Design Thinking and Social Research (MNG250)

The course focuses on understanding the Design Thinking approach and various frameworks, and the application of the design thinking approach in business development, creating services and products in order to sustain competitive advantage. After describing the concept of Design Thinking, the course will focus on three main areas: defining the problem, planning and executing field research, and summarizing data for decision making. The course is based on numerous practical real-life cases, examples, and tools for empathizing and other field research to gather necessary insights on people’s needs. It develops skills of planning and conducting research and applying critical thinking in decision making. The course is an overview of Design Thinking frameworks and research methods to enhance students throughout the continuous complex project.

• To be able to define the design thinking process.
• To be able to formulate business/user-related assumptions and define a research plan to verify assumptions and gather information is needed to support decisions.
• To understand the advantages and disadvantages of various qualitative and quantitative research methods and be able to conduct research using relevant tools.
• To be able to link human needs, possibilities of technology, and requirements for business success.
• To identify and understand potential ethical, empirical, and analytical problems plaguing the research process and ways to overcome them.
• To be able critically evaluate the quality of other people’s research findings and the process used to obtain them.