Each semester, the NEXT Innovation Scholars lead a 55-minute innovation workshop for first-year honors students. Max and his team redesigned the workshop to introduce design thinking and ideation in an engaging, hands-on way.

In this session, students were challenged to design a shoe that could grow with a child from ages 1 to 10. They began by empathizing with the user, identifying challenges such as durability and cleanliness, and translating those into problem–solution statements. To push creativity further, the team introduced design constraints like “make it ultra-sustainable” or “include Cincinnati culture.” A standout constraint required students to integrate something learned from a current class, sparking cross-disciplinary application of knowledge.

The exercise gave first-year students an accessible entry point into design thinking and highlighted the value of multidisciplinary collaboration, with teams blending insights from business, engineering, design, humanities, and medicine. To this day, over 500 UHP students have been introduced to human-centered design.