CREATIVE AND DESIGN THINKING 2025
By Jairo da Costa & Dulaj Perera
The course adopts a flipped classroom model, where participants engage in active preparation through recorded lectures and a pre-assignment, followed by a hands-on full-day workshop on Creativity and Design Thinking. After the workshop, participants complete the course by submitting a brief reflection video that shares their learning process and how they will apply the theories and practical activities learned in the course in their daily activities.
PREPARATION
1. Watch the mini-lectures of the course
- Creative Thinking Methods by Armağan Karahanoğlu.
- Design Thinking by Geke Ludden.
2. Read the selected articles on Design Thinking:
- Nigel Cross on Design thinking: What just happened? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142694X23000285
- Blog post by the Interaction Design Foundation on Design Thinking Frameworks:
https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/design-thinking-a-quick-overview
3. Reflect on a specific challenge you have faced in your PhD journey. Remember, this problem should focus on the process rather than the content of your research. Perhaps you have encountered difficulties in collaborating with others on a paper or in organising various activities. Please take a moment to write down a few sentences describing the issue and any strategies you have attempted to address it in the past. Then, consider a question you would like to explore with the group and bring it to the workshop.
Note: The selected challenges will inspire our creativity exercises!
Activities of the Workshop
The workshop begins at 09:00 on campus. We kindly ask that you arrive on time!
- Introduction: a short discussion on creative and design thinking, participant problems and forming groups. [Ordered list, bold main activity]
- Exercise 1: Negative Brainstorming.
- Exercise 2: Brainstorming/Brainwriting.
- Exercise 3: Six Thinking Hats.
- Exercise 4: Collaborative Prototyping
- Presentation: Short pitch of the ideas / Discussion of the results.
- Reflection: general reflection about the workshop experience.
Lunch will not be provided, but coffee and tea will be available.
Please ensure you bring your own lunch. [Normal, Italics]
After the workshop, you will create a reflection video discussing how creativity techniques can help in generating new ideas and addressing challenges in your research, or outline a plan for incorporating Creative and Design Thinking into your PhD project in the future.