Design practitioners' perspectives on methods for ideation and prototyping

Abstract

The Design Exchange is a site dedicated to the support and development of the design thinking community. Its mission is to provide an online space for design thinking practitioners to share, discuss, and explore design thinking, allowing both novices and practitioners to expand and hone their expertise. Though there are many introductory experiences and courses available in design thinking, it is often difficult to find resources and support for advancing to the next stage of professional development, an aspect of which is being able to intelligently choose among the myriad methods available, rather than relying on the subset of methods learned in school. TheDesignExchange aims to fill that void by organizing the available design thinking methods, developing a community of design educators and practitioners to evaluate those methods, and helping educate the next generation of design innovators. This paper focuses on insights gained from two practitioner workshops associated with ideation and prototyping methods and describes the results of pilot testing with product design students in an upper division multidisciplinary course at UC Berkeley.