Ever since its earliest beginnings, design thinking has a strong tradition of merging science, engineering, philosophy and art. This is evident both in terms of collaborations across disciplines and in terms of people’s individual biographies.

When John E. Arnold lay important groundworks for design thinking at the M.I.T. and subsequently at Stanford University, he did so in close collaboration with guest experts who personally came to lecture in the courses; these guest experts had varying academic backgrounds covering science, engineering, philosophy and art. Interested readers are referred to the guest essays in Creative Engineering. Moreover, in terms of personal biographies, many design thinking protagonists unite two or more disciplines in deep ways. John Arnold was a social scientist and engineer. Buckminster Fuller and Robert H. McKim combined engineering and art with philosophical reflections. Beyond that, institutional co-operations reflect the bold intention of merging disciplines. The Joint Program in Design at Stanford University was offered collaboratively by the Mechanical Engineering and the Art Department. 

Neurodesign continues in this legacy. We wish to include experts from all fields in the neurodesign curriculum, who address creativity, collaboration and innovation from varying academic perspectives. Moreover, we encourage students to work across the borders of traditional disciplines.

We want to leverage more digital engineering expertise in the field of neuroscience. This aim is based on observations about traditional career paths in neuroscience. Many neuroscientists are originally trained in fields such as psychology, medicine or biology, some in physics. Yet, the day-to-day tasks of neuroscientists are to a large extent digital engineering tasks, such as data processing, data modelling or data visualisation. Therefore, we believe that the creativity and expertise of digital engineers is very fruitful when brought to play in the field of neuroscience on a much larger scale.

Furthermore, neurodesign seeks to answer new research questions. Some of them cannot yet be answered with the existing methods and call for new approaches and technology. We support the development and use of new tools and analysis techniques that allow researchers, for example, to take neuroscientific studies out of the lab into the field.

Design thinking has a long tradition of attending to the whole body, both in research and practice, to promote good design and radical innovation. The approach builds on concepts such as visual thinking, which elucidates the role of the senses in creative design, and ambidextrous thinking, which emphasizes the importance of bilateral body engagement for creativity and innovation. 

In more recent terminology, neurodesign invokes an “embodied cognition” perspective on creativity and collaboration. With this outlook, it helps to underpin design thinking in two major respects. First, neurodesign provides a theoretical framework for prevailing design thinking interventions like bodystorming. Thus, it enables innovation practitioners to make use of such techniques in more goal-directed, mindful ways. Second, neurodesign guides the development of novel interventions based on concepts of embodied cognition. Altogether, we encourage physiological research beyond the brain. Also in creative design practice, we track and facilitate full-body engagement.

Noteworthy gaps exist between the analogue versus the digital, or the natural versus the artificial.

Animals including humans naturally spend their days moving around, engaged in manifold physical activities. By contrast, today for many persons around the globe digitally organised work enforces relatively static body positions over multiple hours per day, such as sitting in front of a computer with limited motion opportunities. How might digital engineering solutions of the future facilitate more natural and healthy modes of conduct?

Humans possess many senses and use them to navigate the world, such as the sense of vision, hearing, smell, touch, taste, of body position, temperature and so forth. Digital solutions often address very few of the human senses. Information is usually provided visually on a computer screen. Commands are typically entered through the banal motion act of pressing buttons. The programming of computers is usually language-based. How might digital engineering solutions of the future help people use and enjoy all of their senses? How might humans use diverse modes of information processing when interacting with machines?

In general, living organisms are an effervescent source of inspiration for artificial designs. Nature has created solutions that are fascinating and highly effective in many different regards. In which ways do we want artificial solutions to become better? What examples from nature can inspire novel and more effective technical solutions?

We want to create novel job opportunities for neuroscientists and support a greater variety of life models in the field. This concern is based on observations about career choices that many highly skilled neuroscientists need to make during or after their PhD. To progress on the academic career path, neuroscientists are often expected to be equally active in fields such as study planning, data acquisition, data processing etc., leading to a weekly workload considerably beyond 40 h with little flexibility to adapt life models on demand. Also, work beyond academic research - even when concerned with the same phenomenon otherwise studied in the lab - is rarely appreciated; it rather tends to impact people’s career prospects negatively. While for example in clinical neuroscience the exchange between lab research (e.g., on depression) and application (e.g., clinical depression treatment) is lively and well-integrated into many research programs, this is rarely the case in social neuroscience. Here, neuroscientists that research phenomena such as collaboration, creativity or social (team) interaction are expected to dedicate all their time to lab research and their career development is based on scientific publications only. In neurodesign we decidedly promote both: exchange between researchers and practitioners, as well as giving individuals the career option to distribute their time between neuroscientific research and applied work in the area of their expertise.