Articles
What Would You Like to Learn Next?
26.01.2022, Reetta Räty
Design Thinking Online Course
Impactful Innovation through Design
You can employ Design Thinking in innovating products, services, processes, business models, and strategies. By employing this human-centric approach to innovation and development, you can make important decisions 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.
Design Thinking 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 to your own real business challenges.
Why Design Thinking?
- Design Thinking is an innovation approach driven by a deep understanding of the stakeholders.
- It involves early prototyping and iterative testing of potential solutions by employing a practical methodology and process. You can employ design Thinking in developing products, services, processes, business models, and strategies.
- This way, you can make important decisions early on in the development process to save resources towards the end of the process, where changes are far more expensive to make.
"The course knowledge shared online was excellent; it really opened up my mind on the take of new design thinking processes." 2020 participant
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By completing the course, you will get an Aalto EE Design Thinking certificate worth 0.5 ECTS. |
Start
Any time
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 to your own business challenges
Watch the Introduction Video of the Sample Module
Please note that the course is available with English subtitles.
Course Benefits
During the course, you will learn to combine analytical and creative thinking systematically for the best results in your business and gain a coherent understanding of this human-centric approach to innovation, its process, and tools.
Receive the latest academic viewpoints as well as great many practical real-world examples and tacit knowledge on how best to apply it
Acquire a workbook of tools and templates to help you to apply the lessons learned on your own real business challenges
For
This course is suitable for anyone who wants to get a coherent understanding of Design Thinking as an approach, a process, and a 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 use the lessons learned immediately in your organization. Maybe you are working in managing or developing:
- products or services
- marketing
- business development
- sales and customer relations
- HR
Contents and Schedule
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 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. 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 organization. Work together with a colleague or your team to get the best results.
The course videos are subtitled in English.
The estimated study time of the course is 18 hours. The course allows flexible study patterns; you can decide on your schedule and the speed you progress. The recommended study schedule for the course is 2–3 hours per week during 4–6 weeks.
Program Structure
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
Modules
Instructor
Tua Björklund
Tua Björklund is Assistant Professor 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.
