Design Thinking & Subject Review – Reflection On The Applications Of Design Thinking In Hospitality Education

With the continued growth of the hospitality education sector, higher education providers are constantly reviewing subject content and delivery to ensure the quality and relevance of the curriculum to meet students’ expectations. This working research paper attempts to reflect on how Design Thinking could be applied within the context of such hospitality curriculum subject reviews. Though a new concept applied to education, Design Thinking is a mindset but also a structured framework for gathering information, generating potential solutions and refining ideas. This paper highlights the benefits of its use and an opportunity to review the curriculum utilising the five-step process: Discover, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. Findings determined that though the main Design Thinking concepts were applied during the process, a key element during the initial phase, Empathy, lacked focus on the end-user, the students, which resulted in an end product that could have been better crafted to meet the students’ needs. This reflection may be of interest to academics as it provides another perspective and framework to aid in the successful review of the curriculum within education, highlighting the importance of each stage, starting with the student in mind. Further research could help to strengthen the understanding of the application of Design Thinking in a hospitality education context.