Design Thinking Certification

The Spring2 Design Thinking Certification Program is an immersive 5-day course. Throughout the course you will learn the Five Stages of Design Thinking: Empathize (Discovery), Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. By the end of the course, you will know how to apply design thinking tools and methodologies from a solution based lens with the end-user in mind.

The course will take place over an immersive 5 days, allowing you to apply Design Thinking methodology to your work and get feedback from seasoned professionals.

The first 3 sessions will be covered on November 24th, 25th, 26th, 2021; with 2 additional sessions on January 12th and 13th, 2022.

Session Breakdown

SESSION 1: Design Thinking 101

This session will set the stage for the certification program and will cover the basics of Design Thinking. You will learn tools for empathizing with the end-client, allowing you to understand stakeholders’ needs, mindsets, attitudes and challenges, which will in turn guide you to their unmet and unarticulated needs.

SESSION 2: Getting to the Root of the Problem

Session 2 is all about getting to the root of the problem. You will learn how to apply Journey Mapping (JM) to identify the real problem to be solved. JM uncovers the root issue by analyzing the clients’ end to end experience using the organization’s service or product.

SESSION 3: Define the Problem & Generate Solutions

By looking through a multi-stakeholder lens, Session 3 will teach you how to define the problem by leveraging facilitated brainstorming techniques to ideate possible solutions.

SESSION 4: Making it Real: Prototyping Real World Solutions

Contrary to popular belief, Session 4 isn’t solely about checking if the solution is right. It is about asking good questions to uncover biases/assumptions, create momentum for an action plan going forward and to prepare an you, or your organization, for how the solution will look, feel and work in practice.

SESSION 5: Test, Test, Test!

Session 5 is the testing phase and this is when you will engage end users to test the prototype and the assumptions made during Session 4, the Prototyping Phase. It is at this stage that ideas can be regenerated, or hybrid prototypes can be co-created if necessary, to address the real problem.

Upon completion of the course, and submission of the application of knowledge, you will be awarded the Spring2 Innovation Professional Design Thinker Certification.

This certification will be taking place virtually on November 24-26, 2021 and January 12-13, 2022 with 2 sessions per day; one in the morning and one in the afternoon. We use a virtual platform that you are able to access from your home network. You do not need your corporate VPN to access the training.

Schedule:

• Wednesday, November 24th: 9am-11:00am & 1pm-3pm
• Thursday, November 25th: 9am-11:00am & 1pm-3pm
• Friday, November 26th: 9am-11:00am & 1pm-3pm
• Wednesday, January 12th: 9am-11:00am & 1pm-3pm
• Thursday, January 13th: 9am-11:00am & 1pm-3pm