Design Methods & Tools

There are many design methods and toolkits available online. A few of my favorites include UC Berkeley & MIT's open-source Design Exchange of design methods, IDEO's Design Kit, Design for America's Loft platform, and the LUMA Institute’s curated 36 human-centered design methods and digital workplace. At the SUTD-MIT International Design Centre, we created a set of Design Innovation (DI) learning modules that are constantly being updated and improved.

Below, I have included a few of my materials for teaching prototyping, human-centered design, and effective technical communication through transforming presentations. This section is a continuous work-in-progress and I will upload more materials in the future.

Prototyping Workshops

I developed prototyping workshop materials to teach students about the importance of prototyping in the design process. This includes a prototyping warm-up activity using MockUps (created by Northwestern's Delta Lab), a 45-minute lecture, and then an applied activity. Students use our Prototyping Canvas (learning module on DI website here) to identify assumptions and then plan to build “pretotypes” to test those assumptions and answer specific questions. I recently published a conference paper on the Prototyping Canvas, which you can download here. And I wrote an open-access article on Medium explaining the value of prototyping by comparing the process to baking a cake. The goal of this workshop is to fundamentally shift students' way of thinking about prototypes and get them into a build to think and fail forward mindset!

Human-Centered Design Workshops

As the founder of CU Boulder's Design for America (DFA) studio, I taught workshops on the human-centered design process (also known as design thinking) to students since 2015. DFA uses an iterative six-step approach that is divided into two main sections: Understand and Create. Within Understand, students learn to identify, immerse, and reframe problems. Within Create, students then ideate, build, and test their solutions. I have adapted DFA's materials to embed them with my own examples and additional tools. Through this process and methodology, we have had numerous successful projects including a patented mobility device in collaboration with Medline. This project has gone on to launch a company - StrideTech - located in Boulder, CO.

Enhanced Technical Communication Workshop

I was trained in effective technical communication at Penn State University through the Engineering Ambassadors program. The basis for technical communication comes from Michael Alley's Assertion-Evidence approach. Since then, I have collaborated with Michael Alley and Christine Haas Consulting to teach effective communication to Simula and the University of Oslo. I also lead workshops at CU Boulder for engineering graduate students.