Human-centred Design for Innovation

Unlock your creative potential with Human-Centred Design! This course immerses you in user-focused innovation, teaching design principles from Stanford University’s Design School/IDEO framework. You'll learn to create new products, services, experiences, and business models that truly resonate with users. Design thinking is by now known as a widely accepted and impactful way for organizations to innovate. Real world organizations ranging from startups to banks and governments employ design to improve their customer experience and organizational performance. The course is divided into four main aspects, all interconnected but separately emphasized: 

(1) Human-centred design principles (e.g. empathetic user research, brainstorming, prototyping and testing), 

(2) the product or service to be designed 

(3) mindsets, attitudes and behaviors and 

(4) design contexts. Design contexts encompass the dynamic environments of humans and businesses.

 Increasingly, they include societal and sustainable concerns. Learning in the course will be hands-on, highly interactive and deeply engaging – through class interactions, team exercises, and a team project. This course has benefited both students and clients in a win-win learning environment. Each semester, we have worked with clients from different industries ranging from multi-nationals to small & medium enterprises, government agencies, start-ups and non-profit organizations. Past clients were surprised and delighted with the innovative prototype solutions designed by our student teams. Students also benefited from gaining invaluable experience using design concepts to deliver value to clients, learning from client’s feedback and exceeding their client’s expectations.