What is Design?

This seminar introduces key concepts and principles of design to articulate the meaning of design and the idea of design as a value-add process and product.  The seminar addresses how as a strategic tool in business, design sets the context for design thinking in product branding and innovation to create competitive advantage for business success.  The seminar programme comprises interactive group discussions and case studies blended with lectures to provide the background knowledge and theories that underpin understanding of the key principles and concepts.

Essential Thinking Skills for Creativity and Innovation

This course reviews how the human mind takes in, organise and process information for different purposes and the role of critical thinking, analytical thinking and creative thinking to drive one into action for creativity and innovation.  It explores the principles of good thinking and its relationship to effective thinking for action/behaviour that enhance professional capabilities and creative innovation. 

Design Thinking for Business Design, Creativity and Innovation

This course introduces the key concepts and principles of design thinking for business design, creativity and innovation.  The course addresses how as a strategic tool in business, design sets the context for design thinking to create competitive advantage for business success.  The course covers the underpinning thinking skills and knowledge required for better awareness of the creative process to drive innovation. It will examine the thinking strategies and process models for idea generation and holistic problem solving that leverage on design thinking for strategic and innovative business development.

Driving Productivity and Innovation with Design Thinking

Design thinking is characterised by an individual’s ability to organise tasks, address issues and resolve problems with an approach that focuses on end-user’s experience (human-centric), engagement in idea generation, experimentation and testing (rapid prototyping) and thriving on perspectives of diverse insights of the real world in team work (multi-disciplinary collaboration). 

Design thinking engages tasks and problem solving in a creative process just as a designer would in the conceptualisation and development of a design project.  This includes the engagement of creative thinking to address and manage issues to ensure meeting user’s requirements, mapping out strategies to overcome challenges, generating new ideas by experimenting with new approaches, testing ideas rigorously, and driving productivity and innovation through collaborative team work.

For design thinking to be effective at the workplace, an individual should keep an open mind to new possibilities, constantly questioning conventions, take chances with new ideas and testing out different approaches to doing things in ways that can generate alternative potential possibilities.

The Design Thinking Mindset

This is a design thinking induction programme aimed at introducing the principles and concepts of design thinking, and interprets its multiple possibilities to bring forth innovative solutions to existing challenges at work by understanding user needs and creating meaningful user experiences.  This involves fostering a mindset change and embracing skills sets to foster a new way of thinking about problems and challenges, and the different ways to deal with them.  The programme is designed to provide the learning opportunity to equip learners with design thinking skills to think differently, think creatively, think critically, generate new ideas, solve problems effectively and effect innovative breakthroughs with a focus on user needs and experiences.