Organized under the Higher Education Capacity Development (HECD) program funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and in partnership with Florida State University (FSU), the Design Thinking Workshop was held at Antonine University (UA) from October 17 to 19, 2022. Participants from nine different Lebanese universities joined the eighteen-hour workshop where the sessions were conducted by Mr. Ken Baldauf, Founding Director of FSU’s Innovation Hub and Dr. Lisa Munson, Teaching Faculty at the FSU Department of Sociology.

The objectives of the proposed training sessions were threefold: to help the attendees explore the various phases that make up the Design Thinking process, which is viewed as an innovative problem-solving methodology that relies on reshaping the way products and services are developed; to equip them with the right tools to spur innovation, foster creativity and come up with the most suitable solutions; and to explain the design facilitation practices so that they are able to deliver the Design Thinking course to the University students.

Attendees worked in groups to apply the Design Thinking approach which is composed of the empathy, definition, ideation, prototyping, and testing stages. They also began brainstorming about the possibility and usefulness of applying Design Thinking in higher education institutions, by offering, for instance, courses that teach the learners how to hone their problem-solving skills.