Design thinking was a thing ten years ago. Today, some of us might think it is a buzzword that doesn’t really contribute much to the overall service or product improvements. Unfortunately, rapid prototyping and ‘post it notes everywhere’ made some of us wrongly assume that design thinking is a rigid six-step methodology with no real business value.
However, recently, I came across the Forrester CX index score. It shows that 75% of CX projects can achieve 2xROI by utilising design thinking. Furthermore, this report showcases that a mature design thinking practice can achieve an ROI between 71% and 107% at organisational levels. Even though not popular like a decade ago, design thinking still plays an important role in the general service design, UX research, and CX toolbox.
Over the past few years, I obtained five different design thinking certifications. I can tell you that design thinking is not magic; nor does it offer easy solutions. To keep your team aligned and get their buy-in for the method, you have to work hard.
Every now and then, someone asks me for books, articles, and courses on design thinking. Practitioners still believe this method and a mindset can contribute to the general project management skills and creative thinking.
This article will outline some of the best design thinking resources and certifications based on my own experience. I have studied this method for more than seven years. But before we dive into it, let’s remind ourselves of the good old definition of design thinking.
What is design thinking?
“Design Thinking is a human-centred approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success” (Brown, 2009, pg. 17).
This is an explanation by the IDEO co-founders and creative leaders Tim Brown. However, design thinking is a product of different influences and some of the most impactful don’t come from designers, but social scientists. The first step in applying design thinking is contextual understanding of people we are designing for.
Methods such as contextual inquiries, observations, and ethnographic studies are typical for anthropologists, sociologists, and phycologists. Therefore, their expertise is inevitably important when talking about design thinking. Combined with practical and hands on processes practised, design thinking has way better chances of helping us create meaningful solutions for people.
Design thinking and CX in crisis
2023 in CX will be nothing but hard conversations about keeping customers loyal, building trust, and serving the vulnerable. Considering the cost of living crisis, these are not easy challenges to solve. In one of the recent conversations on the CX Lore podcast, I talked to CCXP, Ian Stokol. We discussed the nature of wicked problems and why more CX practitioners should get involved in helping the planet; not only be blindly focused on the business goals.
Complex problems businesses face today are not isolated from what happens to the world in the broader sense. Preventing ourselves from playing and seeing from an entirely different perspective means missing out on the chance to make a difference.I believe that practising skills of dealing better with ambiguity will help us navigate this rapidly changing world. Below are five courses that helped me broaden my perspective on the connection between different human needs, society, and business thinking.
Top 5 Design thinking courses
1. IDEO
IDEO’s courses are one of the most recognised design thinking certifications. This comes from IDEO’s years-long effort to promote and popularise design thinking through free programmes and toolkit. Before entering one of the certification programmes, you should browse their free content to get familiar with their approach and terminology. IDEO offers two tracks: Design Thinking Foundation and Advance Design Thinking. Their approach is learning by doing. At the end of the programme, you will get a certificate and a portfolio of the selected project you used to test the techniques offered.
2. Interaction Design Foundation
Interaction Design Foundation offers various courses on UX research and service design. Their facilitators are typically practitioners with rich experience in topics they discuss in pre-recorded videos.
Their course Design thinking: the ultimate guide provides a good balance between theory and practice. Just like IDEO’s course structures, you have your portfolio ready to be shared with your team, clients, or future employers.
The thing I like about IDF is that all courses are connected. If you take more than one, you achieve a holistic view of what it means to be in the service industry from the creative and research side of the story. Their programme makes a fantastic link between CX, UX, and design.
3. Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI)
Hasso Plattner Institute is an internationally recognised University with options to attend courses online and in their offices in Potsdam, Germany. They are known for their practical-oriented programmes of learning design thinking, and linking that to other disciplines such as organisational development, engineering, leadership, etc.
I attended two courses: Mastering Design Thinking in Organisations and With Design Thinking to a Networked Culture. I recommend them to anyone wanting to understand how to use design thinking to develop internal organisational capacities. They are focused on teaching how design thinking can bring strategic and systematic changes.
4. NN Group
If you are a UX designer and want a word class certificate, Nielsen Norman Group (NN Group) is your choice. They teach design thinking as part of their comprehensive UX certification programme.
Their course is focused on preparing you to be a UX design leader capable of facilitating workshops, leading projects, and conducting research. They provide practical but also theoretical insights into what it means to design products and services, while keeping people at the centre of any solution.
5. MIT
Mastering Design Thinking by MIT is created for senior project managers, designers, and C-Suite executives. Even though this course comes from such a recognised institution, it doesn’t cover anything more than the courses I mentioned above. However, MIT Review can be a fantastic source of learning about design thinking. Recently, I came across this interesting article questioning the impacts of design thinking and challenging its further developments.
Additional resources to fuel your learning
- Creative Confidence: Unleashing the creative potential within us all by Tom and David Kelly. They are two brothers who founded IDEO and Stanford D.School
- This is Service Design Doing by Marc Stickdorn, Markus Hormess, and Adam Lawrence
- Designing your Life by two Stanford University professors, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans