Course Description
Design Thinking Fundamentals for Customer Experience Online
The interactive online Design Thinking fundamentals for Customer Experience Training is run part-time. It is designed to equip you with the Design Thinking mindset, tools and skills to kick-start bold innovation. You will be working virtually in a small intimate group, on a customer-centred challenge under live guidance of our skilled facilitators.
With a combination of live classroom sessions, group assignments and homework you will gain practical knowledge and experience to apply Design Thinking in your daily work on how to identify opportunities to develop innovative solutions that delight customers.
*PAYMENT PLANS ARE AVAILABLE – contact nicola@designthinkersgroup.com for more info
Early Bird Price
R11 350 ex vat
Length
3 weeks part-time / 6 sessions
Language
English
Standard Price
R13 220 ex vat
Involvement
3 hours per session plus 45 minutes homework
Course Type
Online
KEY BENEFITS OF THE ONLINE DESIGN THINKING FOR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TRAINING
Focus on how to implement Design Thinking in your daily work;
Live and personal guidance from our expert facilitators;
Learn to empathize with your customers to improve your proposition and strategy;
Develop your creative problem solving skills and mindset for innovation;
Increase your confidence for remote & multi-disciplinary collaboration.
Through years of experience we have shown that the best way to learn DT is through practical application. It is like learning to drive a car or play the guitar. You can’t learn it by watching others do it or simply reading about it. This program helps to embed the principles and ensure a deeper understanding of these through experience.
A powerful learning experience
The Design Thinking Fundamentals is our flagship introduction course that introduces the principles and mindsets of DT. Participants will work on a challenge learning how to build customer’s needs into the solution. Activities will include:
Researching needs and empathising with others,
Making sense of complexity (operating on the edge of your comfort zone),
Learning the art of synthesis by identifying themes,
You will learn to reframe the problem (with the user at the centre) and
Learn how to solve for those needs by creating prototypes of the ideas to test.
This practical learning experience will embed the principles and mindsets needed to do the above effectively.
MAIN OUTCOMES OF DESIGN THINKING FOR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
The program will develop the participants individual creative problem solving capabilities, providing the fundamental skills of design thinking necessary to bring about positive change.
Capabilities we will focus on are:
- Working in a multi-disciplinary manner: Design Thinking is a team sport. Learn to collaborate with colleagues on the training. Understand different innovation styles and how the creative tension between styles catalyzes fresh insight and new concepts.
- Empathy: You will grow your empathic skills to take in fresh perspectives. Learn to be more aware of your own state to be able to listen to customers and other stakeholders. Be open to diverse viewpoints and insights to shift your biases to work on what matters to clients.
- Understanding interdependencies: Customers act in certain ways. These behaviours are linked to their motivations and goals. As a DesignThinker we need to understand these drivers to identify and focus on essential customer needs.
- Value-generation: Participant will learn to work on opportunities that generate value for key stakeholders (value exchange) with a specific focus on the customer and their preferred experiences.
This program will support people who are working in distributed teams to explore new ways of working. It will enable creative problem solving using online collaboration tools like Miro.
OUR APPROACH ON THE ONLINE DESIGN THINKING FOR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TRAINING
You’ll be introduced to Design Thinking by directly working with a set of tools and methods under the guidance of our leading coaches, which you can then use immediately on user -centred challenges.
You will gain an understanding of the principles and mindsets that underpin Design Thinking, and obtain practical experience with Design Thinking’s key tools and processes. Armed with this new understanding, you’ll return to work with creative problem-solving techniques that you can share in a multi-disciplinary team.
All tools covered are made available, so that you can take these and start applying them in your work context.
STRUCTURE OF THE ONLINE DESIGN THINKING FOR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TRAINING
Introduction Session 1:
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 learn the basics of radical collaboration online. It will also give you your first introduction to Design Thinking principles and mindsets.
Session 2: Discovery through empathy
We get a deeper sense of the Design Thinking process and mindsets and how to set up a DT project.
We will start with a broad challenge and practice divergent thinking techniques that are grounded in empathising with stakeholders. We will cover story gathering and data collection techniques as we identify any assumptions and biases. We will do user research (as homework) and learn how to empathise with others (with a particular focus on techniques to use during social distancing)
Methods covered in this session: stakeholder map, user research, interviews and observation
Session 3: Sense-making
In this session learn how to make sense of data to get to customer insights. Based on the insights you’ve uncovered we will build a clear picture of what you know around the challenge, to eventually reframe this challenge.
Methods covered in this session: affinity mapping, personas, touch-points and opportunity mapping
Session 4: From Reframe to Novel Concepts
We make sure we have identified a problem worth solving (a promising opportunity). We reframe the challenge as a central focal point and focus on developing solutions. We will introduce various brainstorming techniques.
Methods covered in this session: opportunity statements, ideation methods, idea prioritisation
Session 5: Prototyping and Storytelling
This session really taps into your creative problem-solving abilities with rapid prototyping and testing of early-stage concepts. We practice storyboarding and building and presentation of prototype concepts through storytelling techniques.
Methods covered in this session: concept proposition, storyboarding, prototyping, importance of iteration
Session 6: Consolidation and Certificates
In the final session, your final presentation of your prototypes takes place, after which we run an open conversation session.
This is a semi-structured open conversation session that will be partly shaped by the needs and interests of the participants. You’ll have the opportunity to share any challenges that you’ve encountered or foresee in applying design thinking moving forward. We will award your certificates of completion.
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.
Part-time and supportive of work continuity
This is a practical, live course run part-time where you’ll experience Design Thinking in action with a focus on designing for Customer Experience (CX). This course format is less disruptive to regular work rhythm. It is run on Miro which is a collaborative white-board tool enabling participants to engage with the material during the training and in their own time.
EXPERIENCED FACILITATORS
You will be guided through the Online Course by our highly experienced Facilitators. They have years of experience in working with Design Thinking and know the tips & tricks to guide you on this online learning journey how to implement it within your working environment.
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.