What You'll Be Doing In This Course

In this course, you’ll explore global challenges by working directly with local community organizations addressing them here at home. In interdisciplinary teams, you will:

• Identify a real social or environmental challenge that matters to you.
• Conduct ethnographic research and needs assessments to understand the perspectives of users and communities.
• Use design thinking to generate and refine innovative ideas.
• Build low-tech or high-tech prototypes and test them with users.
• Develop a business model and financial plan to bring your idea to life.
• Pitch your concept in a final competition and prepare a team proposal for potential funding opportunities.
• You’ll step through the entire design process, from idea to pitch, while keeping user needs, cultural contexts, and sustainability at the center.

Skills You'll Develop

By the end of the course, you'll have gain experience with:

• Needs Assessment & Customer Discovery – Learning how to uncover real community needs through interviews and ethnographic research.
• Design Thinking & Prototyping – Applying tools from engineering and social science to design and test innovative solutions.
• Social Entrepreneurship – Building business models and exploring pathways for sustainable impact.
• Pitching & Communication – Delivering persuasive presentations and proposals to academic, professional, and community audiences.
• Teamwork Across Disciplines – Collaborating in diverse groups that bring together technical, social, and entrepreneurial strengths.
• Grand Challenge Competencies – Practicing creativity, multicultural understanding, social awareness, and entrepreneurial skills aligned with the National Academy of Engineering’s global challenge framework.

Employers across industries are looking for graduates who can combine technical know-how, human-centered problem solving, and entrepreneurial thinking. The skills you’ll practice in this class—listening to diverse stakeholders, framing complex problems, iterating prototypes, building business models, and pitching solutions—are exactly what’s needed in design, consulting, product development, community work, and startups. Whether you go into engineering, business, public policy, non-profits, or education, this course shows you can take an idea from concept to real-world impact.