Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Design Thinking And The Internal: A Case Study, Meredith James

School of Art + Design Faculty Publications and Presentations

‘Design Thinking’ commonly refers to a set of cognitive activities one engages in during a design process. These activities are regularly applied by design practitioners to external problems – often in the role of mediation between ourselves and our environments, objects, and information (‘material culture’). A designer’s efforts are intended to solve the problems of others, but this externalization is only one half of the equation. Rarely is such energy and focus turned inwards mastering the self first. Students from ART 111: Design Thinking (fall 2014 and winter 2015) at Portland State University investigated how specific tactics and tools of …