Research as Design: Developing Creative Confidence in Doctoral Students Through Design Thinking

Abstract

This paper explores the benefits of design thinking training to enhance doctoral student problemsolving ability, creative confidence, and emotional well-being. Our team adapted the design thinking curriculum taught by Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design to the challenges of developing and carrying out original research, and has taught thirteen workshops to over 240 graduate students, research staff, and faculty over two years. Using a design-based research framework, we reflect on our observation of the workshops, student debriefs, and a prepost survey of participants to assess the value of design thinking for doctoral education. We find that participants felt the workshops enhanced creativity, productivity, and confidence, participants appreciated applying the mindsets of a bias toward action and embracing experimentation to their research, participants learned to be mindful of their research process, and participants valued the emotionally supportive, nonjudgmental atmosphere cultivated in the workshops. The research suggests (1) that creative problem solving methods can be adopted by doctoral students and (2) that there is a demand for graduate training to more explicitly treat students’ intellectual needs in tandem with their emotional needs to create happy, productive researchers.