Design Thinking: Ideas to Action

Welcome, designers! In this course, developed at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, you will carry on the design thinking process begun in our Insights to Inspiration course, beginning with the eighth step in our 14-Step process, bringing the ideas you developed in our Insights to Inspiration course to action. We start this course by asking, “What if?” We’ll use brainstorming in a new and creative way to generate solutions to your challenge, and then learn to take those raw ideas and synthesize them into important concepts. By asking, “What wows?” and “What works?” you will learn to move from ideation to experimentation. Throughout this journey, you will gather critical skills that will enable you to turn your ideas into action that can have a profound impact on you and your organization.

• What If?
• Welcome to the course! In this first week, we will continue our 14-Step process with Steps 8 and 9, in which you will brainstorm ideas and develop concepts related to your chosen project.
• What Wows?
• Welcome to Week 2! This week we move from hypothesis generation to hypothesis testing and from idea generation to idea evaluation.
• What Wows to What Works
• In Week 3 we transition from "What Wows?" to "What Works?". We will focus on Step 12 and Step 13 of your design process.
• What Works
• In Week 4 you will push further into the design and execution of in-market experiments.
• What's Next?
• It's hard to believe, but we've reached Step 15, the last step we have for you! In Step 15, we discuss what's next. Then we will wrap up our time together with some final thoughts on measuring the impact of design thinking.