On June 27th, 2023 we welcomed Vindhya Umapathy, Design Thinking Lead at CMR University (Bangalore, India). She spoke on the topic of “Fostering Design Thinking Mindsets amongst University Students“.
In this spotlight, CMR University shared its best practices and initiatives in developing the design thinking mindsets for students across all disciplines in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. The session focused on their initiatives in building a mandatory course for all students, CAUSE – a global open innovation challenge, their space for creative collaboration- the ‘Design Thinking Lab’ and an upcoming initiative – the ‘Design Thinking Club’. The session also opened out to a short discussion with the audience on ways to build mindsets such as curiosity, empathy, grit, a sense of experimentation and collaboration among students.
Vindhya Umapathy is the Design Thinking Lead at CMR University. She has diverse experience of close to a decade in the fields of Design Strategy, Education and Architecture. She is driven by the impact of design on creating positive social change. As the Design Thinking Lead at CMR University, Vindhya has played a key role in designing the curriculum for all the Design Thinking courses offered by the Dept. Common Core Curriculum, she has facilitated workshops and semester-long sessions for students and faculty at the University, co-designed the space for creative collaboration – the ‘Design Thinking Lab’, and supported the launch of the annual flagship event- the ‘Design Thinking Day’ and the launch of the Global Open Innovation Challenge- CAUSE 2023.
Prior to working with CMR University, Vindhya worked as a Design Strategist with Spread Design and Innovation in Bangalore and has completed her Post Graduation in Interdisciplinary Design Strategy at the Institute without Boundaries (Brookfield Sustainability Institute), Toronto. She has also worked as a teacher in a public school in Chennai as part of the Teach for IndiaFellowship and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture.
Vindhya believes that in order to design things right, we start with the question ‘Are we designing the right things?’ – she has helped both students and organisations better understand their stakeholders in order to design for a better world – be it through products, services or experiences..
Michael Lewrick, bestselling author of The Design Thinking Playbook and AI and Innovation, leads an inspiring session exploring how Artificial Intelligence is transforming Design Thinking practices worldwide.
At our GDTA Spotlight session on October 21th, Joann Halpern guided us through a “Designing Your Life” workshop, which has been adapted from Bill Burnett and Dave Evans’ book on this subject.
In 2022, the Global Design Thinking Alliance (GDTA) set out to celebrate Design Thinking coming of age, as well as the discipline’s global expansion.
In our session held via zoom on April 7th, 2022 at 4:00 pm (CEST) / 10:00 am (EDT), we welcomed our speakers Lynne Martin, Strategic Lead for Design for Business at V&A Dundee, and Annie Marrs, Lead Officer at UNESCO City of Design Dundee. Lynne and Annie talked about “Entangled Values: The Power of Networks”.
The Global Design Thinking Alliance, in collaboration with the IEEE Standards Association and Vienna University of Economics and Business, invited you to the GDTA Spotlight Special Edition “Value-Based Engineering in Design Thinking,” which took place on March 10th, 2022, from 9:00-11:30 am (EST) / 3:00-5:30 pm (CET) via Zoom.
In this session, Dr. Assaf Krebs, Dr. Yigal David, and Daniel Altman of GDTA member institution Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art talked about: “Intermediate spaces – Two perspectives on engineering, design, Design Thinking, and life itself. From Sound Engineering to Human Surfaces”.
In a discussion with GDTA President Uli Weinberg, Ricardo Ruffo and Reinaldo Campos from Echos Innovation Lab in Brazil shared how they are creating online Design Thinking learning experiences between Australia and Brazil.
Design Thinking has been reshaping the minds of many students and professionals globally for the past 20 years and is fast becoming the winning mindset that drives innovation and solutions to complex problems of our time. The mindset has seen major support from academia and professional networks with some great expansion over the years.
Transform with Design presents examples of creative organizations across industries and geographies, and recounts the stories of how they adapted design thinking to build their innovation capabilities. Written by leading industry experts and design-thinking scholars, the book features ten anecdotal experiences by professionals who detail the implementation of design thinking as it unfolded for them. Contributors share how they navigated the many barriers and obstacles they encountered along the way and describe their experience from early beginnings to the present, revealing valuable lessons for anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation.
At our GDTA Spotlight session on May 23rd, 2023, we welcomed Guido Caicedo, Executive Director of i3lab, Dr. Sharon Guamán-Quintanilla, Academic Coordinator, and Isabel Alcívar, Lecturer and Design Thinking Facilitator. They discussed about “Turning freshmen into DThinkers.”
In our talk on February 20th, 2024 four educators from SNS Insitutions Coimbatore, India shared their insights on Design Thinking in education starting with K12 to PhD in several streams. SNS had recently crossed 25yr mark with nearly 14K + student fraternity and nearly 37k+ alma mater. The Design Thinking Framework is applied to improve the quality of teaching methodologies to increase student engagement. For this to come true, one measure introduced is 3P Culture: Purpose, Process, People.
At our GDTA Spotlight session on January 18th, we were welcoming our speakers Isabella Stranger, Gastón Roca and Yael Gitman from D-School Chile. They talked about how the first Latin American D-School came to life at the very core of a Chilean University, what they have built in 3 years of history, and what challenges they are hoping to tackle next.
Western University is a large, public university in Canada with 11 faculties and schools. Since 2013, they have slowly built up the presence of Design Thinking across the university.
At this GDTA session on June 15, 2021, Alejandro Rodriguez, Associate Director for Industrial Design Department at Tecnológico de Monterrey, and his team talked about “Education and Design Thinking: How Tecnológico de Monterrey is applying Design Thinking across all their campus, education and innovation.”
Adam Somlai-Fischer, Co-Founder of Prezi, shared how a personal challenge sparked a global storytelling revolution. Discover the magic of spatial visual storytelling, AI’s role in transforming presentations, and the impact of LLMs on visual thinking.
In a discussion with GDTA President Uli Weinberg, Richard Perez, Founding Director of the Hasso Plattner School of Design Thinking (d-school) at the University of Cape Town, and Faculty Members Luke Doman and Mark Jackson talked about how they adapted their programs during Covid-19, using technology that is accessible for all students, and shared their vision for the future of the d-school at UCT.