Sustaining an Innovative Design Culture

This unit focuses on applying human-centered and organizational strategies to sustain design thinking within teams and workplaces. Students practice emotional awareness, rapid decision methods, reframing techniques, interview synthesis, and interventions that promote psychological safety, diversity, and measurable innovation outcomes.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze team interactions and emotional cues to identify at least three actionable strategies that increase psychological safety and inclusion during design thinking sessions
• Apply reframing techniques (reformulation, point-of-view, Six Hats) to reconceptualize two distinct design challenges and produce decision-ready problem statements within a timed exercise
• Demonstrate a practical plan to foster an innovation-ready team—incorporating mistake-tolerant policies, empowerment practices, diversity supports, and workspace changes—and define three metrics to measure their impact
• Evaluate and synthesize findings from at least five user interviews, postprocess the data into a prioritized list of insights, and produce a follow-up action plan that addresses objections and tracks next steps