Center for Design Thinking

A systematic and creative approach to problem-solving, design thinking starts with empathy and uses collaborative and participatory methods to understand problems and achieve complete solutions. It’s the prevalent thinking you’ll find among today’s top businesses and nonprofit organizations, and it fits well with Manhattanville’s mission to help students obtain marketable skills while learning to become ethical and socially responsible leaders.

At Manhattanville College, students of any major can study design thinking to incorporate its principles in any discipline and learn to become positive, creative changemakers both on campus and off. They also have the chance to immerse themselves further and earn a Certificate in Design Thinking.

Human-centered design emphasizes the notion that we need to fully and wholly understand the people for whom we are designing.

This is accomplished through the first step of design thinking: EMPATHY.

Empathy includes collecting information from and about the people you are designing for through interviews and observation, among other methods.

Developing empathy for your users means that you develop an understanding of their needs, goals, motivations, experiences, and perspectives.

Through a deep understanding of your user, you are also checking assumptions that you might have about the users and the problem that you are working to solve. This is also where we find our INSPIRATION.

Developing empathy is key to the generation of new insights and lines of inquiry around the problem. Empathy allows a designer to clearly DEFINE the problem at hand. Once the problem is clearly defined, we can begin to IDEATE and develop a set of wide possible solutions.

With several possible solutions, now, one needs to focus on one possible solution and develop a PROTOTYPE. Prototyping helps the designer think more fully about the details of a possible solution. Low fidelity prototypes can then be TESTED on potential users to gain further insights and learning about this possible solution.

Design thinking is an ongoing iterative cycle using rigorous methods of research to understand your users and test your prototypes for deep learning and understanding.

"More industries — from tech services to retail chains are gravitating toward Design Thinking because it provides clearer insight into the needs of their customers. Manhattanville College is proud to be preparing our students for this revolution in thinking which will impact all industries in the future, as well as the future of education."

At the Fab Lab Professor Capalbo uses project-based learning to foster a community of makers and develop the technical skills to bring students' ideas to fruition. In his Introduction to Making course, students explore 3D modeling, design, and aesthetics through simulated clients and real-world problem-solving.