Training: Design Thinking Foundations

Context

What comes to mind when you hear the word ¡°design¡±? Graphics? Illustrations? Websites? Fashion? It is likely that your first associations are related to the arts, media, and digital spheres. Yet, design has an omnipresent influence on all aspects of our lives. The chair you may be sitting on as you are reading this is based on a design, so is the building you live in, and the peeler you use when preparing a fruit salad. If design is everywhere, then it can be helpful for companies, organizations, and communities to approach a broad range of problems with the mindset of a designer. Enter design thinking.

Design thinking is a human-centered problem-solving approach that can be applied during the development or innovation of products, services, processes, and business models. It is most effective in contexts where problems are not yet known or only vaguely defined, where the goal is to achieve radical, future-ready innovation, and where teams are interdisciplinary. By putting the user, with their needs and wishes, at the center of the development process, better products and services can be designed in the sense that true needs are addressed, and actual problems are solved. 

The workshop

During the workshop, participants will get to know the design thinking process as a methodology:

• to develop ideas and concepts, typically in the early phase of the innovation process (the fuzzy-front end) used for product, service and business model innovation, for organizational development (process improvements, redesign of organizational structures, etc.).

Participants will learn how to:

• apply the design thinking methodology or parts of it
• empathize with users: simple interview techniques, observation, etc.
• formulate a clear problem statement
• develop ideas through brainstorming techniques
• prototype ideas with simple means
• test ideas with potential users through simple test structures. 

Upon completion of the workshop, participants will be able to:

• assess whether design thinking is a useful methodology to solve the challenges they face at university or work
• use elements (i.e. a novel brainstorming technique, a novel feedback method, etc.) in their daily projects. 
  

Please note: This 2-day training is not extensive enough to provide full-scale design thinking training that enables participants to design, organize and run their own design thinking workshops and projects. For this, further courses, training and self-guided learning are necessary. References to institutes, books and other materials will be provided.

Ready to gain a valuable toolkit for your career and improve your creative confidence? Then external page register now!