Design Thinking for Innovation: Problem-Solving through Creativity

Digital Transformation and Innovation October 25, 2025
Enquire About This Course

Introduction

Design Thinking is a human-centered, iterative process used for complex problem-solving and innovation, applicable to products, services, and business processes. This practical course guides participants through the five core phases: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. It moves beyond abstract theory, teaching concrete tools for deep user understanding, rapid conceptualization, and efficient validation. Participants will leave with a versatile methodology to tackle poorly defined problems and deliver solutions that are desirable, feasible, and viable.

Objectives

Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to:

  • Master the five stages of the Design Thinking process and know when to iterate or backtrack.
  • Conduct effective user research and create empathy maps and personas to truly understand customer needs.
  • Reframe vague business challenges into actionable, human-centered problem statements (POV).
  • Facilitate high-energy ideation sessions using various creative thinking techniques.
  • Develop low-fidelity prototypes quickly and cost-effectively for validation.
  • Design and execute small-scale usability tests to gather constructive, unbiased feedback.
  • Apply Design Thinking principles to both external product challenges and internal process improvement.

Target Audience

  • Product Managers and Business Analysts
  • UX/UI Designers and Customer Experience Teams
  • Innovation Team Members and R&D Personnel
  • Project Managers leading cross-functional initiatives

Methodology

The course employs an immersive, project-based approach, where participants apply all five stages to a live business challenge. **Scenarios** involve analyzing poorly performing product launches from a user perspective. **Case studies** examine how companies like Airbnb and IDEO used Design Thinking to solve their initial problems. **Group activities** include timed rapid-prototyping sessions, where teams build a physical model of a new service using only office supplies. **Individual exercises** focus on mapping their own daily workflow and applying the Empathize phase to a colleague. **Syndicate discussions** analyze the challenges of gaining leadership buy-in for a fundamentally non-linear approach.

Personal Impact

  • Develop highly sought-after skills in structured, creative problem-solving.
  • Improve collaboration by learning to listen and synthesize diverse team inputs.
  • Reduce cognitive bias and make decisions based on verifiable user evidence, not assumptions.
  • Become a strong internal advocate for customer-centric methodologies.
  • Accelerate the ability to take an idea from concept to validated prototype rapidly.

Organizational Impact

  • Increase the success rate of new products and services by ensuring desirability.
  • Reduce costly late-stage development failures through early, frequent validation.
  • Foster cross-functional collaboration by providing a common problem-solving language.
  • Accelerate the organization's pace of innovation and learning.
  • Build internal capability to solve complex, ambiguous problems efficiently.

Course Outline

UNIT 1: The Foundations of Human-Centered Design

Defining the Methodology
  • Introduction to the history and core principles of Design Thinking
  • The three lenses of innovation: Desirability, Feasibility, and Viability
  • Distinguishing Design Thinking from traditional analytical problem-solving
  • The iterative loop: Understanding when to jump between the five phases

UNIT 2: Empathize and Define

Deeply Understanding the User
  • Techniques for conducting effective user interviews and observational research
  • Creating detailed Empathy Maps to capture user feelings, thoughts, and pain points
  • Synthesizing research findings into meaningful Personas and user segments
  • Crafting clear and actionable Point-of-View (POV) statements and "How Might We" questions

UNIT 3: Ideate and Conceptualize

Generating Creative Solutions
  • Facilitation techniques for high-quantity, constraint-free brainstorming sessions
  • Utilizing visual tools: Sketching, Storyboarding, and Concept Cards
  • Divergent thinking tools: SCAMPER, Random Inputs, and Attribute Listing
  • Convergent thinking: Affinity Diagramming and Idea Ranking methods

UNIT 4: Prototype and Test

Making Ideas Tangible
  • Principles of rapid, low-fidelity prototyping (paper, cardboard, digital mock-ups)
  • Identifying the core assumption to test before building the full solution
  • Designing simple, unbiased usability and feedback tests
  • Analyzing test results and generating actionable insights for iteration

UNIT 5: Scaling Design Thinking

Integrating into the Organization
  • Applying Design Thinking to non-product challenges (e.g., strategy, organizational structure)
  • Building internal design thinking capacity and training internal facilitators
  • Integrating the methodology with Agile and Lean product development cycles
  • Measuring the ROI of Design Thinking: Metrics for desirability and speed

Ready to Learn More?

Have questions about this course? Get in touch with our training consultants.

Submit Your Enquiry