Design Thinking & Innovation

Course Code: IS02

Program: Innovation & Startup Skills Program

Course Overview: Design thinking uses human-centred research, empathy, creativity, experimentation, and collaboration to understand challenges and develop meaningful solutions. It helps students frame the right problems, learn from users, explore possibilities, and improve ideas through evidence and iteration.

This course develops user research, empathy mapping, personas, customer-journey analysis, problem framing, ideation, co-creation, idea evaluation, low-fidelity prototyping, user testing, feedback, innovation culture, social innovation, and ethical, inclusive, and sustainable innovation practices.

Learning Outcomes

• Apply design-thinking principles and human-centred problem-solving processes
• Conduct user research and develop empathy-based insights
• Generate, evaluate, refine, and prioritize creative solution ideas
• Create prototypes, test concepts, and improve solutions through feedback
• Collaborate responsibly and apply ethical, inclusive, and future-ready innovation thinking

Target Audience: Student teams, aspiring innovators, entrepreneurs, and learners designing solutions for academic, professional, business, or community challenges.

Learning Experience: Students engage through video overviews, audio deep dives, study guides, practical examples, reflection prompts, workbook activities, applied tasks, knowledge checks, and end-of-module quizzes. Activities support empathy research, user insight, problem framing, ideation, co-creation, prototyping, testing, feedback, iteration, and responsible innovation planning.

Course Structure: 5 modules / 25 lessons.

Special Feature: Every module concludes with a Putting It All Together audio deep dive that connects the key lessons and supports reflection and practical application.

Pathway Focus: Understand real needs. Design possible solutions. Test and improve ideas.