Design Thinking is a horizontal and inter-disciplinary skillset that can be applied to solving all kind of human-centred problems. It gives a structured methodology for teams who wants to engage in a creative problem solving through team collaboration and human centred approach. As part of Cisco Partner Success team, I work with Cisco’s top partners guiding them to create next generation services for their customers and design thinking approach seemed to me like a perfect methodology to leverage. These were some of the key motivations for me to enroll into this course that is offered as a part of MIT Sloan Managment executive education program.
The course has been divided into 10 modules that contains video lectures, live sessions, team/individual assignments , final project and run at the global level. Video lectures are delivered by the MIT professor with deep expertise in Integrated Systems design and uses simple language to communicate complex topics and frameworks. Individuals were grouped into teams based on the industry and the region, in my case all four of us were from tech industry in the APJC region which helped better communicate on the same wave length. Weekly office hours by MIT staff and program leads helped clarify many of the assignment questions.
My favourites are the frameworks around innovation, needs analysis, product specifications, brainstorming , prototyping, service design and so on. These can be applied seamlessly to any product development scenario’s. I have already started to apply several of the principles and frameworks from the course into my professional work with partners and colleauges. Please explore more on the slideshare below for deepdive into each module, frameworks, my key takeaways and team assignment.
From the practical aspects, since this is an online remote course, it comes with its own limitations when it comes to team assignments and final project. User research which is a core work requires field research, observation and applying empathy skills with the actual users hasn’t been as effective as it should have been. Prototyping was more of a theory than having to build a real one, so we did not build any. The last 2 modules on design for environment and product development process is a nice to have but not very helpful in my personal opinion. The program is hosted on the Canvas platform which was not a good experience at all because of the poor features. Communication within the team has been effective but across the teams and the MIT staff has not been effective, again because of the poor features on the Canvas platform.
To conclude, the course comes with its own benefits and drawbacks as i highlighted above. But i do feel that all the design thinking principles that has been laid out at the industry level hasn’t been fully applied to the learning modules with this program. There is more that can be improved to deliver more value to the learners in a much more collaborative mode.
Feel free to explore the following slides and love to hear your thoughts and feedback .
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