
Center for Design Thinking
Building the Future by Design
Learn to approach even the most difficult problems with the mindsets of design thinking at The Center for Design Thinking (CDT) at Manhattanville. The CDT is located in the picturesque former President’s Cottage and is open to all students for independent study and design thinking classes. Three floors of state-of-the-art classrooms are all equipped to encourage collaboration, featuring large worktables, whiteboards, projectors, and computers loaded with design software. The Center for Design Thinking offers courses and workshops for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as services for corporations and non-profit organizations. Undergraduates can now even earn a certificate in design thinking. The Center also includes a fabrication laboratory, known as the Fab Lab, where students can make prototypes using 3D printers.
What Can Design Thinking Do for Me?
Looking to gain design-thinking expertise? Immerse yourself in this increasingly popular methodology at the Center for Design Thinking at Manhattanville College (CDT). Opened in 2019, the CDT is one of the only such centers located on the campus of a liberal arts institution.
The CDT’s fabrication laboratory, the FabLab, is where students can create prototypes and make their virtual designs come to life using the lab’s bank of 3D printers, a laser cutter, and vinyl cutter. Engaging in the practice and art of making is a crucial part of design thinking.
What would you make at the FabLab?
At the FabLab, Justin Capalbo, Assistant Professor of Communication and Media, and Director of the lab, uses project-based learning to foster a community of makers and develop the technical skills to bring students' ideas to fruition.
What would you make at the FabLab?
What is Design Thinking?

It all starts with Empathy
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.
Meet the Design Thinkers

Alison Carson, PhD
"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."

Justin Capalbo
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.
The Sara Little Turnbull Endowed Scholarship in Design
You really feel like you’re making actionable change because you’re working with people who actually want to make those changes.”“I really enjoyed how it’s so interdisciplinary and you get to work with a lot of different departments on campus. I also liked that as you’re working with the clients, there’s an observable need to help out your peers and classmates more than you would with any other program. You really feel like you’re making actionable change because you’re working with people who actually want to make those changes.”
In 2020 the Foundation awarded the Manhattanville College Center for Design Thinking a $50,000 grant for the Design Scholars Program, establishing the Sara Little Turnbull Endowed Scholarship in Design. Manhattanville College has included design thinking as part of its foundation for a 21st-century liberal arts education.
...for the first time, they thought about curriculum as a tool that is ultimately used by students.”
The programs and initiatives of the Center for Design Thinking are made possible, in part, by the Class of 1967 President’s Endowed Fund for Excellence.
Contact Us
-
Center for Design Thinking
alison.carson@mville.edu914.323.2769