90-829 Design Thinking for Public Policy
6 units, Carnegie Mellon University
Design Thinking presents a series of methods through which we will work to better understand andserve our intended users and audience. In a public policy setting these users are often citizens andothers impacted by government systems, processes and tools. So, a major component of this courseis thinking about how government can provide more effective services and products that prioritize theneeds of the user. In this course well learn and apply Design Thinking to challenges that are representative of realworld problems. Well learn how to develop insights around those we need to serve, identifying and mapping out the real problem were trying to solve for, and identify ways to provide and test solutionsquickly through an iterative approach. Well also work to investigate solutions that are equitable andwork for as many people as possible making sure that we account for extremes in our dataset andthose that otherwise might be overlooked by our own assumptions. Once weve developed our insights, well go through Design Thinking processes to rapidly prototypeand test our ideas until we can settle on a solution or two that we think will work. Well continue torefine our best ideas and abandon those that dont appear to hold as much promise as we originallythought. As we continue through this process, well learn how to develop personas and beginengaging representative users so that we can test our ideas and see if what we think shows promisereally meets the needs and expectations of real people. Finally, well discover Design Thinking approaches to ensuring that we educate our partners andfellow citizens as we go, so that in the end we all benefit from a new way of diving into issues.
Prerequisites: none listed
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