NAVIGATING NEEDS

Instructor Jeff Koleba’s Design Thinking Course Teaches People-Centered Approaches to Business

It’s 4:45 pm, and your marketing professor is still lecturing. Finally, with ten minutes to spare and a ravenous stomach, you race out of the doors of Frazier Hall, determined to beat the rush of students in line at the SAC Chick-fil-A. Out of breath, sweaty, and side-eyeing that snack you see that squirrel in the quad has found, you let out an audible groan as you burst through the doors to the food court. Once again, you didn’t get there in time.

While dramatized, this type of scenario was an all-too-common occurrence for University of Louisville students like Tanguy Bonicel. The campus dining options and challenges at universities in the United States were not something the French international student was used to experiencing. He encountered difficulties with healthy dietary options at UofL due to various factors, such as campus dining locations closing early, difficulty finding quality dining options, and supermarket inaccessibility.

UNCOVERING UNDERSTANDING 

In the spring 2024 semester, his design thinking course, MKT 202, taught by College of Business instructor Jeff Koleba, challenged him and his classmates to explore new ways to solve this problem for Aramark, the company managing many UofL campus restaurants. Along with his group members, Tanguy had the chance to lean on his international perspective while learning more about American college dining differences and focusing on ways Aramark could engage more students with their meal plans using concepts central to design thinking.

Using AI, Tanguy and his project group developed a storyboard after completing interviews to present their proposed solution, which included food trucks. Depending on their location, this food distribution option would allow students to get food faster. Tanguy explained, “For example, students at the J.B. Speed School of Engineering need to walk to the SAC to get food, which is not ideal if they only have 45 minutes or an hour to eat due to walking and queue time. We suggested an app that would show where the food trucks are on campus and their menus.”

TEACHING THOUGHTFULNESS

“Design thinking is about having empathy for other people and their needs,” shared Koleba, an advocate for the human-centric business strategy and lead instructor for the MKT 202 course. “[It is] an approach to innovation and problem solving that has become increasingly popular in modern business and is commonly referenced by companies like Apple, Google, and Tesla as a key part of how they develop new products and features.” A corporate marketer for over 15 years as a brand manager at Johnson & Johnson and Colgate-Palmolive and as the head of marketing for Churchill Downs Racetrack & the Kentucky Derby, Koleba brings a wealth of strategic marketing insights to the College and his course. His class is structured to educate students about developing empathy and understanding for clients and to generate ideas that will be of the greatest value to a client’s target audience. Koleba educates his students on a “useful approach to solving complex and ambiguous problems not just in business but in community and non-profit environments as well.”

Are you interested in learning more about business strategies and furthering your education with a business degree? Learn if our bachelor’s degrees in business administration might be the right fit for you.

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About the UofL College of Business:

Founded in 1953, the UofL College of Business fosters intellectual and economic vitality in our city, region, and the global business landscape. Our academic programs, research, community outreach initiatives, and commitment to student success inspire lives and businesses to flourish through entrepreneurship, innovation, critical thinking, diversity, and the power of people.

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