Design Thinking Activity: Improve the School Experience for International Students
Challenge Question: How might we improve the school experience for international students?
This activity uses five stages: Empathize → Define → Ideate → Prototype → Test
1. Empathize Stage
Goal: Understand international students’ feelings, needs and challenges.
What to do: Interview or imagine their experiences, make an empathy map to record thoughts, feelings, words and actions.
Key Output: User insights & empathy map
2. Define Stage
Goal: Write a clear problem statement.
What to do: Summarize user needs and create a focused problem statement.
Key Output: Clear problem statement
3. Ideate Stage
Goal: Brainstorm creative solutions.
What to do: Discuss ideas freely and choose the best solutions as a group.
Key Output: Selected solution ideas
4. Prototype Stage
Goal: Make a simple model of your solution.
What to do: Create a low-fidelity prototype with sketches, posters or role‑play.
Key Output: Simple prototype
5. Test Stage
Goal: Get feedback and improve the solution.
What to do: Share prototypes with other groups and collect useful suggestions.
Key Output: Feedback & improved ideas