Projects & Collaboration
Grand Valley State University lives in the center of a design ecosystem, where creativity and innovation are basic to economic and social growth. The scale and complexity of today’s and future problems require the ability for different disciplines to work together on common problems. Grand Valley has liberal education at the core of our education mission. The Design Thinking Initiative aims to expand opportunities for students to experience and learn the process of design thinking, enhance their employability, and help them further their liberal education. Employers are looking for collaborators and those experienced in design thinking as a creative process.
As a comprehensive institution with more than 200 programs, and with multiple community partners, Grand Valley is ideally situated to host this multidisciplinary, integrative approach and nurture the design thinking ecosystem for the West Michigan community.
Laurent Bernard and Sean Corcorran (from Steelcase) and John Berry (from the GVSU Design Thinking Academy) discuss design thinking and how it is applied.
Properly defining and analyzing a problem is crucial to the design thinking process. Systems thinking is a powerful tool for identifying the way multiple factors often combine to produce a problematic outcome.
What projects are you tackling—or leading—in school or life? Whether we're planning a course, doing a class project, creating a presentation—or working on time management or planning a holiday trip—a little design thinking can make a big difference.
A GVSU marketing and communications class began working with an Amway sponsored project to both learn design thinking and apply the process to an area on Amway’s interest. This video documents the first phase of that project.
Design Thinking Immersion means giving students the opportunity to understand and experience soft skills in collaboration, discovery, empathy, ideation and prototyping.
What does working with horses have to do with working with humans? Herd dynamics and the expressive, silent language of horses are a remarkable example of non-verbal communication and leadership-based collaboration.
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