Fundamentals of Design Thinking

Design thinking has gained immense popularity among the world’s most successful companies. Google, Apple, Siemens, Lufthansa, and General Electric are just a few of the companies that use this approach both for developing new products and services and for improving internal processes.

Today, user demands are higher than ever before, as new solutions are created every day that focus on user needs, not just brand or legal requirements. However, many solutions are still based on assumptions, experience or theoretical data. Do words like “we’ve always done it this way” sound familiar to you? To add value to a product and strengthen its competitiveness, it is essential to take user needs into account at every stage. This is the foundation of design thinking – to create solutions that truly improve the user experience.

What is Design Thinking?

Design Thinking is a user-centered, creative problem-solving process based on deep user understanding and systematic innovation development. This method provides the opportunity to create thoughtful and relevant solutions that are tailored to a real user, not just a theoretical model. Design thinking involves user research, idea generation, prototyping and testing to create a truly useful result.

Objective

To provide an insight into design thinking through a small design project, during which new product and service solutions will be developed.

Benefits

• An understanding of the design thinking methodology, its stages and tools.

• Skills in creating new products and services, as well as improving existing ones.

• Inspiration and tools for deeper research into user needs and creating innovations.

Working method

The training is designed as "Learning by doing," and will take place in small interdisciplinary teams so that participants gain real experience in all stages of design thinking. Before the course, participants are invited to prepare a specific problem or challenge that will be addressed during the course.

Target audience

This course is suitable for entrepreneurs and employees involved in product and service development or innovation, as well as anyone who wants to learn the basics of design thinking and improve their company's ability to adapt and create valuable solutions for customers.

Program

1. Introduction to design thinking

2. Getting started

Determining a user profile and conducting research.

3. Defining

Formulating the problem and explaining the challenge.

4. Ideation

Idea generation - how to generate more than 100 ideas.

5. Prototyping

Creating and presenting a prototype

6. Testing

Getting feedback and improving the prototype.