An experience report on teaching multiple design thinking techniques to software engineering students

Abstract

Nowadays, we need to teach new approaches to elicit requirements that support a systems development with differentiated resources. One new approach that could be employed to elicit requirements is Design Thinking (DT), characterized by interactivity, user focus, and innovation. Some papers have presented the teaching of DT in computer courses, focused on the use of DT concepts and techniques aimed for requirements elicitation. However, previous experiences reported the teaching of a limited number of techniques. Thus, there is an opportunity to teach a higher number of techniques, making DT teaching richer. This paper aims to present an experience report about the teaching of multiple DT techniques to Software Engineering students in two different courses. In these courses, we presented 15 different DT techniques that can support the requirements elicitation. In the first course, we introduced the different techniques with an available material in a traditional way. In the second course, additionally to the presentation of the techniques, we employed a tool that recommends DT techniques and a repository with material on the techniques. As results, we report lessons learned about DT teaching, as well as students' perceptions and outcomes about the use of DT techniques.