A First Implementation of a Design Thinking Workshop during a Mobile App Development Course Project

Millennials prefer learning-by-doing and social learning, and project-based learning. At the same time, software engineering educators should take into account that software development projects require not only technical skills but also creativity—Design Thinking can help in achieving the latter. We conducted a workshop, following the Design Thinking approach of the d.school, to help students generate ideas for a mobile app development project course. In addition to the details for implementing the workshop, we report our observations and lessons learned. Moreover, we provide suggestions for further implementation of Design Thinking in similar courses.