Transcript:
Ryan Harris: Joining me now is Wendy Angst, associate teaching professor in the Department of Management at the Mendoza College of Business. Professor Angst teaches graduate and undergraduate courses specializing in design thinking—and we'll get into that in a little bit—innovation as well, and entrepreneurship. Her classes have traveled to the corners and companies across the country to learn about and prepare for the business landscape of the future.
Welcome to Notre Dame Day, Professor!
Wendy Angst: Hi, I'm great, thank you. It's great to be here.
Ryan Harris: It's great to have you here. Now, I understand you started your career in the healthcare space. Can you now tell us how you came to be teaching at Mendoza?
Wendy Angst: Yeah, so I started in healthcare and had the opportunity to take a company through a couple different phases of growth, from angel investment all the way through acquisition by a publicly traded company.
While I was doing that, my husband went back to school for his doctorate, so he was recruited to come out to Notre Dame. At that time, we weren't quite sure if it was the right move for us. But what really tipped the scales for me is one day, I was driving home from work, my cell phone rang, and it was the dean of the college of business, Dean Carolyn Woo. She took time out of her day to call me on my cell phone to say that she really wanted our family to be a part of the Notre Dame family.
I thought, if the dean of the business school can take time and reach out to the spouse of someone they're recruiting, it's a really special place. So, we moved our family out. I got to be a good friend of Carolyn Woo's and ended up helping design some courses on how you could teach commercialization, and the rest is history.
Ryan Harris: Well, with your experience, we're lucky to have you here as a professor. Now, for those of us who don't know, please tell us: what is design thinking?
Wendy Angst: Sure. So, design thinking is one of the emerging trends in business, and also for a lot of social problems. We actually teach courses here at Notre Dame in Arts and Letters, Science, Engineering, and in Business, all in design thinking.
Really, it's a premise in human-centered design where you put the user at the center of the solutions that you're working on. It's grounded in deep empathy for the users, and it's really applied not just for products, but for service design and experience design as well. You focus on the user, you identify their needs, and then you do kind of quick iterations and prototypes so you can fail quickly and learn from that before you invest a lot in implementing a solution.
Ryan Harris: Well, I can see why you're teaching that. I mean, I suppose most people come up with a business plan and they have their idea of how their business is going to work, and you're saying, "No, you have to start with what the user wants."
Wendy Angst: Exactly. You start with the user. You understand the user's unmet needs that they really can't even articulate themselves, and just try to immerse yourself and really understand the situation from their perspective.
Ryan Harris: And how much has technology—specifically going to telephones—changed business?
Wendy Angst: Oh, quite a bit. So, you think about the types of problems that society is facing today around the environment, around food scarcity, conflicts, and then just the increasing use of technology. We call those wicked problems. They're problems that there's no precedent for how to deal with them in society. So, that's where design thinking or human-centered design really is the best approach for thinking through those challenges.
Ryan Harris: Wicked problems indeed, but amazing that the solutions will come from here and from your classes that you're teaching. I understand you provide a lot of unique learning opportunities for your students. Can you tell us a little bit about those?
Wendy Angst: Well, the students here at Notre Dame, as you know, are phenomenal, and it's such a privilege to work with them. They have such big hearts and such passion for making a difference in the world. So, I feel like my role as an instructor—and the fact that I have industry experience—is just a great opportunity to bring that to bear.
In the fall semester, we had an opportunity to work with Hearst on a Seventeen magazine project, where the students worked on what the future of print magazines could be for the Seventeen magazine brand. At the end of that class, we were able to take 12 students to New York and present to the executives in the boardroom at Hearst Magazines. It was really a phenomenal experience for the students to basically get to put their solutions into practice.
Ryan Harris: It wouldn't seem like it, but the future of print, you know, that's definitely something that is going to be unique moving forward. Mendoza College's motto is "Ask more of business." How do you integrate that mission into your work?
Wendy Angst: Well, I would say again, we have students that just have it as a part of their DNA; they have such a passion for making a difference. So, while our project in the fall semester was around Hearst and print magazine, this semester we have students that are working on challenges with the Center for the Homeless, the Boys & Girls Club, and even looking at improving the homiletic practices of priests. So, a wide range of problems that the students are working on and applying the design thinking methodology to.
Ryan Harris: Wide range indeed. Thank you so much, Professor Angst, for joining us here at Notre Dame Day.