Articles
Design Fiction Portrays Possible Futures Through Storytelling
20.12.2019, Joanna Sinclair
Design Thinking, Impactful Innovation through Design, is a cost-effective and flexible online course offering a concise overview of Design Thinking. It walks you through the human-centric process of Design Thinking and gives you the best tools for all phases. You will acquire a workbook to practice and apply on your own real business challenges.
Why Design Thinking?
"The course knowledge shared online was excellent, really opened up my mind on the take of new design thinking processes." 2020 participant
![]() |
By completing the program, the participant will get Aalto EE Design Thinking certificate. |
Start
Learn why this human-centric approach to innovation is so effective
Working at your own pace, gain an understanding of the design thinking process and methodology
Acquire a workbook of tools and templates to apply on your own business challenges
Please note that the course is available with English subtitles.
Design Thinking can be employed in innovating products, services, processes, business models and strategies. By employing this human-centric approach to innovation and development, important decisions can be made early on in the development process. This will save you a significant amount of resources towards the end of the process where making changes is complicated and expensive. By validating or co-creating your designs with your stakeholders your pursuits will be far more likely to succeed.
This course is suitable for anyone who wants to get a coherent understanding of Design Thinking as an approach, a process and set of practical tools. People involved with developing products, services, processes, business models or strategies will benefit from this course.
We also offer a face-to-face program, Design Thinking for Business Innovation, if you prefer a deep dive into the topic with an international group of peers and instructors.
Learn more
You may be accountable for getting measurable results through a systematic process and thus want to be able to use the lessons learned immediately in your organization. Maybe you are working in managing or developing:
The themes cover the topics from creating value with Design Thinking through to the process and different tools and templates for applying the methodology in practice. The course also addresses the question of how to scale up Design Thinking and implement it in your organization.
This online course comprises six modules with three videos each. It also includes a workbook that you can either print out in A3 format or use in electronic format. The duration of each video is about 5 minutes, altogether about 1,5 hours. After each video, there is a brief knowledge check. We recommend that you stop after each video to reflect and consider how the lessons learned can be related to your own context. To enhance learning, employ the workbook on a challenge in your own organization. Work together with a colleague or your team in order to get the best results.
Six Online modules
Six times three videos of appr. 5 min each
Reflection
Relate lessons learned to your context
Workbook
Employ templates on a business challenge in your organization
Tua Björklund
Dr. Tua Björklund is Professor of Practice and one of the founders of Aalto Design Factory, a multidisciplinary experimentation platform in Aalto University and 29 institutions abroad. Her research focuses on design expertise and advancing new ideas in organizations, building on her experience at Aalto University and at the Center for Design Research at Stanford University.
Tua Björklund has a comprehensive, human-centered view on what innovation efforts actually need in order to succeed in organizations. She teaches design thinking and innovation practices in three schools of Aalto University, as well at e.g. Aalto EE and Stanford Executive Education. Currently she leads the development of research activities in the Design Factory Global Network and manages several research projects investigating design thinking in Finland and in Silicon Valley. She is experienced in supervising design thinking development initiatives for companies in practice.
Tua Björklund holds a DSc degree in industrial engineering and management from Aalto University and a MA degree in cognitive science from the University of Helsinki.