Design thinking for non-designers
Published by O'Reilly Media, Inc.
How to become user centered at rapid speed
Design thinking is a proven and practical way to test, build, and solve complex user-centered problems at rapid speed. By bringing different disciplines like engineering, product management, and design into the mix, design thinking enables you to move quickly toward important product decisions.
Join expert Naveen Raja to learn how to build a deeper understanding of your users and their experiences. Over three hours, Naveen walks you through the tools and knowledge you need to put design thinking to work in your projects, with a focus on collaboration. You’ll gain exposure to innovative resources and methods to fine-tune your delivery of design thinking, better understand your workflow, help align your team on the users you’re designing for, identify your customers’ problems, and deliver a better user experience.
What you’ll learn and how you can apply it
By the end of this live, online course, you’ll understand:
- The definition of design thinking in clear terms
- How to leverage design thinking as a tool to drive user-centered product development
And you’ll be able to:
- Use design thinking activities to align your team
- Build and develop a deeper understanding of your users
- Employ the design thinking framework to solve complex problems and recognize gaps in your products
This live event is for you because...
- You're a developer working on a legacy or technically challenging product who needs to come up with new ideas of what the product could be.
- You're a product manager who wants to take your product’s UX to the next level, and you need to understand what you’re building and how to deliver it.
- You're an innovator who wants to understand your users and deliver an amazing product experience.
Prerequisites
- A basic understanding of the design thinking approach and general practical experience
- Familiarity with team dynamics (ideally from a leadership perspective)
- A minimum of two Post-it notepads and three standard Sharpie markers
Recommended preparation:
- Read Educate & Iterate (website)
- Read "Lessons Learned from Applying Design Thinking in a NASA Rapid Design Study in Aeronautics" (article)
- Read “Design Thinking: A Manual for Innovation)” (article)
- Read “Design Thinking in the Corporate DNA” (article)
- Read “Kaiser Permanente’s Innovation on the Front Lines” (article)
- Create a high-level list of what you do on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis, focusing on your job function and how you could collaborate with other disciplines by using design thinking on your team
- Download the course worksheets
Schedule
The time frames are only estimates and may vary according to how the class is progressing.
Introduction to design thinking (60 minutes)
- Lecture: Design thinking basics in a modern context; understanding your users
- Hands-on exercises: Persona sketch—identify how much or how little you know about your users; stakeholder map—better understand your user’s realm of influence
- Q&A
- Break (5 minutes)
Finding opportunities (55 minutes)
- Lecture: Finding opportunities; pain points and opportunities
- Hands-on exercise: Journey map—map a user’s journey to learn what areas of the journey can be improved using design thinking
- Q&A
- Break (5 minutes)
Delivering disruption (40 minutes)
- Lecture: Delivering disruption; road mapping—scoping and delivering a big idea to market
- Hands-on exercise: Ideate big ideas for your users and learn how to prioritize and group ideas into actionable steps for you and your team
Wrap-up and Q&A (15 minutes)
Your Instructor
Naveen Raja