The mission of DT4T is to teach high school students nationwide the Design Thinking method and use it to solve problems in their communities.
Below is a description of a design thinking event held by DT4T's Silicon Valley chapter president Amish Gupta on 10/20/18:
On October 21st, DT4T Silicon Valley Chapter hosted a Design Thinking workshop at Stanford University in collaboration with Lovenotes. The workshop brought students from around the Bay Area to collaborate with each other and learn the basics to design thinking. Sohayle Sizar, a recent graduate from the Stanford Graduate School Business, led students through the 5 step process to create a solution to gift-giving. Students interviewed each-other and developed a mobile platform to enhance the gift giving process.They presented their solutions and received feedback from a user level. In addition, students provided user feedback for Lovenotes, utilizing their newly acquired skills. Mindy Kim, a freshman at Folsom High School, said "This design thinking workshop provided incredible insight and can motivate kids to start projects that can eventually grow into something long term. This is definitely a workshop I would recommend for anyone, especially for those who want to start their own business." Amish Gupta, president of DT4T Silicon Valley, recently partnered with San Mateo High School's design thinking club and looks to expand the Silicon Valley network and conduct more workshops in the near future.
A pilot program began in November 2016 at Kent Denver School located in Denver, Colorado. The pilot program introduced students to the Design Thinking method and let them explore how to innovate in a real organization.
The organization selected for this pilot program was "Breakthrough". Breakthrough is a tuition free, educational nonprofit group that provides learning opportunities for under-served middle school students from Denver Public Schools.
After some training in November 2016 from a design thinking expert, about 45 students from several Denver area high schools used empathy and ingenuity to create rapid prototypes and help solve Breakthrough's biggest challenge. Ongoing student support and implementation are now in progress. This not only helped Breakthrough be more effective with their goals, but hopefully this innovation process continues to inspire creative problem-solving for these teens to use in all their future endeavors.