Design Thinking in Interior Design Studio Teaching: Post-Pandemic Challenges in Design Education

Interior designers faced unparalleled challenges during COVID-19 in meeting the requirements given healthcare guidelines, as merely providing for such guidelines could deter the mental wellbeing of users. This demanded new design teaching strategies. Studio teaching integrated design thinking as a way of preparing students to fine-tune an end-user focused design process. A thematic analysis of literature on the use of design thinking in studio teaching established the vim of design thinking as a cyclic process that empathizes with end-users. To test its integration in the studio to support students’ developing a place-oriented design process, we developed an experimental studio. Observation, participatory observation, depth-interviews, and focus groups were used in those studios to collect primary data. By decorously rendering design thinking, this exercise found the need to promote students to use design thinking to fine-tune a divergent cum convergent design process to face similar challenges in the future.