By Deepesh Khadka, Uma Dhakal Gautam & Rajesh Kumar Shah | Design Thinking Masterclass – 1-2 October 2026 – Lecturer: Elif Öztekin, Laurea University of Applied Sciences.

Have you ever had a perfect plan for your project, only for everything to change? Well we have! But after completing two days of Design Thinking at Laurea we now understand why.

Teamwork at Laurea – 1-2 October 2026. We used notes and posters to develop our ideas.

What We Did In Class

Day 1: We conducted deep interviews in small groups. This consisted of one person telling a story from their student life, one listening and one taking notes. In only 5 minutes we learnt so much more than we would have if we had asked a long list of questions.

Day 2: We developed ‘How Might We’ questions from the knowledge we had gained. We then designed a prototype using LEGO bricks and pitched our design in 2 minutes.

Step In & Step Out

Empathy can be broken down into four stages: discover, immerse, engage and disengage (Kouprie & Sleeswijk Visser, 2009). Basically ‘stepping in’ and ‘stepping out’. During our interview activity we were ‘stepping in’, however without stepping out we would only have empathy for the person. By stepping out we can actually design something.

Wicked Problems

Horst Rittel came up with the idea of ‘wicked problems’ (Buchanan, 1992). These problems are difficult to define and there is no clear end goal. All solutions will impact the problem. Buchanan also explains that the brief isn’t the actual problem, it is just the initial issues to look into. This is why often plans can change once we understand people better.

Think With Your Hands

Innovation involves three stages; inspiration, ideation and implementation (Brown, 2009). We don’t move from one to the next but bounce between them. Prototyping is also central to this process as it involves thinking with your hands.

During our class we created our idea using LEGO bricks on a large piece of paper. We created a model which included an entrance, lobby, session area, playground and problems solving department. We also included some support such as email help and AI based learning. The model wasn’t very detailed but meant we could point to our idea, ask questions and make changes.

LEGO Prototype – University area using LEGO bricks. Includes session, play and problems solving areas.

Conclusion

The three sources tie in well together. Kouprie & Sleeswijk Visser show us how to identify what is important. Buchanan reminds us that this will constantly change. Brown shows us how to easily test our ideas. Our LEGO model is a good example of this. It was nearly free to create but made our idea easy to talk about. It’s easy to make changes to your idea on a table but once it’s been launched it will cost a lot of money. Overall design thinking is a cycle rather than a linear process. You want to step in early, step out to think and test.

How can teams find time to empathise with people when they are under time pressure?

References

Brown, T. (2009). Change by design: How design thinking can transform organisations and inspire innovation. HarperCollins Publishers.

Buchanan, R. (1992). Wicked problems in design thinking. Design Issues, 8(2), 5-21.

Kouprie, M., & Sleeswijk Visser, F. (2009). A framework for empathy in design: Stepping into and out of the user’s life. Journal of Engineering Design, 20(5), 437-448.

Tschimmel, K. (2026). Design thinking masterclass [Lecture slides]. SID, Laurea University of Applied Sciences.