You would be surprised to know that Design Thinking is applicable in all professional spheres, whether it is in a business, educational, personal or even social context. It extends beyond the ‘design team’, and has become an approach to devise strategy and change. How exactly?
- It fosters a creative and innovative approach to problems, and encourages the discovery of new pathways and ideas
- It brings a balanced solution which is a mixture of emotions and intuition with analytics and science
- It focuses on empathy where humans are put first, i.e., to use the real customers/users to come up with a lasting solution
That leaves us with a bigger focus- how can we use it to help your career?
Here are three ways to help you answer this question
1. Get Curious: Follow your curiosity so that you can discover what you want. Come up with as many ideas as possible and experiment with a variety of options and create your own career choice based on your curiosity.
2. Empathise: As reflected in our discussed Design Thinking methodology, empathising will help you create a meaningful career where you thinking about your needs and motivation and the impact your decision will have on others. When you have this principle etched in you, any career path you build will be a sure way to success.
3. Explore Options: Test your ideas to figure out what you are good at and what you like so that you are motivated to take it further. This means not getting stuck in your comfort zone and even experimenting with your existing roles that could help progress further in your career.
Given how Design Thinking is not entirely confined to designers, globally ranked universities across the globe have started offering the course. Here’s our handpicked places to study Design Thinking inclusive of short certificate courses or degree programs-
University | Course | Mode of Learning & Duration | Course fee |
Johns Hopkins University | Design Leadership (MA/MBA) | On-campus 2 years | US$102,030 (full prog.) (approx. ₹ 74,92,573) |
Manchester Metropolitan University | Design Innovation (MA) | On-campus 1 year | £17,500 (approx. ₹ 17,36,925) |
The University of Melbourne | Bachelor of Design (BA) | On-campus 3 years | AUD$100,992-$140,768 (full prog.) (approx. ₹ 57,16,060 – ₹ 79,67,347) |
Cornell University | Design Thinking (Certificate course) | Online 6 months | US$3,600 (approx. ₹ 2,64,366) |
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | Mastering Design Thinking (Certificate course) | Online 3 months | US$3,300 (approx. ₹ 2,42,148) |
University of Oxford | Design Thinking Practitioner (Certificate course) | Online 8 days | £495.00 (approx. ₹ 36,322) |
University College London | Systems Design (Certificate course) | Online 5 days | £1,450 (approx. ₹ 1,44,335) |
National University of Singapore | Design Thinking for Building Innovation (Certificate course) | On-campus 3 days | S$3,210.00 (approx. ₹ 1,77,715) |
The Australian National University | Design Thinking: Human-Centred Innovation (Certificate course) | On-campus 2 months | AU$ 4890 (approx. ₹ 2,76,845) |
McGill University | Innovating Through Design Thinking (Certificate course) | Online 4 weeks | CA$1,995 (approx. ₹ 1,15,354) |
Signing up for a Design Thinking course will give you exposure to managing different types of innovations in organisations, i.e., inclusive of product, service, information systems, and business models. It will also give you an understanding of both strategic and operational issues.
No matter what your field, a course in Design thinking will encourage you to be more innovative in anything you do.