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University of Leeds

Get Creative with People to Solve Problems

University of Leeds and Institute of Coding via FutureLearn

Overview

Find solutions to a range of problems using design thinking

How are the products we use every day created and designed? Human-centered design is being used by companies, startups, and governments all over the world to solve the problems by understanding the needs of people who face them.

On this two-week course, you’ll gain a practical insight into why this method of thinking is effective, how to use it, and which jobs benefit from the process.

You’ll take part in activities and become familiar with how to collect the right information and data to prove a solution can work in the real world.

Discover the importance of human-centred design

Human-centred design is a creative approach that focuses on understanding the needs of the people who have a problem, in order to design appropriate solutions.

This course will show you how putting people first in design delivers results, as well as how to develop your own design thinking mindset.

You’ll build skills in empathy, brainstorming, and making prototypes, and see how something as simple as asking the right questions can make your product stand out.

As well as identifying the kinds of problems that can be solved with human-centred design, you’ll experiment with the process through a series of simple activities to understand what is needed to make a successful design project.

Gain insights from industry experts

Learning from experts in the field, you’ll discover how to design great products for and with real people. You’ll also understand how to apply design thinking to real-world problems to see the process in action.

By the end of this course, you’ll be able to summarise the activities needed to run a successful human-centred design project whilst developing your design thinking mindset.

This course is designed for anyone interested in building on their skills and developing a design thinking mindset to tackle problems in the workplace.

You could be a graduate or working but looking to improve your career prospects with sought-after skills.

Syllabus

  • Introducing Human-Centred Design
    • Welcome to the week
    • What is the human-centred design process?
    • A look at the five phases of HCD
    • Developing a human-centred design mindset
    • Summary
  • Designing for Real People
    • Welcome to the week
    • Empathise and Define
    • Ideate
    • Prototype
    • Reflection, testing and iteration
    • Summary

Taught by

Molly Bridge

Reviews

4.8 rating at FutureLearn based on 104 ratings

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