideas in a logical manner.

4. Consider how you might expand this short pitch into something longer.

2. Present Your Elevator Pitch 

1. Determine which members of your group will present which parts of your pitch. 
2. Each group will get 1 minute each to present their problem/solution.

V. Closing Activity (3:00)

(Slide 18) Parting Ah-ha moment Before we go, let’s share an Ah-ha moment from this Design Thinking Unit: a word or phrase to describe what you found surprising or important about the design thinking process. Ask for volunteers or have all students share.