My experience in the Design Thinking into Action: Teen Wellbeing course felt like a dream—it went by so fast, yet I remember every detail clearly. In three months I was transformed into a user-oriented engineer.

The first important lesson I learned from the course was about the environment—the people and perspectives around me. Through activities like body mapping, the partner prototype challenge, and the self-assessments on time management, social media, and AI usage, I realized how little I truly knew about the world I had lived in for 16 years.

The most impactful part for me was my final project, which focused on improving pedestrian safety for visually impaired people. Through my research I learned that eye problems are a significant issue in China; 17.3 million people, or roughly one in a hundred, are blind or visually impaired. Sadly, this issue receives little public attention, and the infrastructure meant to help is falling apart. According to the Minsheng Think Tank’s 2025 Urban Governance Research, over 70 percent of tactile paving in China is reported to be ineffective due to damage, obstruction, or poor installation. This prompted me to create something for visually impaired people—because even a small improvement to tactile paving can make a difference.

I started my journey of invention, following the five steps in design thinking: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. The very first step, Empathize, became the most transformative part of my learning. At the beginning of the course, the professor drew a clear distinction between sympathy and empathy: sympathy is feeling for someone, while empathy is feeling with someone—understanding their experience from their perspective, not just acknowledging their struggle from a distance. This distinction stayed with me as I reached out to interview my user for my final project, a friend with severe visual impairment. I didn’t just ask him about his challenges; I asked him to walk me through his daily routine—how he navigated his community, what frustrated him, and what he wished people understood. It struck me deeply when he said, “I don’t need people to feel sorry for me. I just need the world to be designed so I can live independently.” In that moment, I felt the full weight of what the professor had been trying to teach us. I realized that before this conversation, I had been approaching the problem with sympathy—I felt bad for visually impaired people, but I hadn’t actually understood them. Through listening to him, I finally put into practice what I had learned in theory about empathy. I started to see the world through his eyes. That shift in mindset became the foundation of everything I designed afterward. I tried hard to break free from stereotypes to become an engineer who looks beyond cold data and lab results. I recognized that since I was designing something for humans, empathy was the most important part. I also used empathy to engage my audience in my presentation video by asking: “How would you feel if one day everything went black?”

I’m grateful that after this course, I now possess one of the most valuable skills for an engineer to practice: design thinking with a human touch. This skill reminds me that the logic behind successful products is always based on the needs of their potential users. Now I always remind myself: if you want to make a difference, you must first understand the user and the problems they face. The best way is to talk with them, think as if you are them, and most importantly, make revisions based on their feedback. Through this approach, I can best understand their needs and try to solve their challenges.

During the 10-week course, we met and spoke with scholars from Stanford who generously shared their expertise and listened to us with incredible patience and encouragement. Our instructors, Stefanie Orrick and Carey Moncaster, guided us every step of the way, and cheered for us when we reached our goals. I also gained like-minded friends through growing collaboration and connection. The program made me feel more open to new ideas and opinions and more confident in my ability to design meaningful solutions.

Looking ahead, this experience has refined how I approach any work I do. I still believe that solid skills and sound methods matter—clear logic and reliable results are important. But on their own, they are not enough. They are merely the outer shell of what I create. What truly gives it meaning is the care, understanding, and empathy I put into it. This is the kind of person I want to become—one who builds solutions that are not just functional, but deeply human-centered. Now I am still working to improve my tactile paving project and am currently preparing the documentation for a patent application. In the future, I will always make sure that the work I do is wrapped in empathy.

Thank you, Stanford e-China, for helping me find the people-oriented engineer in myself.

Innovating Wellbeing: Human-Centered Design in the AI Era (formerly Design Thinking into Action: Teen Wellbeing) is one of several online courses offered by SPICE.

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