# Enhancing User-Interviewing During Design Thinking: Leveraging Clinical Communication Skills to Augment the Student-Innovator’s Toolkit

## TL;DR

This paper suggests using clinical communication skills to improve user interviewing in design thinking courses for students.

## Contribution

The paper introduces a curriculum framework and faculty development suggestions to enhance user interviewing in design thinking.

## Key findings

- Student designers often lack qualitative interviewing skills, affecting user engagement quality.
- Incorporating clinical communication skills can improve user interviewing in design thinking courses.
- A research agenda is proposed to support the suggested solution.

## Abstract

The pedagogical application of design thinking in higher education has increased in recent years. Many higher education institutions apply design thinking to acquaint students with user-centred approaches for problem-solving. We consider a problem identified in an evaluation of experiences in implementing design thinking in a master’s-level course, where it was discovered that student designers had limited experience in qualitative interviewing skills, which compromised the quality of user engagement. We provide a potential solution for design thinking courses to improve user interviewing. Accordingly, we make curriculum framework and faculty development suggestions. Lastly, we suggest a research agenda to coincide with this solution.