Are you are looking for an exercise to explain Design Thinking in a short period of time? I could highly recommend the ‘coffee filter challenge’ to everyone! This exercise (as described in the book Design Thinking by Guido Stompff ) let’s participants experience how innovative ideas arise. It is an easy to perform exercise to experience the essence of Design Thinking with a group of people. Below I describe how this exercise works best:

The Coffee Filter Challange:

Divide the class into groups of 4-6 people. Give each group a pack of coffee filters and explain;

These are not coffee filters, but what are they?

Give the groups 15-20 minutes to come up with ideas and end up with one (not two or three) best idea. At the end, all groups pitch their final idea, and together the groups decide what the best idea is and why.

The exercise is not about the results (as nice as they are), but about how the ideas came about. As a trainer, therefore, ask the following questions afterwards:

• Did anyone know the idea beforehand? (The answer is logically ‘No, of course not’ ideas arise ‘on the go’).
• Who did the idea come from? (Usually someone raises their hand, but after some further questioning, it often turns out that the idea arose again through a comment from someone else, this is the essence of co-creation).
• Did you play with the filter bags? (Teams that only look at the function of the filters usually get stuck on variants close to the feature (French fries, filter for water purification, lampshade etc.,). The winning team probably has an idea far away from the original function and has explored new ‘frames’.

The aim is for students to apply the steps of design thinking without realizing it. The students become aware that ideas do not arise through long thinking, but ‘on the go’, in co-creation, and by playing.

This exercise has helped me a lot in helping first-year students experience Design Thinking, and hopefully it will help other teachers, trainers or companies as well.