Design thinking – practical techniques for practical problems
Design thinking is a tried and tested concept that enables businesses to successfully meet the human needs for their products, services and processes. This very practical session takes you through successful design thinking on a step-by-step basis, giving you tools and techniques you can apply in the workplace. It will help you define a problem and use empathy to look at it in a different way, discovering solutions and innovations with a mindset of continuous improvement.
Learning objectives
This design thinking training session will help you understand the principles of design thinking, appreciate its potential to improve and streamline the development of products, services and processes, and, most importantly, put it into practice. You will learn how to:
- Follow the steps
- Empathise – use sensitive questioning to appreciate different perspectives
- Define the problem – bring greater rigour to the process
- Generate new and innovative ideas – encouraging diversity of thought leads to a broader range of potential solutions
- Prototype – greater creativity supports more rapid prototyping
- Test and implement – with a focus on continuous performance improvement
Audience
Managers and teams responsible for creating and developing services, processes and products, and particularly those working in transformational change – leaders wanting their teams to contribute more on putting forward ideas and projects.
Format
This one-day workshop addresses the full range of applications – creating services, products and processes. It is highly interactive, very practical – and works just as well virtually as face-to-face session.
You are encouraged to bring a specific work challenge to apply the methodologies for real.
The expert trainer
Liz is an extremely popular trainer, coach and facilitator with over 15 years’ experience specializing in creativity, problem-solving and related techniques and disciplines.
Workshop outline
1 Empathise
- Define empathy skills and why they underpin the process
- Practise active listening to build trust
- Practise open questioning for deeper insights
2 Define the problem
- Apply 5W1H for clarity
- Turn assumptions into facts
- Reframe the problem to work on the right solutions
3 Ideate
- Apply tools to brainstorm effectively
- Identify assumptions and biases holding you back
- Create an environment for diversity of thought
4 Prototype
- Build on 2+ ideas to ensure success
- Develop resilience skills to fail faster, fail better
- Apply collaboration skills to iterate quickly
5 Test and implement
- Reflective practice for continuous improvements
- Create a clear vision for alignment
- Apply leadership skills for engagement