Design Thinking

Traditional Classroom: 1-day
Virtual Instructor-led: Two 3-3.5 hour sessions; Three 2-hour sessions

The ability to successfully innovate starts with a change in mindset. Design thinking is a fun and powerful innovation approach that teaches you how to quickly create viable, user-centric solutions. This one-day course is a hands-on, interactive experience applying the design thinking framework WITH your customers so you can ensure you develop solutions that meet their true needs. It introduces a best-practiced design thinking framework that teaches you how to quickly create viable, user-centric solutions that meet the needs of your organization and its users and clients (internal and external).

Target Audience

Individuals who will benefit from this course include all non-technical employees who want to learn how to create and contribute to a mindset, culture, and leadership of innovation that fosters and encourages organizational creativity and innovation as well as anyone interested in using design thinking in the workplace to drive innovation.

Learning Objectives

Identify the five phases of the design thinking framework.
Empathize with the customers and target user audience.
Define human-centered design and experiment hands-on with a sample scenario customer journey.
Apply tools and techniques to define/prioritize user problems.
Describe the benefits of rapid prototyping.
Experience how design work feels as a designer and a recipient of a design.
Work quickly while listening deeply to customers, resulting in new, customer-welcomed ideas.
Cultivate a positive and open mindset for embracing new perspectives and learning approaches.

Course Outline

Introduction and Objectives

The Design Thinking Framework

What We Can Learn from Failure
The Design Thinking Framework &ndsh; 5 Phases
- Empathize
- Define
- Ideate
- Prototype
- Test

Empathize with and Research Users (Phase 1)

Personas
Empathy Map
Activity: Create a Persona and Empathy Map Using a Sample Scenario

Define Users’ Needs and Problems (Phase 2)

Principles of Human-Centered Design
Journey Maps (User or Customer)
Dot Voting
Problem Statements
Activity: Use a Journey Map and Dot Voting to Create a Problem Statement

Ideate and Challenge Assumptions (Phase 3)

Brainstorming – Divergent/Convergent Thinking
Activity: Brainstorm Using Crazy 8s Technique
Activity: Brainstorm Using Convergent Thinking

Prototype to Start Creating Solutions (Phase 4)

Definitions
Activity: Prototyping Mock-Ups

Test and Try out Solutions (Phase 5)

Feedback: Conducting Customer/User Interviews
Activity: Gather Feedback from a User Using Your Prototype

Summary and Next Steps

MDV911bc Course Code

Practice Area

Management and Leadership