Wicked Problems, Innovative Solutions: The new DE250 course at IITB

Introduction

The recent curriculum revamp at IIT Bombay has introduced significant changes aiming to offer a more holistic educational experience by incorporating HASMED (Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences, Management, Entrepreneurship, Design) and Makerspace into the first-year curriculum. This integration brings together the strengths of various departments at the institute, enriching the undergraduate program. In line with this, the institute also introduced the course DE 250, ‘Design Thinking for Innovation’, as a mandatory component of the curriculum for second year students from the batch of 2022 onwards. We at Insight had the opportunity to interview Prof. Nishant Sharma, one of the key architects of this course, who played a major role in its design and execution.

What is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is a creative, human-centred, and user-focused approach to problem-solving and innovation. It is based on evidence of how people interact with products and services, which can be used to develop and improve new products, services, processes, and organisations.

The Vision of the course

DE250 aims to cultivate a culture of design thinking among engineering and science students, enabling them to create innovative solutions that address real-world problems. By embedding these skills early on, students can make a significant impact in their future careers and beyond.

Here is what Prof. Nishant had to say about his vision of the course: “Whatever field you are in, the idea is to empathise with the user. Building this ability in students is crucial because, in the long run, it’s going to be useful no matter which technology or sector you work in. You will always need to think about the user. This focus on empathy ensures that engineering students can create products that provide better user experiences, which is beneficial both for businesses and end users.

Moreover, this course aims to prepare students for various career paths. Whether they go into startups, corporate roles, bureaucratic positions, or academia, the ability to empathise with users and think creatively about solutions will be invaluable.”

About the course

The course was worth 6 credits and ran as a combination of video lectures and lab sessions. The contents of the course were delivered in the form of modules, which is the usual approach to teaching courses followed by the Industrial Design Centre at IIT Bombay. The course followed the double diamond framework for design thinking, a concept proposed by Hungarian-American linguist Béla H. Bánáthy. The framework involves iteratively using divergent and convergent thinking to explore and refine aspects of the issue to reach a desirable solution. This was delivered in the form of modules for the course. Students were divided into groups of six, and each group was assigned a theme (more details below) to ideate solutions by following the approach of design thinking as learned from the modules.

Modules

The course unfolded across six modules, which introduced the students to the various aspects of design thinking. The theoretical contents of these modules were delivered to students in the form of weekly online lectures. 

Module I: Design Thinking for User-Centred Innovation : Introduced the students to ‘Design Thinking’ and its human-centric process to problem solving

Module II: Empathy : Allowed students to understand needs and aspirations of users through interviews, anecdotes and observational research  

Module III: Defining the Problem : Involved the analysis of user data to gain deeper insights of the problem and develop empathy maps and user personas

Module IV: Creative Ideation : Enabled students to creatively solve the problems or the pain points of users through sketching, storytelling and brainstorming

Module V: Prototyping : Guided the transformation of ideas into prototypes through storyboards, mock-ups and models

Module VI: Testing : Required that the students check back with users’ needs and aspirations through usability testing and feedback

The course had a variety of activities conducted in weekly lab sessions, which went in harmony with the lectures. These activities were meticulously planned to allow the students to actively apply the concepts of the modules in developing a tangible solution. 

Prof. Sharma, who was also involved in teaching Design Thinking to corporate students and government agencies through the Continuing Education Program (CEP), said: 

“Through CEP, I had an idea of how the modules could have been. However, we had a lot of deliberation about whether it should just be a course where we deliver lectures and be done with it. I believe that approach isn’t very effective because much of the learning happens by actually doing things. 

“I was a part of the team involved in setting up the Makerspace labs. We also drew inspiration from that course and eventually decided to create 11 lectures and corresponding studio sessions to solve a problem that would go all the way to the end solution.”

Coming to the work happening in the group sessions, Prof. Sharma mentioned: 

“We wanted to enable students to do things hands-on and ease the process for them. For that, every Friday we used to have an all-stakeholders meeting. In the meeting, we would discuss whatever activities we were going to conduct in the next week, and we would actually do the pilot there, fine tune them, and see how they played out. 

“During the lab sessions, we also had preliminary activities, called Creativity Warm Up, in the first 15 to 20 minutes wherein we wanted to prepare the students for the actual session. For example, for the brainstorming session, we wanted students to talk more in the preliminary activity so that there are fewer barriers in the group and the actual brainstorming happens freely. Before the exercise on drawing inferences from observation, we conducted a Tangram game (a Chinese puzzle to replicate a given pattern by putting together different shapes called tans), as I feel that is a metaphor for bringing together data of different forms and making sense of the chunked data.” 

Themes

The problem-centric approach of design thinking is highly versatile and applicable to various types of problems across different fields. In the field of design, these problems are often classified into ‘tame’ and ‘wicked’, as coined by the designers Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber. Tame problems are resolvable, with components that can be addressed to arrive at an optimal solution. In contrast, wicked problems are marked by social, behavioural, and resource complexities, making it difficult to arrive at a single, definite solution.

The course had 8 themes, each based on a wicked problem closely related to students’ everyday experiences.

1. Walk-friendly IITB Campus for Commuting
2. Nurturing coexistence between humans and dogs at IIT Bombay Campus
3. Seamless Campus travel for Students with Special Needs
4. Effective Time Management for IITB Students
5. Student Health, Physical Well-being and Fitness
6. Mental Peace and Well-Being Among Students
7. Space Solutions for Dual Occupancy in Older Hostels
8. Customised Food Solutions for Hostel Students

Due to the varied applicability of Design Thinking, there was a wide range of problems which could have potentially been assigned as themes to the students. 

Going deeper into the process of ascertaining these themes, Prof. Nishant said: “We had a panel of 12, composed of professors and students, and we observed a lot of problems. Initially, we were coming up with topics that we could observe in society, like solutions for the homeless, design for elderly, sweepers inside IITB.

“Soon we realised that we could pick up the problems that students are really very closely connected with. We felt that if the problems are relatable to the students, then they themselves will be able to come up with good solutions as they are the end users. 

“That’s when we began to notice significant challenges faced by students on a day-to-day basis. There were space constraints in hostels—what was once a single occupancy room now accommodates two. Physical health also became a concern, as many students frequently fell ill, leading to overcrowded hospital visits. Mental health, issues with food, and procrastination were among the other problems that surfaced. 

“We grouped similar issues together. Then, based on logistics and the need to align with our lab environments, we decided to eliminate a few from consideration to arrive at our final set of themes. ”

Overall, the process involved high participation and interaction from the students through discussion, collaborative ideation, visualisation, and eventually transforming their ideas into solutions. To facilitate this, the institute established a design thinking lab on the ground floor of the Rahul Bajaj Building. This lab, accommodating nearly 190-200 students at a time, became a weekly destination for sophomores taking the course. With a colourful theme, glass windows letting natural light in, and music often played during sessions, the lab emulated a resourceful design studio, creating a fun and immersive environment for the students.

Challenges

One of the biggest challenges for the course was managing the large number of students. This was something new for IDC professors who were not used to teaching such sizable classes.

Speaking about the same, Prof. Nishant Sharma said: “It was not possible to give lectures to 1400 students due to infrastructure limitations. The idea of video lectures came to life due to this problem, but they had their own set of challenges. The video lectures had to be short, and recording them in the absence of immediate student feedback was a learning curve for me. Recording these videos was also intense, often requiring me to move between the studio and recording sessions quickly.”

This large number also meant that individual attention to each group was not possible. To mitigate this, though, the tutors maintained summaries of each group’s progress and discussed them with the professors regularly for feedback. This system helped track each group’s development and provide targeted guidance.

Evaluating 1400 students was another significant challenge. Prof. Nishant Sharma gave us an insight as to how they tried to mitigate a few difficulties in the evaluation process: “Evaluation was the other substantial challenge. Judging creativity is inherently subjective and contextual. The course was designed to focus on innovation for the non design community rather than emphasising on skill-based aspects like sketching and model making. So, we created a rubric to ensure fair and equitable grading, emphasising student effort, fresh thinking, and the ability to attempt and learn from the process. We also normalised evaluations to account for different tutors and external examiners, ensuring consistency in grading. The team also made sure that the course was refined continuously based on the feedback from students and tutors”

Going forward

As we look towards the future of DE250, it aims to be the platform for students to innovate and find their areas of deep interest. DE250 can also be a foundation for students to start a company or a firm, patent their ideas, and potentially develop them further through courses from the Desai Sethi School of Entrepreneurship (DSSE) or through IDC courses. In essence, DE250 focuses on teaching the students that the process of ideation is valuable. 

The team behind DE250 is also very optimistic about the outcomes of the course. In order to foster innovation and support, they are constantly reviewing projects and identifying those with potential and will reach out to those students to ask them to pursue their ideas further. 

“We are looking at how to improve collaboration with other departments. Some projects might benefit from technical inputs from specific departments, like materials, mechanical engineering, chemistry, or chemical engineering. For example, a project involving a polymer to reduce slipperiness in shoes could benefit from such collaboration. This cross-departmental approach could enhance the innovation process. Additionally, we believe in involving enthusiastic faculty members from other departments early in the process to support and guide students with their technical expertise. This interdisciplinary approach can help students develop their ideas more robustly and make significant progress in their projects,” said Prof. Sharma when asked about how the course can be improved.

Student Reflections

Insight also had the opportunity to interview a few students who were part of the course. Here are their testimonials as they share their experiences and standout moments from the course.

Varun: “The final presentation where we demonstrated our app along with the working model of our electric vehicle on Fusion360 was the standout moment. The simulations worked perfectly, and that was a great feeling.”

Varun belonged to the group ‘Ikshana’. Their project focused on developing an app and a modified electric vehicle to enhance campus travel for people with special needs

Yug: “The ‘role play act’ was the most fun activity and actually helped us understand why our previous solution was not as good as the final one, which we ended up presenting.”

Yug was in the group ‘Geckos’ whose theme was Walk-friendly IITB Campus for Commuting. They developed a prototype of a ground-activated assistive walking shoe.

Shreshth: “We started by creating mockups of the app interface on Figma to outline user flows and interactions. We designed the 3D model of the VR attachment using AutoCAD and then constructed some physical models with paper and cardboard. Presenting our prototypes to peers and instructors to gather feedback and refine our designs was incredibly valuable.”

Shresht was a member of team ‘With Visuals’, which designed an app with VR games using motion sensors to help students manage time, build community, and match sports interests.

Krishna: “I feel the course taught us many useful skills to tackle wicked problems. The frameworks ensured that we approached the problem critically and not superficially. Though there was a trade-off between creativity and abiding by a structure, the process involved us to communicate, empathise, brainstorm and develop ideas which was very beneficial.”

Krishna was part of a group which designed modular lockers for hostels with added support to track belongings, detect theft and address maintenance requests.

Stuti: “The idea of building the bot struck me in the random ideation phase where we had to sketch whatever random ideas we had in our mind in a short period of time”

Stuti was part of the group ‘Kaalchakra Chaalak’, which designed an AI-powered desk bot to help IITB students effectively manage their time despite their hectic schedules.

Vaidehi : “We had a memorable experience during the role play activity. We enacted a scenario, in which an old lady scolded her two grandkids for touching and interacting with dogs. However soon an IITB student stepped in and educated the family on human-dog coexistence. I feel the activity was not just fun, but it also highlighted the importance of understanding and compassion in everyday situations.”

Vaidehi was part of a group that worked on developing a dog collar utilising ultrasound. The collar aims to alert dogs as they approach hostel messes and other restricted areas to nurture coexistence between humans and dogs for a safe campus.

In Conclusion 

The course on Design Thinking and Innovation marks an exciting addition to the revamped curriculum, blending creativity with structured problem-solving. It not only equips students with the skills to craft user-centric solutions but also nurtures the potential for innovation and entrepreneurship. Anticipating the future, the course presents bright prospects to expand its structure and approach to addressing newer themes. The evolution of this course and its dynamic design thinking lab promise to develop fertile ground for innovation, preparing students to become adept problem-solvers in their chosen fields.

Editorial Credits: Pratham Srivastava, Taniishq Kadam, Yash Toshniwal

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