Creativity is essential for the development and execution of new and successful strategies. This module is designed to ground participants in utilising creativity and innovation in Product Management through Design Thinking.
Design Thinking is a human-centred approach to innovation that draws on the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.
Understanding the fundamentals of Design Thinking theory and practice enables participants to apply transformative thinking to whatever the business challenge requires. Essentially, Design Thinking brings about creative solutions to solve complex business problems across different industries and contexts – it is about applying the principles of design to the way people work.
This module will enable participants to define business challenges by building personas, journey maps, empathy mapping and creating experience journeys – all from the customer’s perspective. Through inspired ideation, participants will be able to discover, evaluate and develop ideas into a commercially viable product or strategy using agile prototyping techniques. Learning is facilitated through highly interactive practical tutorials and workshops.
Phase 1 - Design Thinking Premises/Theory
Creative Confidence: Why it is important to approach business challenges from the innovative designer’s perspective.
Design Principles: The major design principles – such as speed, simplicity, convenience, choice, attraction, habit – and incorporating these into business strategies.
Defining Challenges: A three-pronged approach to business challenges: defining the change initiative; the personas involved; and metrics.
Prevalent Methods: Reviewing both academic research and private sector case studies of successful design thinking.
Empathy Theory: An understanding of empathy (vs. sympathy) and its importance. Empathy plays a pivotal role in the design thinker’s ability to identify the needs, ‘pain-points’, aspirations and ideals of the human experience.
Language of Design: A deep understanding of the terminology and definitions of human-centric solutions.
Phase 2 – Applied Design Practices
Othodoxies: The means of breaking ‘business-as-usual’ thinking to unlock new ideas.
Empathy Mapping & Persona Building: The centre of gravity of design thinking is the human condition. Personas allow us to empathise fully with the customer’s experience.
Journey Mapping: Utilising journey mapping as a tool to identify, and then re-imagine the highest priorities of the persona/customer.
Ideation: Using best-in-class examples of innovations across various industries and disciplines.
Agile Prototyping: A prototype is worth 1,000 meetings. Utilising agile development methods, prototyping teaches the student how to blueprint their vision and bring it to reality, rapidly.
Storytelling: The art of building a story spine; developing a compelling narrative and telling that story is central to applied design thinking
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A. Introduction to Applied Design ThinkingB. Agile user methodologies and pain point mapping (Empathy mapping)C. Discovery Design: Ethnographic principles, empathy profiling (Journey building)D. Discovery Design: Business challenge statementE. Business orthodoxiesF. Facilitating inspiration (workshop facilitation competency) G. Prototype development and solution building H. Story telling
This module will use a mix of:
- Short interactive lectures
- Case study discussion and live application of Design Thinking techniques
- Real-life examples
- Delegate exercises
- Video examples
- Extensive discussion and teamwork
Sessions will be lecture based with a significant emphasis on practical activities encompassing the integration of in-company challenges to class exercises to enhance learning and provide frameworks for future use. Participants will be asked to contribute their own experience to both the lecture and activities to enhance the learning.
| Module Content & Assessment | |
|---|---|
| Assessment Breakdown | % |
| Other Assessment(s) | 100 |