Design thinking starts from a simple idea: the best solutions come from understanding the people who will use them. This module introduces the five phases of the process and shows how teams move back and forth between them as they learn. You'll look at what happens when teams skip the early work, learn to tell a problem statement from a solution in disguise, and get a sense of when the method is worth reaching for.

Before you can solve a problem for someone, you need to understand their world. This module covers how to plan and run user research, from stakeholder mapping and interviews to observation and diary studies. You'll then make sense of what you've gathered using empathy maps, affinity diagrams, personas and journey maps, and learn how the POPI Act shapes the way you handle people's information.

Research gives you a pile of stories and observations. This module shows you how to turn them into a problem statement your team can act on. You'll learn to spot patterns, reframe problems that arrive disguised as solutions, and sharpen your thinking with tools like the five whys and point-of-view statements. The module ends by turning your problem into How Might We questions, ready for ideation.

With a clear problem in hand, it's time to generate ideas. This module explains why generating ideas and judging them need to happen separately, then gives you a toolbox of techniques for both, from Crazy Eights and SCAMPER to dot voting and the Lean Canvas. You'll also learn how to plan and facilitate an ideation workshop that gets the best thinking out of everyone in the room.

A prototype is a way of asking a question before you invest in an answer. This module covers prototyping across digital products, physical objects, services and business models, and shows you how to match the level of finish to what you need to learn. You'll leave knowing how to build quickly and cheaply, and when to let a prototype go.

Watching someone struggle with something you made is uncomfortable, and it's also the most useful thing a test can show you. This module teaches you to plan a user test, facilitate it without steering participants and turn your observations into clear design changes. You'll learn why five participants are often enough and why what people do counts for more than what they say.

Good solutions don't build themselves. Someone has to convince the people who control the budget and the team who will implement it. This module covers how to read your audience, turn a whole project into one evidence-led story and show that your solution is feasible, desirable and viable. You'll also learn which format suits which situation, from a short pitch to a full handover pack.

Across the course you run a complete design thinking project: you research real users, define a problem, generate ideas, and build and test a prototype. The summative pulls all of it together into a handover pack, a presentation that tells the story of your project and makes the case for your solution to a chosen audience.

You finish with a piece of work that demonstrates the full process from problem to recommendation, grounded in evidence you gathered yourself.