Design Thinking

Design thinking is a powerful tool for devising strategic interdisciplinary or entrepreneurial initiatives, permitting connections between concepts, methods and shifts of perspective that would otherwise be overlooked in a mono-disciplinary ‘problem-solving’ approach. Originating in design, but capable of being applied across a broad range of disciplines, design thinking brings a disruptive, game-changing potential to ways of working that have become routine. People naturally have the ability for design thinking – it deploys the associative, improvisatory logic of play – but are typically encouraged to suppress it in favour of more dependable yet limited problem-solving methodologies. For entrepreneurs who value the pursuit of validity and innovation over tradition and repetition, this course will equip you with the core skills for furthering such aims. It takes a practice-led approach, teaching design thinking skills through a mix of lectures, workshops and assignments. Having acquired the fundamentals of design thinking, students are then encouraged to explore ways of extending the established techniques – incorporating elements from, for example, other creative and design disciplines such as plotting, characterization, visualisation, role-playing, story-boarding and experience prototyping. As the course focuses on themes and speculative, post-critical prototyping of actual “wicked” problems, teaching is conducted in an interactive manner with participants expected to take an active role throughout the course.