Education and support for non-design major students using the sprint method in design thinking projects

One of the most important factors in being successful these days is the possession of problem-solving skills. Design thinking, one problem-solving skill, has become more important as a creative process in planning, managing, and conducting projects in many companies and other organizations, as well as in developing products or services. This paper is based on the premise that non-design major students can engage in design thinking after repeatable and diverse design experiences in a short period with effectible setting of design thinking methodology. The paper begins with the role of design in facilitating and evolving human lives by recreating friendly objects in our everyday lives as interconnected with various fields. Several design examples show that the objects existing around us can be changed for the better through the design-thinking process. I propose to design a takeout coffee cup as a reinterpretation and redesign from the viewpoint of college students majoring in science or technology. This study method is a case study, and it includes about 110 students who attended the ‘Design Thinking’ class during the first semester of 2017. Teams of six to seven students, making up 18 teams in total, are required to design a takeout coffee cup based on a class about design elements that includes specific design tool lessons and activities. At the end of the class, it is proven that engineering students with no design knowledge can implement their brilliant ideas, translating them quickly into an object successfully using design-thinking skills. In this modern society, design thinking is essential for the convergence of diverse fields. Through this study, we hope that engineering majors will have developed a design-thinking approach that will connect interdiciplinary organically, without separating their fields from design.