Design Thinking Weekend Workshop held at GTU for students

78 students from 18 colleges prepared 12 projects on various social problems

Design Thinking Weekend Workshop held at GTU for students

Ahmedabad: Gujarat Technological University (GTU) organized “Design Weekend – A Design Thinking workshop series for Students” on 18th & 19th February, 2017 at its Chandkheda campus, in which around 78 engineering students from 18 GTU affiliated colleges across the state participated.

GTU introduced Design Engineering subject in all engineering disciplines from AY 2014-15 from 3rd semester, this subject is based on globally expected and practices Design Thinking methodology. Design Weekend, is a series of Design Thinking workshops on weekend for students, which will provide a best learning platform for all the students of GTU affiliated colleges, where they will get an opportunity to develop their problem solving skills while working on real life problems.

The aim of this series is to create new innovation by organizing workshops/events in series and to know importance of design thinking/engineering in most practical way via trying to create case studies for real life problems. Also students would get chance to meet the Design Thinking experts and would work on hands on exercises, specially designed for them, Prof. (Dr.) Navin Sheth, Vice Chancellor of GTU said.

Total 12 multidisciplinary teams were formed and they worked on the projects in the areas like Cleanliness, Healthcare issues, Food stall owner’s issues, Transportation/BRTS system, Traffic management system, Hospital Management, Construction site issues etc. The students worked upon the social and community issues around us. Students have learned the fundamental of Design Thinking process with the stages like Observation, Identify the needs through Empathy, Ideation, Sketching, Product Development and Prototyping techniques with hands on exercises.

Expected Outcome from Design Weekend:

· To enrich culture of Design Thinking/ Innovation in Gujarat.

· To aware students for emerging trends/opportunities in Innovation, Start-up, Patents, Entrepreneurship Etc.

· To create case studies for real life problems.

· To have innovative solutions using Design Thinking Tools to solve real life problems.