Design Survivor is a mixture of design, engineering, and the arts. Students work in rotating teams through 8–9 design challenges across completely different domains (health literacy campaigns, personal expression with emerging technologies, the future of growing food) each based on a psychological concept from the creativity research literature and a case study that exemplifies it brilliantly.
Professor Altringer Eagle developed and taught this course for over a decade at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Graduate School of Design before bringing it to Dartmouth, where it has been reimagined for the tools, application areas, and creative demands that matter now. The pedagogy is experiential and case-based as each week introduces a trainable creative capacity (analogical transfer, perceptual learning, perspective-taking, constraints as generative forces, collaborative intelligence), pairs it with a real-world case from companies like Apple, IDEO, Swarovski, Nike, and Frog Design, then asks students to apply those insights to a new domain. Weekly critique panels and tight feedback loops replace lectures. Competition is designed to be generative and the categories for originality, feasibility, embodiment, and peer favorite ensure that no single team dominates and every student finds challenges where they shine.
The course draws on four foundations mainly. These include the applied psychology of creativity (what cognitive science tells us about how creative capacity actually works), applied creative skill development (deliberate training of attention, perception, judgment, and point of view), the modern history of the concept of creativity (how our understanding has evolved and what that means for practice), and the psychology of desirability and impact (why certain creative work resonates and how to design for outsized effect).
I am working closely with Professor Altringer Eagle on course structure, challenge design, and student support.
Weekly Workshops
I design and lead weekly workshops that equip students with the technical skills each challenge needs. Since the course assumes no prior design or prototyping experience, these sessions help with both concept and execution. Past and current workshop topics include graphic design fundamentals (Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop), interaction and UX prototyping, physical prototyping (sketching, 3D printing, household materials), storyboarding and video, multi-sensory and experience design, behavior change design, and AI-native design tools through DIAD's Co-Lab program.
Critique and Feedback
I participate in weekly critique panels alongside Professor Altringer Eagle, providing structured feedback on student work across the four evaluation dimensions: originality, functionality, demonstration of the week's main concept, and overall execution.
I also help organize the structural logistics of a fast-paced (Dartmouth operates on 10 week terms), project-based class with rotating teams, weekly deliverables, and external partners: coordinating team assignments, managing challenge materials and timelines, supporting studio sessions, etc.
Thoughts
I love the idea that creative capacity is trainable, not innate, and that the upstream skills (what you notice, how you frame problems, which constraints you treat as generative) precede and enable domain expertise. The course's insistence on speed, constraints, and collaboration is really how creative work actually happens outside the classroom.
Working with Professor Eagle, whose design philosophy really matches with my own, and who has spent over a decade refining this pedagogy across Harvard, Brown RISD, and now Dartmouth, has helped me see how making can function as a form of reasoning.