A4Q Design Thinking

The Design Thinking course is for anyone who wants to understand business challenges from a creative, customer-centric perspective and gain key design thinking skills. The study of design thinking is recommended for: Business Analysts; Business Service Designers; User Researchers; Project Leaders; Product Owners; Business Engineers; Business Architects; Business Change Managers; any business professional involved in transformational change projects. Everyone can learn from the design thinking practices.

Design Thinking (a three-day course)

Introduction to Design Thinking

• The nature and characteristics of Design Thinking
• The rationale for Design Thinking
• The core elements of the Design Thinking mindset
  • Collaboration
  • Customer Centricity
  • Outcome focus
  • Creativity
  • Experimentation

Fundamental Design Thinking Practices

• Empathy and perspective analysis
• Research and investigation
• Divergent and convergent thinking
• Experimentation and prototyping
• Visualisation
• Validation
• Assumption identification and testing
• Iteration and continuous learning

Design Thinking approaches

• The Design Council 3H approach
  • Head: Problem solving
  • Heart: Humanity centred
  • Hand: Practical skills
• The structure and stages of the Double Diamond approach to Design Thinking
  • Discover
  • Define
  • Develop
  • Deliver
• The structure and stages of the Stanford d.School approach to Design Thinking
  • Empathise
  • Define
  • Ideate
  • Prototype
  • Test
• Design Thinking macro and micro processes

Design Thinking techniques

• Discover
  • Service safari
  • Empathy map
• Define
  • Customer journey map
  • Problem framing
• Develop
  • Service blueprint
  • Assumption reversal
• Deliver
  • High and low fidelity prototyping
  • Feedback capture grid
  • A/B testing
• Generic Techniques
  • Brainstorming and brainwriting
  • Focus groups
  • User role and persona analysis
  • Storyboarding

Implementing Design Thinking

• The relationship between culture and Design Thinking
• The Culture Pyramid
• Cultural aspects that enable and inhibit the use of Design Thinking
• POPIT™

The Design Thinking course forms one part of Service Design training programme which includes courses on Business Service Design and CX Analysis. It is one of the mandatory modules for the new internationally recognised A4Q Service Designer qualification.

A4Q Design Thinking

During this three-day course you’ll receive all the training you need to prepare for the examination leading to the A4Q Foundation Certificate in Design Thinking. This is one of the mandatory modules for the new internationally recognised A4Q Service Designer qualification.

All delegates attending a classroom, virtual classroom or online course, sit the examination (ratified by global certification body iSQI) remotely using an online proctoring service. This examination consists of 40 multiple-choice questions with a pass mark of 26/40.

The exam is also available via Pearson Vue, iSQI Person Vue Code is DTFL_Syll2.0

The Syllabus can be downloaded here: A4Q Design Thinking 

The Sample Exam can be downloaded here: A4Q Design Thinking Sample Exam