Design Thinking: Reaching your audience in the right way
by Holly Morris
Designers know that empathy for the audience is the first step in every effort, whether you’re designing a whole new degree program or creating a marketing campaign to promote that new degree program. Every audience, indeed every student is different! How can you ensure you’re reaching them in a meaningful way? How do you know if your plans merit scaling?
Design Thinking, a set of principles and process steps that start with the user at the center, can help you build on that core knowledge regarding empathy in a disciplined way. Using the steps outlined by the Standford D-School—Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test—you ensure that you’re focused on the right problem to solve, engage right brain oriented designers in the problem solving process, and build a case that helps left-brain oriented deciders green light those creative efforts with confidence.
Several higher education institutions have engaged Design Thinking to create everything from award-winning student success apps to marketing campaigns supporting financial planning for college to competency-based academic programs.
Holly will be presenting the following sessions at the UCDA Design Summit:
• Using Design Thinking in Higher Education (Part 1)
• Using Design Thinking in Higher Education (Part 2)
Join Holly Morris, among other experts, at this year’s UCDA Design Summit scheduled for April 11-13 in Savannah, Georgia.
This exciting program, with a curriculum that features inspirational sessions as well as those addressing technologies and resources, can help your daily work flow so that you can focus more on design. Come prepared to learn from experienced speakers through intimate and focused sessions on key topics and issues that we all face as designers.