Course description
The course introduces the basics of design thinking and the importance of the human-centered approach to innovation and the success of the business. The course will familiarize with the landscape of Design Thinking models and major steps of Design Thinking methodology. We will deep dive into the design process - Empathise, Define and Ideate. We will examine the art of doing fieldwork in order to understand what people truly want, need, and desire and learn the fundamentals about how to gather data, what research methods there are and how to conduct interviews in the real world.
The course is based on numerous practical real-life cases, examples, and tools for empathizing and other field research to gather necessary insights on people’s needs. It develops skills of planning and conducting research and applying critical thinking in decision making.
The course is an overview of Design Thinking frameworks and research methods to enhance students throughout the continuous complex project.
Course goals
The course focuses on understanding the Design Thinking approach and various frameworks, and the application of the design thinking approach in business development, creating services and products in order to sustain competitive advantage. After describing the concept of Design Thinking, the course will focus on three main areas: defining the problem, planning and executing field research, and summarizing data for decision making.
Course results
- To be able to define the design thinking process.
- To be able to formulate business/user-related assumptions and define a research plan to verify assumptions and gather information is needed to support decisions.
- To understand the advantages and disadvantages of various qualitative and quantitative research methods and be able to conduct research using relevant tools.
- To be able to link human needs, possibilities of technology, and requirements for business success.
- To identify and understand potential ethical, empirical, and analytical problems plaguing the research process and ways to overcome them.
- To be able critically evaluate the quality of other people’s research findings and the process used to obtain them.
