Course Description
2-Week FastTrack Online Design Thinking (Certificate)
This 2-week fast-paced FastTrack Online Design Thinking course is the perfect introduction to the Design Thinking essentials. In just four live online sessions you’ll be equipped with all the foundational knowledge and tools you need to kick-start your own Design Thinking journey. This is a unique opportunity to receive live coaching from leading Design Thinking coaches.
Build a foundational understanding of Design Thinking through our interactive, bite-sized 4-part live FastTrack Online Design Thinking course. Working on a live brief that simulates a client-focused challenge and under the guidance of our expert coaches, you’ll gain practical experience in applying Design Thinking within a virtual setting.
PARTICIPANT PROFILE
This course is for anyone who is new to Design Thinking and wants to get a foundational understanding and gain practical experience in applying its core principles and key methods. You may be from a corporate, independent consultancy, start-up, government department or academic institution. This is a beginner–level, practical, live course where you’ll experience Design Thinking in action.
KEY BENEFITS
Learning and working alongside leading coaches;
Opportunity to use the down time to up-skill the workforce;
No need to travel;
Get introduced to new tools and methods for your teams to keep collaborating virtually;
Work with colleagues geographically dispersed, with whom you don’t usually interact;
Spread over 4 bite-sized 2.5-hour sessions, this course format is less disruptive to regular work rhythm.
OUR APPROACH
You’ll be introduced to Design Thinking by directly experiencing a set of tools and methods under the guidance of our leading coaches, which you can then use to shape and improve the services you offer.
You will gain a foundational understanding of the principles and mindsets that underpin Design Thinking, and you will gain practical experience with Design Thinking’s key tools and processes. Armed with this new understanding, you’ll return to work with an approach that reaches for more engaging, open-minded, expansive
and human-centric solutions. All tools covered will be made available to you, so that you can take these and start applying them the very next day after the course on your personal or work life.
The course takes place in 4 sessions: 3 sessions delivered over 3 consecutive days, plus 1 follow-up session delivered 1 week later.
The first 3 sessions cover the theory content and practice on a live challenge.
The 4th session is a follow-up with case-studies sharing, focus on skills for implementation, Q&A and course wrap-up.
PROGRAM
Introduction
In our introductory session we will onboard you to the course. This is an opportunity to meet the other participants, outline your ‘Hopes & Fears’ for the session and sort out any technical difficulties. It will also give you your first introduction to Design Thinking.
Session 1: Introduction and discovering behavioural insights
You’ll get introduced to the Design Thinking process and mindsets, before you will start working right away on our live challenge. You will do user research and understand how to make sense from data to get to customer insight.
Tools & methods covered in this session: Hypothesis Amnesty, User Research, Interviews, Data Clustering.
Session 2: Framing the customer question
Based on the insights you’ve uncovered in the previous session, you’ll build a clear picture of what you know around the challenge, to then reframe this challenge to make sure that you’ll be focusing on solving a real problem or on exploring a promising opportunity.
Tools & methods covered in this session: Stakeholder Map, Personas, Customer Journey Map, Opportunity Statements.
Session 3: Develop & Deliver
Keeping your reframed challenge from the previous session as your central focal point, you’ll explore different ways of answering it. You’ll experience various brainstorming techniques and get started with rapid prototyping and testing of early-stage concepts.
Tools & methods covered in this session: Ideation methods, Idea prioritisation, Concept Proposition, Storyboarding, Prototyping.
Session 4: Bridging learnings & practice
This is a semi-structured open follow-up conversation session that will be partly shaped by the needs and interests of the participants. Coaches will share inspiring case studies relevant to the participants and you’ll have the opportunity to share any challenges that you’ve encountered or foresee in applying design thinking moving forward.
We’ll also run an activity to help participants identify their peak strengths and areas to develop further, in the context of design thinking and innovation leadership.
FACILITATORS & COACHES
David Kester CEO with twenty years experience leading two world-class creative organisations. Consultant on design strategy and policy. Coach and educator in design thinking.
Susana Osório A design thinker, designer and facilitator, Susana brings an unusual combination of empathetic, user-centered thinking with her hands-on prototyping capabilities to bring disruptive new experiences and products to life.
CERTIFICATE
After successful completion of the 2-Week FastTrack Online Design Thinking course, participants are awarded a DesignThinkers Academy Certificate and you can celebrate your achievement of becoming a true Design Thinker. All tools and materials will be available after the course for personal use.