Design Thinking
Why attend a program on Design Thinking?
Executives, managers and project staff everywhere are seeking ways to strengthen their ability to lead and enhance innovation in their organisations. Design thinking is a powerful approach adopted by the best companies and government departments to meet the complex challenges facing their organisations. This program will help participants to develop a design-driven mindset that will elevate their current business thinking.
What is Design Thinking?
Design thinking is an intentional and collaborative approach to problem-solving. Through design thinking, solutions to complex problems can be identified and developed taking into consideration the personal elements of a problem. It's extremely tactile and empathetic in its approach. Participants don't discuss the problem, they feel the problem first-hand - you don't hypothesise solutions you find ways to physically construct and experience them.
Design thinking is about a mindset shift, embracing creativity as a tool. It provides a step-by-step process to find and execute solutions that improve profits, efficiency, and customer satisfaction, and keep your business ahead of the innovation curve.
Why traditional brainstorming doesn't work but Design Thinking does
Traditional brainstorming involves the spontaneous contribution of ideas from all members of a group. But executed simply it rarely proves fruitful. Why? Because we're not all spontaneous and we don't all contribute. Traditional brainstorming doesn't work for three key reasons:
- Group-think is a plague: people latch onto bad ideas as the session foundation piece because they feel pressured to come up with something, however misguided.
- Personality matters: the more extroverted personality types will happily contribute in the moment, while the more introverted personality types may wait to contribute after the fact, if and when they get an opening.
- Rarely sees the light of day: all too often the pile of theoretical solutions to plaguing problems are shelved and left half-baked.
Put simply, brainstorming can lead to lowest common denominator thinking that gets lots of head nods because no one wants to disagree and many are just happy some else has added something to the whiteboard.
Design Thinking is about generating creative and collaborative workflows engineered at tackling big projects and prototyping to discover new solutions. What are the key facets that make it work? Building empathy for potential users and generating prototypes that allow you to test your ideas.
Course Objectives:
During this course we will focus on:
- Understanding the design thinking process.
- How to have a design thinking approach to brainstorming that gets new ideas off the whiteboard and into production.
- Developing stronger innovation skills and the ability to enhance them in others.
- Communication aids that translate design thinking into your organisation’s established business and project management processes.
Delivery Mode:
At OzTrain, we strongly believe in ‘Learning by Doing’, so this course will be a high energy and hands-on event. You will not just learn the techniques and their importance, but will be challenged to work in small teams to apply your learnings and experience design thinking.
This is a fast-paced workshop where participants pair up to interview each other, identify real needs, and develop a solution to redesign a real business process for their partner. Through this experience we hope you will take away some of the basic principles of Design Thinking and start to adapt them into your personal and professional routines.
Course Requirements:
An open mind and a willingness to roll your sleeves up and develop new skills.
Materials provided: Various handouts
Items to bring: Pen and paper
Course Fee*:
$550 plus GST. A 10% discount is available for organisations booking more than 2 attendees into the course.
Organisations may also wish to book an in-house session for groups ranging in size from 10 to 20 employees.
Location - OzTrain's Training Suite:
Suite 114, Level 1, 147 Pirie Street, Adelaide 5000
Next Date Offered*:
TBD - contact Steph
*PLEASE NOTE: All courses need a minimum number of attendees to proceed. If your course date does not have enough enrollments it will be cancelled and you will have the opportunity to either book in for an alternate date or have your fee refunded in full.
To Enrol, Simply Contact:
Steph Jeuken