Unlock your creative confidence with a design thinking mindset.
Transform your team with human-centric design
Design Thinking is a discipline that focuses on a design-led mindset to understand challenges, identify opportunities and innovate solutions.
The Design Thinking in Practice programme is your launchpad for turning innovative ideas into real-world solutions. Learn by doing, and acquire the skills needed to make a meaningful impact on the challenges that matter most to you and your business. The Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at the University of Cape Town focuses on cultivating a design-led mindset across our programme offering to understand contemporary complex challenges, identify opportunities and find innovative solutions.
Aimed at professionals, the Design Thinking in Practice executive education programme is an immersive deep-dive into design-led thinking. Delegates learn how to co-create solutions for complex, real-world problems using design thinking methodologies and practices. This three-day, in-depth introductory programme aims to equip you with a new mindset so you’re able to work differently in your organisation. It’s a highly collaborative and practice-led experience that focuses on applied learning throughout.
Delegates will gain:
- Insight into human-centred problem solving
- Confidence in creative thinking
- An ability to work in multidisciplinary and diverse teams
- An understanding of how to practically apply design thinking in a wide range of settings
Select Location and Delivery
The Hasso Plattner School of Design Thinking (d-school)
The Hasso Platner School of Afrika Design Thinking at the University of Cape Town (d-school) is a place where creative intelligence is unlocked, and where future-ready leadership is developed.
Meet the Director of the UCT d-school
RICHARD PEREZ
Richard is the founding director of the UCT School of Design Thinking (d-school) at the University of Cape Town. Funded by Hasso Plattner, the d.school is a unique offering in South Africa that leverages the d.school network of both Potsdam, Germany and Stanford, United States. It is the only African school of Design Thinking that is officially affiliated with Stanford and Potsdam, drawing on the unique expertise, research and networks of these two institutions.
Richard spent 10 years as a partner and director in an award-winning Cape Town-based new product design agency developing consumer products, services, systems and user-centred research in emerging markets for diverse local and international clients. He is also an external examiner for UCT’s engineering design course and spent a number of years lecturing UCT architecture students on the Theory of Structures. Richard’s education includes a Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Cape Town, a Masters in Innovation Design Engineering from the Royal College of Art and Imperial College of Science and Technology (London) and an Executive MBA (awarded with Distinction) from the UCT Graduate School of Business.
COURSE DISCOUNTS AVAILABLE
Purchase 4 seats and get 1 complimentary
30% discount for UCT staff and faculty
20% discount for UCT alumni
FAQ
You will benefit highly from this course if:
- You are a leader, innovator, manager or entrepreneur who wants to make a difference
- Your business or organisation wants to develop a culture of design-led innovation
- Your business needs to adopt new ways of thinking, new strategies and solutions
- You are interested in learning how to work in, or manage, multidisciplinary innovative teams
- You want to develop human-centred solutions to complex challenges
Delegates on the Design Thinking in Practice course will gain:
- The ability to work with the fundamentals of the design thinking process and its key tools and techniques
- Experience of the different elements of design thinking – such as empathy, user-insights, understanding context, collaborative ideation, prototyping and evaluation
- Insight into human-centred problem solving, and the value of understanding the context in which solutions are implemented
- An ability to work in multidisciplinary, diverse teams on transversal projects, and develop techniques to communicate across disciplines
- Confidence in creative thinking
- An understanding of the practice of low-cost experimentation and prototyping to test ideas early
- An understanding of how design thinking can be practically applied in a wide range of settings, from personal to global, and across disciplines and sectors
REQUIREMENTS
- Participants are required to commit to being available and present for the full sessions.
- Participants will be divided into teams of 5 persons and each team will have their own d-school coach. A tech team will be managing and assisting with the smooth running of the programme.
LOAD SHEDDING
Unfortunately, load shedding has resumed and we are mindful that we may be affected at some stage. Please inform your team, should you be aware of load shedding in your area.
3 days in-person at the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika, located at UCT's middle campus
-3 to 5 June 2024
-9 to 11 September 2024
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