Design Thinking for Innovation
Design is transforming business, powering new companies like Nest and Airbnb, and revitalizing older ones like Google and Intuit. Design thinking and practices are tapped as a font of innovation by startups in particular. But how can you adopt this new approach effectively? Christina Wodtke, Adjunct Professor at CCA and Stanford Continuing Education, will take you through the science behind design thinking.
In this workshop, participants will apply six key design techniques to creating a business. You will learn how to discover hidden insights in data, sketch out concepts, and co-create with customers an early MVP. As well, we’ll use design thinking to rapidly iterate on the business model canvas to assure your business is viable.
This is an extremely hands-on workshop: less lecture, more making. You will consume many post-its, markers and papers as you learn to:
- Pull actionable insights from user research so we understand what customers really want (and will pay for)
- Sketch concepts in order to cheaply iterate and test them before you build
- Work collaboratively with your team and your prospective user base
- Unlock your creative side so you can innovate beyond the next photo-sharing app. Target Audience
This workshop is aimed at people who are in the early stages of a startup or thinking of starting one. Engineers, designers, business folks… this is a workshop for all disciplines, together. Bring your team!
About Christina Wodtke
Curious Human at Wodtke Consulting
Christina Wodtke teaches dreamers how to make change actually happen by mixing pragmatic business practices with creative design approaches. She speaks everywhere from conferences to universities to boardrooms, and even at quirky UX parties in far-away Canada.
Christina has led redesigns and initial product offerings for such companies as LinkedIn, Myspace, Zynga, Yahoo!, Hot Studio, and eGreetings. She founded two consulting startups, a product startup, and Boxes and Arrows, a much-beloved online magazine of design. Christina co-founded the Information Architecture Institute andis author of Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web. She speaks often on the human experience in information spaces and opines across the internet, most often at eleganthack.com.