Cultivating design thinking skills through the biodesign process in Japan

Background The biodesign process, which originated at Stanford University, has had a significant impact on medical device invention. Design thinking skills are core elements in the biodesign process, but there has been no quantitative evaluation of how design thinking is actually affected by a biodesign course. The purpose of this study was to examine the usefulness of the biodesign process by quantifying design thinking ability. Methods We recruited 17 participants who had studied a systematic biodesign process in Japan and 20 participants who were unfamiliar with the biodesign process. All participants took the design thinking test and we evaluated their design thinking skills using a combination of the creation score and the evaluation score. Results The average age of the participants was 34.4 years and 84% were male. Participants who had taken the biodesign program generated more ideas than other participants (5.3±1.9 ideas vs 3.7±2.3 ideas; p=0.01). They also had significantly higher design thinking score, especially creation score, than those who had not taken the program (design thinking score, 220.1±39.7 vs 194.6±32.1; p=0.02; creation score, 91.3±23.0 vs 70.7±20.2; p=0.03). Conclusion The findings suggest that the biodesign process can cultivate design thinking skills, especially the ability to visualise needs and create solutions. Exposure of more people to the biodesign process may accelerate innovation in the medical technology field.