The Builder

The Global Innovation and Design Lab will serve as a foundational program at UW Tacoma and is designed to reach across all campus schools and units. Using the principles of design thinking, it will offer workshops as well as credit and non-credit courses to a dynamic cross section of students, staff, faculty, and community members. It will showcase innovative solutions to real-world challenges at local and global scales. Innovation and design thinking are pivotal underpinnings of effective planning, performance, and problem-solving for all community, industry, and government sectors.[1]
Our vision is a world of ethical and creative problem solvers. Our mission is to create the conditions for inclusive innovation, by providing design thinking training and material resources to prototype and deliver human-centered products and services.
Design thinking is an interdisciplinary process for creative and human-centered problem solving. It places the human experience at the heart of its process. It is widely used across industry, nonprofits, government, and academic institutions to ask better questions, redefine problems, increase agility in finding solutions, deepen collaboration, and expand opportunities. The design lifecycle includes empathy, ideation, prototyping, and testing for optimal impact. Learning from failure, embracing ambiguity, and acting collaboratively are germane to this process. Learn more.
The Global Innovation and Design Lab is open for hosting innovation and design workshops and activities, including classes, workgroups, and makers. To reserve the space, please submit a room request via 25Live or contact Krissy Kimura at krissyk@uw.edu.