Design Thinking for Sustainable Development

Improve your decision-making skills

To tackle the global-scale problems of sustainability, we need original and creative solutions.

On this four-week course, you’ll discover how you can use the Design Thinking methodology for a human-centred problem-solving approach.

You’ll build confidence in your decision-making as you use Design Thinking techniques to overcome barriers in sustainability, with a focus on the people you are trying to help.

This course allows you to experience how Design Thinking works in a safe environment, before implementing these techniques to help develop sustainable solutions.

Explore the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

You’ll be introduced to the SDGs before choosing one to conduct high-level research to help you solve a sustainability challenge.

This practical exercise will help you understand effective techniques such as creating meaning from interview and secondary data and how to expand ideation.

Learn from the experts at Wintec

Guided by the specialists at Waikato Institute of Technology (Wintec), you’ll learn to identify each stage of the Design Thinking process to help you understand which stage a project is in.

By the end of the course, you’ll feel confident in your decision-making skills to help you develop solutions that advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and other areas of social good.

This course is designed for anyone wanting to explore how Design Thinking can be used to drive sustainable change.

This course will help you experience the full process of the methodology and show you how Design Thinking can be applied to any business and role.

• Design Thinking and Empathy
• Introduction to the course
• Design Thinking and Sustainability goals
• Empathy
• Reflection
• Define and Ideate
• The Define Stage
• The Ideation Stage
• Reflection of Define and Ideation
• Prototype and User Test
• Introducing Prototyping
• User Testing
• Reflection
• Refine and Reflect
• Refine and Communicate
• Reflection's and next steps