Design Thinking Isn't a Framework. It's a Toolkit That Outlives Classrooms.

What d.tech's Design Thinking Program Prepares Students For

I keep coming back to the same lens when I talk with d.tech graduates: they are anchored in purpose, adaptable, strategically effective, relationally intelligent. I call this human agency, and it's what I watch for when I ask alumni what stuck with them.

I recently got to chat with d.tech alum Miriam Brody, a 2022 graduate, now a PhD student in human-computer interaction at the University of Washington. Her focus is accessibility and creativity, an important though not flashy corner of tech research right now.

When I asked her where that passion came from, she didn't point to a research methods class or a mentor's advice, though I half expected one of those answers. She described a toolkit of design thinking instead, picked up mostly outside the classroom, through clubs, sports, and community work at d.tech long before any formal computer science course caught up with her.

That's design thinking doing what I think it's supposed to do: building less of a six-step process and more a habit of noticing who a problem belongs to before deciding what to build. Talking with Miriam, I kept hearing human agency underneath every answer.

How Design Thinking Builds a Community-Centered Toolkit

She traces her interest in computer science to clubs, sports, school leadership, and a project with the San Mateo County Board of Education on STEM outreach. "I got this real passion for community," she told me, and that passion became the training ground for the researcher she'd become.

Miriam’s research on accessibility focuses on treating the people she studies as designers of their own solutions, not subjects waiting on her expertise. One of her recent papers looked at how disabled artists adapt their creative tools. "The whole research was not about me creating a new tool," she said, "but just understanding what people are already doing. They are the engineers."

That instinct shows up again in her work making retro video games accessible to low-vision players, where she's found that “accessible” isn't the same as “desirable.” Strip a game down to only what's functional, and you can lose the thing that made it worth playing in the first place. "It's not just about how we can make this functional," she said, "but how do we actually spark joy? How do we create play?"

Design Thinking and Empathy: Understanding Who a Problem Really Belongs To

Ask Miriam what her research argues for, and she doesn't start with disability. She starts with everyone.

"I truly view accessibility as intersectional," she told me. Her work is rooted in disability research, but the frame is bigger: age, economic background, educational background, any place where someone needs something specific to function in a world built around an assumed default user.

The insight Miriam keeps returning to is that accessibility built for one group tends to end up serving everyone eventually. She cited examples that span everyday use: curb cuts – designed for wheelchairs – turned out to be just as useful for strollers and grocery carts. Google Docs zoom – built for people with low vision – is a feature nearly everyone uses now. Siri's voice-to-text started as an accessibility tool before it became a convenience for anyone with their hands full. "All these pieces were created for a particular group, but then are able to impact a much larger environment," she said.

It's easy to treat empathy as a box to check early in a project, something you do once before moving on to the real work of building. Miriam's research treats it as the whole point: understand who actually needs what before deciding what accessible even means.

Building Comfort with Iteration

Most people treat a step backward as a sign something went wrong. Miriam treats it as data.

"Being a researcher is a lot about iteration and willingness to come back to ideas," she told me, "understanding that where you're in the beginning is not necessarily where you're gonna end up." That's not a hedge. It's a skill, and she credits d.tech’s design thinking approach with teaching it to her early enough that it stopped feeling like failure.

"Those steps back are actually a step forward," she said, describing the instinct not to get frustrated when a project sends you back to a question you thought you'd already answered. The design thinking model has that iteration built in on purpose: you come back to ideas, you test them again, you let the process pull you backward when the work calls for it.

It's a hard habit to teach directly. You can tell a student to expect setbacks, but expecting one and actually treating it as progress are different muscles. Miriam picked up these habits at d.tech, and they followed her straight into a CS PhD program at the University of Washington Paul G. Allen School for Computer Science & Engineering that encourages the same iterative process: you rarely land where you started, and that's the whole point.

How Design Thinking Prepares Students for Life After d.tech

I asked Miriam what she'd tell an incoming high school student. She didn't mention grades, or a five-year plan, or picking the right track early. She talked about not needing to have it figured out.

"I thought I needed to know exactly what I was gonna do," she told me about leaving d.tech. If someone had told her back then she'd end up doing a PhD in human-computer interaction, researching accessibility for people whose needs get overlooked by default, she wouldn't have believed them. She didn't know that world existed yet. Instead, she had the toolkit of design thinking, a habit of empathy, and enough comfort with iteration to let the path find her instead of forcing it.

"You need not just motivation, but the ability to keep going without it. Be the person who's telling yourself what to do.”

Miriam’s journey is an example of design thinking taught well. Her way of moving through problems and through a career keeps working, even when you have no idea where it leads.