Increasing Student Empathy Through Immersive User Empathy Experiences in First-Year Design Education

摘要

The Introduction to Design (ITD) program at the Colorado School of Mines introduces openended problem-solving to all first year students. Around 600 students take the course each semester. These classes of 25 are taught by a professor who serves as both "manager" of the teams as well as course instructor. Students are divided into 5-person teams to understand, define, then solve and refine solutions for a single broad "messy" problem. To define "messy problems," ITD leveraged several of the components established by Rittel and Webber for "wicked problems:" · No existing solution precedent · Poorly constrained · No one right solution · Conflicting user needs