Course Description
Design Thinking African Bootcamp | Johannesburg
The Design Thinking African Bootcamp provides a unique training opportunity to learn from internationally recognized and highly experienced Service Design & Design Thinking practitioners from the Business, Design and Academic world. It also provides a combination of Masterclasses, in-depth knowledge of Service Design & Design Thinking Tools as well as a deep-dive in the Design Thinking Methodology, principles and mindsets.
If you aspire to be a changemaker, a maverick or are someone who wants to make an impact and bring about positive change, then this course is for you.
Design Thinking is now commonplace in most customer centred organisations. Whether you are an executive, a manager or operational staff, this program will help you pick up the tools necessary to design unique solutions that meet customer needs.
Coaches and consultants will benefit from this course too as it is the quintessential program to help you work with teams who are looking for novel solutions to delight customers.
A sustainability focused challenge
The main goal of the Bootcamp is to provide key insights on how to apply Service Design Thinking. We will carefully facilitate participants through the program as you work on a real case study to obtain direct, relevant experience. And through this, we will expand your capabilities to solve problems creatively and work in a more human-centred way.
The program will focus on a sustainability related challenge, ensuring teams consider both human needs but also ensuring that solutions are environmentally regenerative, economically sound and socially desirable.
Learning by Doing
From learning to generate customer insights through research and journey mapping to prototyping and testing fresh ideas, we will help you learn to adopt this value-focused way of working.
It won’t be plain sailing, we strive to replicate a real-world scenario, where you are required to pitch your concepts to our Dragons Den on the final day. So, as you learn to navigate ambiguity and wrestle with complexity, you will learn to step out of your comfort zones, to question previously held biases and assumptions and to listen to and understand the perspectives of others.
This process, which relies significantly on sensemaking and achieving alignment will mean you will need to explore, in a safe learning environment, the art of questioning and challenging the current situation, so that you can move together as a team, to defining a preferred future state.
DesignThinkers experienced facilitators will guide you through these divergent and convergent thinking cycles, so that you will obtain a lived experience and retain the memories on how to handle these situations when back in your work context.
A relevant and unforgettable immersion
At the Design Thinking African Bootcamp you will experience the pace of the city, explore the needs of African’s and consider how an emerging economy can shift into innovative and fresh solutions for people while holding the environment and other sustainability considerations at the forefront.
The venue offers a safe place to explore Design Thinking and Service Design while putting you at the heart of the confluence of African trends. The food is delicious, and we will photograph the process of you interacting with your colleagues as you prepare to pitch your concepts to the Dragons Den.
We look forward to having you on the course.
*Pricing plans, as well as payment plans, are available for individuals / start-ups / NGO’s. Please contact southafrica@designthinkersacademy.com to enquire.
Early Bird Price
R 16 995.00 ex vat
Length
4 days
Language
English
Standard Price
R 18 995.00 ex vat
Involvement
4 days
Course Type
In-person
The DT Bootcamp was a life-changing experience. Suddenly the way I’ve been thinking my whole life started making sense. Now I could call it something. Before I was coined too clever, too complex, or not staying in my own lane…
ABOUT THIS COURSE
The following principles will be taught throughout the four days in accordance with our hands-on approach: Service Design Thinking processes including the methodology and corresponding tools. In addition, the DT African Bootcamp includes Personal Coaching and four in-depth Masterclasses from field practitioners, thought leaders representing with a specialty in research, design, methodology and business.
Participants will actively collaborate together with people from different professional and cultural backgrounds. More importantly, you will become a part of a global Design Thinking community where you can continue to exchange ideas and share key insights.
A week after the DT Bootcamp, you will reconnect with your facilitators. This follow-up call, will provide you with the opportunity to reflect on your experiences with implementing DT in your daily work. In small groups, together with your fellow alumni you can share your struggles and/or insights and once again learn from each other.
After successful completion of the 4-Day DT African Bootcamp, participants are awarded with a DesignThinkers Academy Certificate when you can celebrate your achievement of becoming a Service Design Thinker. You will also gain access, as an Alumni to our online Learn & Develop Library to continue your learning journey. All tools and materials will be digitally available after the course for personal use free of charge.
KEY BENEFITS
Learn to implement and apply Service Design Thinking in your daily work;
Personal guidance from our internationally recognized and experienced Service Design
A lived learning experience, replicating rapid innovation and real-life scenarios;
Expand your capability skill set to cocreate new concepts, services and business models:
– Learn to empathize with end-users and reframe problems as opportunities;
– Experience techniques to design innovative value propositions;
– Enhance your creative problem-solving skills;
– Practice approaches needed to co-create and de-risk solutions;
– Learn how to implement innovation-led projects in your organization;
– Develop capabilities to implement shared value across an entire service offering.
For a sample of what the bootcamp is like look here: Cape Town Bootcamp Video
Participant profile
This course is designed for:
Coaches and consultants. . .
with ambitions of taking the next steps towards guiding their clients toward innovation and customer centred outcomes;
Managers or Team leaders...
...seeking to develop and integrate cutting-edge creative practices into their business processes and corporate culture;
Executives....
with a strong desire to strengthen their ability to lead innovation and enhance the organization’s innovation capability & seeking to learn new problem-solving approaches to innovation;
Senior government policy makers and NGO leaders...
...who want to gain key insights in the implementation of Design Thinking;
Professionals...
... from any sector interested in efficiently combining online and offline working.
OUR APPROACH
We strongly believe in ‘learning-by-doing’ which is reflected in the high energy and hands-on approach throughout the DT Bootcamp. You will work in small teams on a local challenge while at the same time learning to work with Service Design and Design Thinking tools. A focus of this program will be on exploring the questions: How to apply and facilitate this new way of working in your organization and how to convince your sponsors and team members.
The focus of this program will be on exploring the questions: How to apply and facilitate this new way of working in your organization and how to adopt and use the principles and mindsets.
Together with our internationally recognized coaches, facilitators and experts, you will find answers to the following: How to successfully apply Design Thinking in a complex business environment? How can you build empathy in an organization, use customer feedback, rate insights and translate them into achievable opportunities?
What is the value of Service Design Thinking and how can it be implemented to your personal and/or organizational advantage? What are the fundamental principles of innovation and Service Design Thinking? How can you successfully drive customer centricity?
In all creative processes a number of possible ideas are created (‘divergent thinking’) before refining and narrowing down to the best idea (‘convergent thinking’), which can be represented by a diamond shape. The Double Diamond indicates that this happens twice – once to confirm the problem definition and once to create the solution.
In order to discover which ideas are best, the creative process is iterative. This means that ideas are developed, tested and refined a number of times, with weak ideas dropped in the process.
"The DT Bootcamp pushes you to the edge of your comfort zone, and makes you realize this is the best decision you could make."
Meet your instructors
Robert Bloom
Founder & Managing Partner DTA South Africa
Robert is the founder and managing partner of DT Academy South Africa, blending design thinking and systems thinking to help people co-create preferred futures.
Terry Behan
Design Coach
Terry Behan is a designer and educator. He assists established enterprises land design at scale to help them build and ship customer centred products and solutions to market, which he has done in over a dozen markets across the globe. His current design & innovation portfolio includes product rollouts in edutech, GBV, neuroscience & child development, financial services, crowd funding, e-commerce, platform & IoT.
Jeroen van der Weide
Partner DesignThinkers Academy Amsterdam
Jeroen is Partner & Senior Facilitator, facilitating teams and designing creative processes and brainstorm sessions. HE has a MA in Dutch Theatre, Film & Communications
We can also offer you a tailor-made coaching program designed around your specific team objectives to guide you through the DT process.