NUS Design Thinking Module
Facilitation + Visual Design
2021 - 2023
Role: Teaching Assistant @ National University of Singapore
Facilitating more than 200+ students across 4 semesters — nerve-wracking but very fulfilling!
DTK1234 is a Design Thinking module for first-year students at the National University of Singapore (NUS).
Students taking this module might not have prior experience in Design Thinking and thus see it as daunting, abstract work.
How might we design an engaging experience for students to feel supported and excited to learn?
In addition to teaching, I designed worksheets and other collateral to be used by over 5000+ people, based on a brand guide created by a prior team.
The Approach
Make Learning Engaging and Clear
Blank boxes take up the majority of the worksheets, encouraging students to use visuals (photos, videos, drawings, diagrams) and draw relationships between their learnings. Each chapter in the module also has its corresponding colour for clarity.
Aesthetic, but...
After the first Semester, students shared that they wished to feel more prepared for the module. This inspired the team to create the Module Guide — a PDF that provides a comprehensive roadmap of the module, released at the start of every Semester.
Due to the tight turnaround, I worked with the animation team and used existing brand assets instead of creating visuals from scratch. I prioritised clarity and a friendly tone, while ensuring that the brand identity remained cohesive.
“You don’t need to draw well to design well.”
That was a mantra we repeated to assure students that clarity is often more important than aesthetics, and creative confidence means giving ideas a chance to take form in the real world.
In my lesson slides, I created a quirky mascot using a computer mouse (intentionally sketchy-looking!), which later became the main character in my storytelling that students resonated with.
Impact
“All the material (lecture slides, ILA worksheets etc.) is very organised and clear... The themes of each Segment were consistent and the design of each video / documents were aesthetically pleasing and new.”
“[The module] was so starkly different to all my other modules - always brightly coloured and engaging, it never felt like boring academic work.”
Iterative Learning
We taught more than 5000 students, and I achieved consistent ratings above 4.5/5 each semester. Reading the post-semester feedback made me feel that our team has succeeded in breaking down a large, complex concept into smaller, palatable bites while providing an engaging learning experience.
Special thanks to:
The DTK Team, and my students!