Workshop "Design Thinking for Your Creative Practice (2023)"

Skills and methods to help you work like a designer

Three lecturers, who have taught students at Stanford University/d.school in the United States, the home of Design Thinking, will be invited to Tokyo Tech and will introduce the concepts of Creative Confidence and User Centric, which are the essence of "Design Thinking" by holding a workshop of "Design Thinking For Your Creative Practice" in Tokyo Tech with a Silicon Valley-style; speedy and keeps participants entertained, over 2 days, December 2 and December 3.

This workshop has been held at Tokyo Tech every year since 2014. But for the past three years due to the coronavirus pandemic, it was held online. This time, however, 3 lecturers will come to Japan and the workshop will be held on face-to-face at Ookayama Campus.

Whether in the academic field or the business field, in the international society, being able to create new value and propose your own ideas while always keeping users in mind should be considered as cores of "leadership" and "entrepreneurship" in the international society. The basis of this is not to wait for argument. Design thinking is an effective way to understand and instill this ability. Many enterprises in Japan and overseas recognize its effectiveness and actively adopt it as a way of thinking that forms the basis of innovation.

Instructors for the workshop are Thomas Both, David Janka, and Scott Witthoft. They are all professional product designers and educators. They teach "Design Thinking" at the Stanford University d.school, the University of Texas at Austin, and at organizations around the world.

Tokyo Tech is the only university in Japan that has held the workshop led by these three tutors every year since 2014.

We strongly recommend that all of you who will be active in the international community from now on apply to participate so as not to miss this valuable opportunity.

*: Although this workshop will be held as a part of ToTAL(Tokyo Tech Academy for Leadership) course of "Fundamental Group Work for Leadership I/II (F)", any Tokyo Tech students who are not applying the ToTAL course or students from other universities can apply. (Credits will not be granted to those students).
*: This workshop has been designated as an event for "Cross the border! Tokyo-Tech pioneering doctoral research project" students at Tokyo Tech.

Overview

Date and time

Day 1: Saturday, December 2, 2023, 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Day 2: Sunday, December 3, 2023, 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.

Venue

Room S4-202, Ookayama Campus

Capacity

Around 35 students

Fee

Free

Language

English

*: This workshop will be held entirely in English.
(Scores over 750 for TOEIC and 80 for TOEFL iBT are preferrable).

Target / Notes

Even those who have attended this workshop in the past can apply.
There will be a selection in case of over-subscription.
With regard to the selection, both ToTAL students and the students who registered for ToTAL course may have a priority, and your answers to the Application Form; "Please indicate your English capability, such as "Native", "Advanced", "Intermediate", or "Beginner", and/or score of English assessment tests including TOEFL, TOEIC, IELTS, Cambridge and/or EIKEN" and "Your aim(s) or expectations you have for this workshop, or motivation for joining the workshop." will be taken into consideration.
Attendants to this workshop need to make commitments to: (1) attending all 2 days, and (2) not be late nor leave early for all 2 days.

How to apply the workshop

If you wish to join the workshop, please apply by filling out the necessary information from the link below by Friday, November 10, 2023.
- 【Tokyo Tech Academy for Leadership】Application Form for Design Thinking For Your Creative Practice | Google forms

*: Whether you can join the workshop or not will be informed to applicants after the application deadline.

Last year's Workshop

Facilitators

Thomas Both

Thomas is a designer and design educator whose passion is helping people understand the practice of human-centered design-and their ability as designers-to innovate how they learn, think, and solve problems.
He is a director of the Designing for Social Systems program at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school) at Stanford University.
In this program, he teaches professionals how to apply design thinking to complex social challenges and facilitates workshops for social impact leaders to develop a more human and strategic practice.

David Janka

Design consultant and creative strategist; former Fellow and current lecturer at the Stanford University d.school. David has a medical degree from Stanford and works to integrate design thinking principles into medical education, healthcare delivery, and medical device design.

Scott Witthoft

Professional space and product designer; Associate Professor of Practice at University of Texas at Austin; former Fellow and lecturer at the Stanford University d.school. Scott is author of the book "Make Space," a tool for designing collaborative spaces. He has a professional background in structural engineering.

Comments from the students who joined last year

Tokyo Tech M1: This course is a must do if you want to learn in a fun cooperative environment. The lecturers are super friendly and professional!
Tokyo Tech M2: It was a really fun, relaxing and interactive workshop. The workshop is very well organized and it allows the participants to learn very effectively.
Tokyo Tech D1: This workshop encourages engineers/scientist to be uncomfortable because we learn and view things from totally new and unstandardized perspective: design, where numbers and formula are replaced by circles and shades.

ToTAL's aims and characteristics of this workshop

All of the Tokyo Tech students are expected to develop and execute new value for society when they become "professionals" in any fields. At ToTAL, we believe that the core of "leadership" is the motivation and skills to develop such new value for society proactively.
The concept of "Creative Confidence", meaning that creativity is for everybody and anyone can generate new ideas, and "User Centric", which is making new values to be accepted in society, are the fundamentals of Design Thinking. Establishing such concepts in your mind, developing logic and taking actions will lead to such new values.
Although it is often understood that Design Thinking is a kind of method to generate "innovations" by following 5 steps; empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test, the core of Design Thinking is the 2 concepts above.
This workshop aims to establish such 2 concepts in your brain and body. D.school tutors designed the agenda especially for Tokyo Tech to satisfy such aim, which is deferent from usual design thinking workshop of merely learning the 5 steps.
During this 3-day workshop, students should try to understand and experience the mind-set of Creative Confidence and the skill set of User Centric; exploring mechanism of needs and jump belong logic, through d.school way of speedy, friendly and diversified learning environment.