Abstract:

The authors teach a class called Design Thinking For Social Product Innovation. This a four-course sequence taught two courses per semester. The students are bright and successful at taking objective test, they are young freshmen, 17-18 years old, largely from the central Midwest. They have little worldly experiences and are thus often quite ethnocentric.

Students are quickly introduced to the UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals. However, you cannot as freshmen student take on world hunger or any of the other great goals. They learn how to narrow down and focus on what this might mean into a particular group or segment. In their quest for knowledge, they are encouraged to observe what they can find on the internet, to experience as in to try and carry water for six miles or spend a day on reduce d food rations.

To focus even more each student chooses a country from the bottom half of the Index Mundi GDP per capita. These are typically from the global south. To learn about the countries, they use several sources including the internet, videos, articles, blogs, books, etc. They also talk to people from those countries in the greater university community, with researchers who may have worked in the country. They also look up contacts and communicate through email, What’s App, Reddit, and Facebook forums. They also learn about the issues through visits with water researchers, looking at the plastic they can find in the Great Lakes, and through culture as conveyed in the international Art Fair in the city.

At the end of semester one they are supposed to have developed a defined subproblem to one of the UNESCO SDG’s. This requires Empathy. They are encouraged to observe in as many ways as they can – today this is often looking at videos on the internet. They are encouraged to think about ways they could experience to some degree what life might be like. Examples include carrying water a great distance each time you need water. Moving around with doll babies to watch out for. Hauling firewood in a large bundle or moving buckets of grain or beans. They are shown how to experience aging as an example of an experiential exercise.

In addition, students are encouraged through several self-tests to examine themselves and their prejudices. Self-Discovery can ultimately help with empathy. Students get even more information for empathy out of interviews of locals via what’s app, some due surveys, and others spend time in either national or expat forums. Finally, food is used to experience other cultures. With students preparing food from their country.

At the end of the first semester the students are expected to be able to produce a 5-minute video integrating what they have learned but creating a case for the UNESCO SDG in the country they have selected.

The authors challenge is to continually develop more and more empathy techniques that will work to help students learn about what it might feel like to walk in someone else’s shoes. The paper is about some of the new techniques learned during Covid and some to be tried.

Keywords:

Design Thinking, Social Innovation, UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals, Global South, Empathy.