A First Implementation of a Design Thinking Workshop During a Mobile App Development Project Course

Due to their characteristics, millennials prefer learning-by-doing and social learning, such as project-based learning. However, software development projects require not only technical skills but also creativity; Design Thinking can serve such purpose. We conducted a workshop following the Design Thinking approach of the d.school, to help students generating ideas for a mobile app development project course. On top of the details for implementing the workshop, we report our observations, lessons learned, and provide suggestions for further implementation.

💡 Research Summary

The paper reports on the first integration of a design‑thinking workshop into a university‑level mobile‑app development project course, aiming to complement the technical focus of traditional project‑based learning with creativity and user‑centered problem solving. Drawing on the Stanford d.school’s five‑stage model—Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test—the authors designed a three‑hour workshop that was embedded at the early stage of the semester. Students (30 participants, organized into six teams) first simulated user interviews to build empathy, then crafted “How Might We” statements to clarify the problem space. In the Ideate phase, each team generated an average of 25 ideas using rapid brainstorming and sketching techniques, far exceeding the typical output of conventional assignments. Prototypes were low‑fidelity wireframes created with sketching tools, which the teams used to reprioritize features based on perceived user value. Observations indicated markedly higher engagement, richer intra‑team communication, and a shift from a purely technical mindset to a user‑oriented design perspective. However, the limited workshop duration constrained the Test phase, and some students lacked familiarity with digital design tools, leading to uneven idea visualization. Moreover, the course’s existing assessment rubric emphasized functional implementation, making it difficult to quantitatively capture gains in creativity and collaboration. To address these issues, the authors propose pre‑workshop training on design tools, reallocation of time to ensure a robust testing cycle, and the addition of rubric criteria that evaluate problem definition clarity, idea diversity, and the extent to which feedback is incorporated into prototypes. They also suggest aligning workshop outputs more tightly with subsequent development milestones so that insights from the design‑thinking process flow directly into coding activities. In conclusion, the study demonstrates that a structured design‑thinking workshop can significantly enhance creativity, teamwork, and user‑centric thinking in a software development curriculum, offering a scalable model for other engineering and computer‑science courses seeking to integrate design thinking with technical instruction.