The objective of Open Design+ is to lead the students through a hands-on learning process of Design Thinking tools to address real-world problems. Central to the process of Open Design is the concept of co-creation, or inviting stakeholders to the table to design alongside Open Design practitioners with the aim to design a solution that is both desirable and effective.

This year’s edition is special due to the global context, therefore the students are working in designing an innovative way that would help to transform learning at Duke in light of COVID-19.

The students will go through four stages to understand and define an innovative solution to the challenge.

Understand

The students break into pieces the current learning process at Duke to identify stakeholders, understand their concerns, analyze data, and define their problem statement.

Create

The students will squeeze their front and left brain lobes to find different ideas that will impact positively their problem statement, and they will prototype the best ideas.

Evaluate

Students will use their social skills to validate the prototype with stakeholders. This process will enlighten new ideas and emerge failures, taking them to iterate on the previous steps to improve their solution and make it the best possible.

Communicate

During this stage, the students will use their communication and creative skills to come up with the best story that would help them to connect with their audience.