Design Students Put Creative Problem Solving into Practice

I recently finished Warren Berger’s book, Glimmer, about how design thinking can transform the world. If you haven’t read it, you should.

And it explains why my interest was peaked this morning when my colleague, James, Tweeted about a group of Utah State University students who went to Switzerland to study creative thinking. This cultivation of right brain (or creative thinking) to solve problems and further innovation is exactly what many, like Berger, call “design thinking”.

And more and more students are calling on the right sides of their brains to not only solve problems, but to get a job. “There’s a new field emerging,” says Bob Winward, the graphic design professor who led the student trip, “…today’s successful businesses are driven by innovation and creativity.” Berger would agree that the world is undergoing a huge shift—our largely informational economy is transforming into a conceptual one where intuitive thought will replace logic.

And before you exclaim, “Well this might be all well and good in theory, but what about in real life?” Let me tell you, the students soon put “design thinking” to practice when they found themselves snowshoeing the Swiss Alps to the famed Great St. Bernard Hospice where monks tasked them with reconstructing gigantic kennels for the St. Bernard dogs—traditionally bred to rescue travelers caught in avalanches. The harsh conditions, risk of snow slides and 60-pound steel beams used to construct the kennels were all figured into the bona fide design thinking process.

But that’s not all…the students learned the most important lesson of all from the monks (clients) themselves, according to graphic design student Rich Wills, “You have to learn how to understand other people if you’re going to design things for people.”