Reimagining Higher Education: Empathy and Design Thinking Integration

Empathetic education at the University of Texas prepares students for success in a rapidly evolving, multidisciplinary world.

### Transforming Education: Preparing Students for a Multidisciplinary Future
* 🎓 For over 30 years, I have led teams and businesses through significant growth, but now I find fulfillment in **teaching students how to navigate the complexities of the modern creative economy**.
* 🌍 The landscape of business has evolved, necessitating a focus on **empathy, collaboration, and critical problem-solving skills** that students need to succeed beyond graduation.
* 💡 At the University of Texas, we aim to prepare students not just for their specific disciplines but for a multidisciplinary world where they can **work effectively with diverse teams**.
* 🛠 We are reimagining higher education by designing a curriculum that emphasizes **design thinking, entrepreneurship, and experiential learning**, allowing students to **engage directly with real-world problems**.
* 🚍 This past semester, a unique class took students to IBM design studios, where they tackled **actual business challenges**, enhancing their **confidence and presentation skills** through hands-on experience.
* 📈 We are also introducing microcredit courses to foster cross-disciplinary learning, ensuring students understand **various fields** and can **collaborate effectively**.
* 🤝 The focus on **empathy and human-centered design** is crucial, as businesses today seek graduates who can **connect with others and solve problems creatively**, not just rely on technical skills.
* 📚 Ultimately, we are creating an educational environment that **embraces mistakes as learning opportunities**, preparing students to thrive in a rapidly changing world while reinforcing the idea that "**what happens here changes the world**."

So, for the past 30 years, I've led teams, departments, and businesses through record growth. I've been involved with mergers, and I've been involved with acquisitions. I've seen product introductions, product reinventions, product innovations, and I've hired and I fired some of the best people in the world. I had a really good run, and I thought when it was all done, I was ready to go do it. A lot of people like me do. You sit on boards, you become a mentor, you invest in companies, but I'm here somehow at the University of Texas, and I'm teaching our students how to become empathetic, how to make mistakes, and how to lead in this new burgeoning creative economy. So, the truth is, I ended up in education, but it isn't so strange that I'm here. For many, many years, I hired so many students out of college, and I watched them rise up through the ranks, and then in the last few years, what I noticed is they weren't being as successful. You see, businesses have

changed. The business has changed. Product cycles today. Our products. Cyclones. The need to interact with your end user, your consumer, your employee is at a rapid pace. We need to work in these multidisciplinary teams to get anything done. So, the work we're doing here has two significant goals. One, it's to prepare our students beyond the 40 acres. You see, a diploma is just the price of entry. Businesses want more. And the second is to, and a little harder, is to change decades-old convention in higher education learning. I'm also going to explain a little bit how we do this, a little bit about human sin and Design Thinking, because I want all of you to walk away today and think, how can I be more human-centered? So, as I said, higher education does a very good job, particularly here at the University of Texas. We do a great job educating our students, but we do it in silos, and those silos don't allow us to have cross-disciplinary work. Now, it doesn't mean that our students and our professors don't want to do that. See, the problem we

have to solve is our is the funding problem. We're rewarded for the number of students in seats in a department. We're not rewarded for the cross-collaborative work that we do. So, we have an amazing opportunity at UT to do something different because think of it. We have almost infinite knowledge here. We have so much research and so many smart people in this university. The cross-collaboration can is is mind-blowing, and how could we expect a recent set of graduates to go out into the world if we haven't taught them how to collaborate, how to work with others, empathy, critical problem-solving. We need to be responsible for teaching them that because today we are living in a very multidisciplinary world. Our students have to learn about this. They have to learn how to live and work and perform in this world. Now we want them to be fantastic at their craft or their discipline, whether their business or computer science or engineering or design, but they need to be more. They need to know how to problem-solve. They

need to be critical thinkers. They need to understand how to work with others that are not like them. So, how do we do that? So, we reimagine higher education. Sounds simple, right? But we're doing it. I want to talk about this is my favorite part of the speech, the school, the school of design and creative technologies, and what we're doing there. First of all, we are designing a curriculum that is responsive to the market. You see, higher education has a wonderful way of teaching a curriculum for 20 years in the world that we live in today, and in the discipline that we have in our school, that's very difficult to do. This curriculum embodies design thinking, entrepreneurship, and a highly collaborative work environment. And second, we're changing who teaches it and where we teach it. We decided that all these 3-credit class, 3-credits, 15-week classes, that wasn't necessarily the way that we needed to do things. And we've recognized the need for entrepreneurial skills to be taught to creative people. So, this past semester

who tried something very different. 24 students were chosen out of a pool of about a hundred that applied to take a class that was taught by really fantastic designers up at the IBM design studios in North North Austin. So each week they gone on the bus and they went up to uh IBM studios and obviously the bus took them down to and it was funny as it went on in the semester the team called it the campus the design campus because that's what it became but there they were learning problems that businesses or that particular business was dealing with. It's very much like they would teach their new employees and it was it had restrictions and they were in a corporate environment and they were working with multidisciplinary teams of people they didn't know but we also had mentors and guest speakers and lots of people to help shape this experience for them and I have to tell you it was it was mind-bending to watch this think about it think about when you would have applied for a job if you had

this type of experience or you wrote a cover letter. What would it have been like for you to talk about something like this when we went up for the final presentation after the 15 weeks, and we took a whole bunch of people up there? And I'll tell you, as I'm driving up there, I'm thinking, Oh my God, I hope this worked. But we got up there, and these students were amazing. Not only was their thought process and how they solved these problems just incredible, but their presentation skills, the way they felt confident about themselves, they were transformed by this. Each and every one of them told me they wished that more of their classes were experiential, where they could learn and they could learn with other people, because they felt like they took knowledge away from there that they could use for the rest of their life. And you know what? As educators and academics, we were transformed by this too. And this semester, because we were so excited about it, we're doing something similar with other companies: USA, McKinsey, Design, BNSF Railroad, WP Engine.

we're making sure that our students are getting real-world experience in a very different setting. We've also started teaching microcredit courses. These are one-credit, five-week courses because if we want our students to understand all about the different disciplines that we're working, we want them to be able, if you're a designer, to go take a computer science course, understand how they solve problems, what's the nomenclature. If you're a computer scientist, go take an intro to design course, understand what they're talking about. What's fabulous about these courses, and actually all of our courses, is that they're getting filled up. They're all filled up. There is a need and a desire, and there is a palpable excitement. There's like a buzz that runs around this floor that we're on. It's very exciting to watch because the students are not being taught, but they're learning. It's one thing to teach, it's another thing to learn, and they're feeling that this is something that can help them going forward. We also hired a serial

entrepreneur, a woman named Jan Ryan, who happens actually to be here. And the reason we did this is we wanted to bring entrepreneurial skills right to our creative team. You know, what I've noticed in my career is nobody ever, ever wanted to talk to creative people about business or entrepreneurial skills. That was actually for somebody else. That didn't make sense to me. You know, it's another piece of the problem. It's a puzzle for them to solve. And our students have really embraced Jan, is inundated with them, has really have really embraced the concept and what to do with it. So, you're wondering probably who's teaching all these courses. You got a hint here. A lot of them are professionals. There are people that are in the industry, that are doing the work, they're staying on the cutting edge, that know where the trends are going. This is what's going to keep our students competitive in the marketplace. This is what's going to help them get out there and get jobs and be recognized. So, that's the how. Let me talk you a little bit

about the what what are we teaching here well and how we're gonna make this stick so really what's Yugi empathy how many of you know what design thinking is or human-centered design guys anybody take a course here ok good we've got it we've got a few so design thinking or human-centered design is often confused with the visual aspect of design it's the tangibility of it but really what it is it's a methodology that designers have actually used since the 1960s and what they do with this methodology is they're trying to solve a couple of or answer a couple of questions what is the actual problem we're trying to solve and who we try to solve that problem for and with this methodology you will go through a discovery phase and insights ideation experimentation testing failure come back to ideation testing failure and you do kind of a rinse and repeat until you come up with a solution that's human-centered that people will use that's made for someone it uses often interdisciplinary team because what you

want to do is get different people's ideas of how to solve this. You know, people coming at it from a software perspective and people coming at it from a design perspective, people coming at it from an engineering perspective will have different ways of looking at a problem. And we want to make sure that you bring in all those ways because if I've learned anything, there's never one way to solve a problem. And empathy is a huge part of what we teach. Now, empathy is not sympathy. It's not feeling sorry for people. In fact, it's understanding people at a deep personal level. And why is that important? Well, have you going to create something for humans, you might as well understand them. Otherwise, we can create it for the monkey. So, we want to understand people. Now, this is a soft skill. This is the skill that hasn't been valued, so to speak. But you know, before I took this position at the University of Texas, I did my design research. I did my human-centered design, and I talked to businesses, and I talked to professors. I

talked to students, and I talked to parents. What was very interesting about this is businesses told me almost hands-down what they told me, the type of student they just expected the students coming out of the University of Texas to have fantastic crafts. They were going to be great engineers or whatever, but they wanted them to have these other skills. And one of those skills was empathy, because they understand today you have to work in a team dynamic, and they have to be able to work with people, and they have to solve problems quickly. Businesses also understand today you cannot run a business from the bottom of a spreadsheet anymore. It's about the unions that surround you and the humans you serve, and we're seeing more and more businesses today using this type of thinking—businesses, nonprofits, governments—it's all over. So how many of you remember Blockbuster here? I loved Blockbuster. Okay, so Friday, right? Friday would come, and that was like the release day, and you'd have to run to Blockbuster, and you'd get the new release, and you'd run home, and I know like

Everybody would want to watch it. He had 24 hours to watch it, the new release. Now you can keep the new release longer, but the late fees were quite hefty. So you returned it, and this is just the way we did things, right? We accepted it. That was the norm. So a gentleman named Reed Hastings was doing the same thing. He was going to Blockbuster, only he kept his DVD a little bit too long, and when he went to return it, the late fees exceeded the cost of a new DVD. And he said, Hmm, there's got to be a better way. And what was that better way? Netflix. So he and what Netflix initially did was they just had a DVD mailing service. She bought a subscription, and what you did was you, you know, you sent it along, and you could watch it whenever you wanted, and it changed the viewing habits of everybody. You, the human, owe us. We were in control. We can do what we want. We didn't have to worry about whether we're gonna have a late fee or not. We just wouldn't get the

video you know until we sent it back. So Netflix, as you know, became so popular that they were trying to get more content from studios, but studios didn't want to get in the content. Interestingly enough, so they decided they were going to make their own content, which everybody laughed at. But they also had something they were watching, how humans viewed, and what they knew is that humans viewed things all at once because people don't have time. Hence, not only did they develop new content, but they released it all at once, and we now have the new phenomenon of binge-watching. I am a binge-watcher. I don't know about all you, but I am a binge-watcher. And so what they did was they really looked at human behavior and how to make that successful. Last year, I met a fabulous designer. I interviewed her for my column, a woman named Ariel Keenan. She works for the city of New York in the innovation group, and she was tasked with figuring out how to help the homeless population in New York.

during dangerous and inclement weather. Now New York City is huge, so many agencies, and she used design thinking with all these agencies to map the journey of a homeless person, and all of these agencies began to co-create with her in a group how you would change the system, and that went from data to communications to infrastructure, and they changed it, and she was so moved by that that she created tools for all these agencies so they can go out and do this themselves. This stuff works. Now we can't talk about the relevance of design and design thinking. We're talking getting back to how we teach our students about mistakes and failure. You see, I hate the F word. I think it's misused because we spend our lives telling our students and telling ourselves not to fail. How many of you when you came home with a failing grade, your parents jumped up and down and said, fail fast? I don't think that happened. Or in a business situation where you make a mistake and somebody will usually say to you, well, whose heads gonna roll? We are actually talking about

learning and what we need to do is make sure our students understand that making mistakes is part of continuous learning. We need to be learning in a continuous fashion. It's not about failure; it's about learning. So, I just want to say this: I think the road from childhood to adulthood is filled with wonderment, with learning, with wanting to seek out information, and we have a job to do, which is to make sure that we're creating the right environment and we're giving our students the right information to go forward and be successful, not just in their work career but in their life. You know, the speed and pace isn't been a slowdown, but we need to teach them ways to cope and deal with it so we can relieve the stress. We need to teach them how to work in the world that we're living in today. And what's great is that it is happening here at the University of Texas because you know what we say is what happens here changes the world, and it's happening. So, thank you very much and hook them horns.

Design Thinking | Doreen Lorenzo | TEDxUTAustin

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TEDx Talks

Transforming Education for the Creative Economy

The speaker has 30 years of experience in leadership, mergers, and product innovation, and is now teaching at the University of Texas.

The goal is to prepare students for the changing business landscape and to promote cross-disciplinary collaboration in higher education.

The speaker emphasizes the importance of teaching students empathy, critical problem-solving, and collaboration to succeed in a multidisciplinary world.

Reimagining Higher Education: The School of Design and Creative Technologies

The School of Design and Creative Technologies is redesigning its curriculum to be responsive to the market, focusing on design thinking, entrepreneurship, and collaboration.

The school is also changing the teaching model by partnering with companies like IBM to provide students with real-world problem-solving experiences.

This innovative approach has transformed both the students and educators, leading to plans for similar collaborations with other companies in the upcoming semester.

Innovative Learning Approach for Students

The institution is offering real-world experience through microcredit courses, allowing students to explore different disciplines.

The courses are highly sought after, creating a buzz of excitement on campus.

A serial entrepreneur has been hired to bring entrepreneurial skills to the creative team, while industry professionals are teaching the courses to keep students competitive in the job market.

The focus is on design thinking and human-centered design as a methodology for problem-solving, using an interdisciplinary approach.

The Importance of Diverse Perspectives and Empathy in Problem-Solving

Different perspectives, such as software, design, and engineering, are crucial for solving problems effectively.

Empathy, defined as a deep understanding of people, is a vital soft skill that is increasingly valued by businesses.

The demand for empathetic skills in graduates is growing, as teamwork and problem-solving in dynamic environments become essential for success.

Reed Hastings' late DVD return at Blockbuster led to the creation of Netflix, which started as a DVD mailing service.

Netflix's popularity grew as they offered a subscription model and eventually started producing their own content.

The company's strategy of releasing episodes all at once changed viewing habits, leading to the phenomenon of binge-watching.

The Impact of Design Thinking on Homelessness and Education

Design thinking was used in New York City to map the journey of a homeless person, leading to collaboration among agencies to change the system.

The speaker emphasizes the importance of viewing mistakes as part of continuous learning rather than failure.

The University of Texas is actively creating the right environment and providing information to help students cope with the fast-paced world and be successful in their careers and lives.