A First Implementation of a Design Thinking Workshop During a Mobile App Development Project Course

TL;DR

This paper reports on implementing a Design Thinking workshop in a mobile app development course, highlighting its role in fostering creativity and idea generation among students with a focus on experiential learning.

Contribution

It presents the first implementation of a Design Thinking workshop tailored for a mobile app course, including practical details, observations, and lessons learned.

Findings

Students showed increased creativity and idea generation.

The workshop facilitated experiential and social learning.

Practical guidelines for future implementations.

Abstract

Due to their characteristics, millennials prefer learning-by-doing and social learning, such as project-based learning. However, software development projects require not only technical skills but also creativity; Design Thinking can serve such purpose. We conducted a workshop following the Design Thinking approach of the d.school, to help students generating ideas for a mobile app development project course. On top of the details for implementing the workshop, we report our observations, lessons learned, and provide suggestions for further implementation.