Abigail Emerson
Abigail is a creator looking for new ways to solve problems. She is an Industrial Design major at Georgia Institute of Technology, and an alumnus of Mount Vernon and its Innovation Diploma Program. For the past 7 years, Abigail has been a facilitator and practitioner of design thinking and has worked with clients, such as S.J. Collins Enterprises Developing Company, CDC Turning Point, and Corporate Chick-fil-A. Her favorite pastimes are giving out high-fives and telling puns. Abigail strives to inspire and empower other students to believe that they can make a change now and don’t have to wait until they’re “older” and “wiser” to start.
WORKSHOP
Wish for WASH Design Jam Workshop
How might we use design thinking methods to engage students in STEM? Work with current and former Georgia Tech students that are a part of the organization Wish for WASH as they guide you through the process of human-centered and empathic design. Wish for WASH Thinks Inc’s mission is to bring more diverse minds, talent, and innovation to the problems of global health and WASH in our world through the lens of research, design, and education because #everybodypoops. Over the past 4 years Wish for WASH has been running design thinking workshops and courses with partners such as OpenIDEO, The Paideia School, The Weber School, Girl Scouts of Atlanta, and the Museum of Design Atlanta as a part of our educational and advocacy workstream.
Through our workshops and curricula, we seek to empower the next generation of STEM learners, design thinkers, and human-centered problem-solvers to use empathic, interdisciplinary, and iterative tools to build sustainable and inclusive innovation in the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) sector to help the world reach the 6th Sustainable Development Goal by 2030. In this specific 3-hour workshop, we will first do a 2-hour Design Jam – a rapid sprint through the design thinking process where participants will get first hand condensed experience going through all of the phases of a design challenge addressing one of our modern world’s biggest problems: water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH). After learning more about design thinking through experience, we will then conclude with a 1-hour facilitation training to learn how to take design thinking tools and methodologies and bring them into a classroom setting with your own specific topics. Learn more.