Abstract:

The acquisition of key skills is becoming one of the most important concern among universities, as they provide an additional value and heavily improves student’s qualification. When talking about engineering studies, the principal key skills are problem solving skills, creativity, and leadership.

However, adding tools that help develop those skills is not an easy task, and measuring the impact of those tools is often complicated. In order to propose and test a possible solution, we have incorporated Design Thinking tools to carry out the bachelor/master’s theses. The methodology included collaboration of industrial companies with the aim to develop divergent thinking and active listening by applying four different stages to the project. The first stage is the empathy stage, where the company partner explains the problems that the student should help resolve. After that, defining stage takes place, in which the student describes the problem gathering further information. The third stage involves assessing ideas proposed by the student and selecting the idea that represents the possible solution. When the solution has been chosen, testing stage takes place. In this stage the student transforms the idea into reality.

The present study has gathered engineering bachelor / master’s theses divided into two groups according to the topic, aim and scope of the project. Furthermore, in each group one thesis has been carried out using the Design Thinking methodology, and the other one using traditional techniques.

The results have shown that students that followed the Design Thinking methodology feel more confident about their key skills (communication, problem-solving skills, creativity, and leadership), a fact that was noticed by the thesis defense jury and the thesis supervisor.

Keywords:

Design thinking, master theses, key skills, engineering.