An observational study of infusing Design Thinking into the CDIO framework.

This paper attempts to outline how Design Thinking can be infused into the CDIO framework to impact on user experiences. Capstone projects were used for the study as they allow students to see the whole product lifecycle at logical stages (i.e C-D-I-O). Engineering students were asked to innovate on ordinary products in order to bring out the effect of the Design Thinking process for transformative solutions as compared to incremental solutions in most Engineering development process. The Design Thinking process provides learning opportunities for engineering students to explore human desirability, technical feasibility and business viability.