The world is a complex, ever-changing place with a multitude of problems and opportunities. To address the challenges of today, we need a lot more than our individual understanding of things. We need to leverage multiple perspectives, encourage collaboration and diversity of thought. We can no longer sit in ivory towers, designing solutions and policies for people. Instead, we have to start with empathy and step into the shoes of the people we are designing with, keeping their needs and experiences at the heart of our process.
University students are presented with so much information and have to make many choices and tradeoffs. How do you choose a single major given the varying interests you have? How do you discover all of the exciting opportunities Habib has to offer and then choose among them? Most of us are rarely given the time to slow down and reflect on who we are, what we care about and what sort of life we want to build for ourselves. You yourself are a prime candidate of empathy, and listening to yourself is an extremely useful practice to shape your own ever-evolving future.
The latter part of the course borrows ideas from Stanford University’s Dave Evans and Bill Burnett’s book “Design Your Life”, but redesigned for our own context. Explored through the Human-Centered-Design process, topics will include understanding yourself and what university means to you, creating ideas for alternative experiences, and prototyping them to discover more about what path to take forward. The course concludes with the creation of multiple versions of what university might look like for you and how to make those ideas a reality.
“Researchers at California State University, Dominguez Hills found that participants in designing-life programs had less career anxiety, increased hope and resilience, and a better ability to create options for themselves than before they started.” – Stephanie Hanes, Lecturer Yale School of Environment This studio course will have an emphasis on practice-based learning, and will involve group work, in-class activities and discussions, field exercises, personal reflection, and collaboration with your peers. Design Your Habib Experience is about learning in the real world rather than in a lecture hall, and having fun whilst you’re doing it.
