The term design thinking has cropped up in education journals and conference brochures more and more over the past few years, but its meaning remains a mystery to most instructors. The term comes from the business sector, where it refers to a process of learning about a customer’s needs to inform product design. Education has adopted it in two ways:
1. As a method for designing programs, courses, and lessons
2. As a course activity where students do design thinking to solve a problem
I will describe the process by showing how I might use it to design my medical ethics class, how it differs from other methods, and its benefits and limitations.