This course is designed especially for a busy Exec as a most of the day hands-on experience, modeling the power of design thinking for business.
Applying the analytical tools and generative techniques that designers use can transform the way organisations create value for their ‘customers’ and themselves. This approach, design thinking, is a human-centred approach that enables organisations to solve complex or ambiguous problems and define opportunities or futures.
Design isn’t about sitting at a desk, it is about ‘learning by doing’. Design Thinking for Execs will walk you through the basics of the design process in a hands-on way and convince you of the power of the tools and techniques of design thinking.
Who is the course for?
Anyone can take Design Thinking for Execs. It has been designed for busy professionals who can’t afford to take an entire day away but still want to: understand how design thinking can be leveraged within their organisation, get hands-on experience using design thinking tools and techniques, know more about design thinking. This course is tailored for those in management positions who want to understand the tools and techniques as well as support their teams to carry our the principles of design thinking.
If you’re wanting to enhance how your business operates and integrate some new skills sets into your team, this course is for you.
Learning by doing?
The design thinking ethos is ‘learn by doing’. This is how we teach the course. It’s not just learning what design thinking is but actually doing it and getting your hands dirty. We won’t just talk about what design is, we will let you practice design in the real world with real people. First setting the scene with real world success stories you can relate to we will then run through the steps: understanding users needs, identifying pain points, defining the problem, exploring possible solutions, prototyping these ideas, and testing with real people. This is a fast-paced taste of design thinking couched in business reality.
What will you get?
During the course
You will learn key tools that underpin the three phases of design thinking – Understand, Create and Deliver.
Understand – gaining user empathy and defining how this is valuable to your organisation
We will introduce the tools of observing and interviewing in order to gain empathy for your target audience. We will show you how to understand the needs, wants and desires, and what it takes to translate these to a value proposition that is right for your organisation.
Create – generating ideas that will create value to your user and you
We will introduce how to ideate, using brainstorming techniques, how-might-we questions and evalutaion techniques.
Deliver – advancing your ideas through prototyping and testing with real users
Our session will end by introducing why and how to prototype selected ideas and the power of testing these ideas with real users. You will learn the tools to capture feedback and iterate.
Because we know your time is precious our session will end at 3pm so that you still have time to deal with the day’s business.
All courses are run at Awayday, a specialist space for innovative thinking.
After the course
Once the course is over we will give you a digital slide presentation of your day at Design Thinking for Execs for your own reference and for you to share with your team. It will be full of images from our day together (you out there actually doing design), so you can remember all the steps in the process. It will also contain the techniques and tools we use in the process so you can practice yourselves.
Course tutors
At least two tutors will run each course.
Matthew Ellingsen
Matthew was trained in the design process at one of the world’s most prestigious design schools, Central Saint Martin’s in London. He has been highly sought after to lead design teams within major companies around the world, including Sony Design Centre Europe and the New Zealand 2011 Office during Rugby World Cup.
Emilie Fetscher
Emilie obtained her M.Sc from the Design Program at Stanford, where she earned her degree in Product Design. During her time at Stanford she taught at d.school on topics including user research, innovation process, and visual design. She has worked across the US from California to Alaska for companies such as Black Diamond Equipment and agencies such as Alaska’s electronic Health Network.
Emma Saunders
Emma’s background weaves together academic training in psychology (PhD ’01) and people-based research with business experience in strategic design. She has uncovered customer insights into populations as diverse as teenage drinkers and Europe’s wealthy mums, and lead business design projects for clients including New Zealand Post, the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and Ministry of Economic Development. Emma has been trained as d.think facilitator by Stanford d.school staff.