Design Thinking for Business Innovation

Design thinking is a human-centred approach to solving complex business problems. Rather than starting with solutions, it starts with deeply understanding the people you are designing for. This programme teaches you the full five-stage design thinking process and how to apply it to product development, service improvement, and business innovation.

Modules

What is Design Thinking and Why It Works
The origins and principles of design thinking. How it differs from traditional problem-solving and why it produces solutions that are more likely to succeed with real users.

Stage 1: Empathise — Understanding Your User
User research methods: interviews, observation, and empathy mapping. How to uncover the real needs, frustrations, and motivations of your customers or stakeholders.

Stage 2: Define — Framing the Right Problem
Synthesising research into insights. Writing a clear problem statement (How Might We) that focuses the team on solving the right thing, not just any thing.

Stage 3: Ideate — Generating Creative Solutions
Structured brainstorming techniques: brainwriting, SCAMPER, Crazy Eights, and worst possible idea. How to generate a high volume of ideas before narrowing down.

Stage 4: Prototype — Making Ideas Tangible
Building low-fidelity prototypes quickly and cheaply. Paper prototypes, sketches, and basic wireframes that are good enough to test without investing in full development.

Stage 5: Test — Learning from Real Feedback
Running user tests with prototypes, collecting feedback without bias, and using what you learn to refine or pivot. The importance of failing fast and iterating.

Applying Design Thinking to Business Challenges
How to use the process for improving internal processes, customer experience, new product development, and service design in Malaysian business contexts.

Building a Design Thinking Culture
How to bring design thinking into your team or organisation. Facilitation basics for running design thinking workshops with colleagues and stakeholders.

Final Activity

Full Design Sprint. Working in small groups, participants run through all five stages of the design thinking process on a real or simulated business challenge, from user interview to prototype and feedback.

Key Outcomes:
Apply all five stages of the design thinking process to any business problem
Conduct user interviews and build empathy maps to understand customer needs
Write effective problem statements that focus teams on the right challenge
Facilitate structured brainstorming sessions that produce actionable ideas
Build and test low-fidelity prototypes quickly and cheaply
Champion design thinking within your team or organisation

Fee: RM 1,750 per participant
Minimum enrolment: 1 participant
Duration: 1 Day
Level: All levels
HRD Corp Claimable
Certificate included

Frequently Asked Questions

RM 1,750 per participant.

No. Design thinking is a problem-solving methodology, not a visual design skill. It is suitable for managers, product teams, HR, operations, and anyone who solves problems at work.

Design thinking is the problem-solving process that underpins good UX design, but it applies far more broadly to business strategy, operations, and innovation.

Any industry. The methodology is used in banking, healthcare, government, retail, education, and technology organisations.

Yes, this programme is HRD Corp claimable.

Yes. In-house workshop sessions are available and can be run around a specific real business challenge your organisation is facing.

Yes, a Certificate of Completion is provided.

In-person or in-house. The hands-on workshop format works best face to face.