Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide
How This Course Will Transform Your Career
In This Course, You'll
Get excited when you discover that you don't need to start from scratch to use the secret recipes that empower companies like Apple and Google to shape the future. You just need a structure and proven methods to optimize what you already do.
Build on your existing creativity, problem-solving, and people skills to learn the powerful 5-stage method called Design Thinking. It's one of the key drivers behind Apple and Google's continuous innovation and provides a clear, structured way to solve real-world problems. You've already got the instincts, so it's easy to learn the method.
Make yourself invaluable with hands-on skills in Design Thinking. Design Thinking can help you break into User Experience Design, product design, and tech. It's widely applicable, impactful, and fun! Use your skills to improve customer support processes, create new products, and even tackle big challenges like climate change. This human-centered approach is a key driver of business success because it guides you to systematically understand and address what your users really need and want. That's why Design Thinking skills can help you increase sales, keep customers loyal, and turn them into powerful advocates for your company.
Gain confidence and credibility as you effortlessly apply methods from all five stages of the Design Thinking process. You'll be guided to build empathy and gather insights into people's habits through user interviews.
Use our downloadable templates to create affinity diagrams, empathy maps, and actionable "How Might We" questions. Develop solutions as you apply ideation and innovation methods. Create a paper prototype early and fast, then test and optimize your prototype to ensure that your users love it. More love, more impact, greater salary potential.
Apply your new skills in an optional project where you'll design and test a user-centered experience—perfect for your portfolio and career growth. Master Design Thinking to amplify your uniquely human strengths like empathy, intuition, and creativity, and confidently future-proof your career even as AI advances.
It's Easy to Fast-Track Your Career with the World's Best Experts
Master complex skills effortlessly with proven best practices and toolkits directly from the world's top design experts. Meet your experts for this course:
Don Norman: Father of User Experience (UX) Design, author of the legendary book “The Design of Everyday Things,” and co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group.
Alan Dix: Author of the bestselling book “Human-Computer Interaction” and Director of the Computational Foundry at Swansea University.
Mike Rohde: Experience and Interface Designer, author of the bestselling “The Sketchnote Handbook.”
Gain an Industry-Recognized UX Course Certificate
Use your industry-recognized Course Certificate on your resume, CV, LinkedIn profile or your website.
Our courses and Course Certificates are trusted by these industry leaders:
Why Learn Design Thinking?
Design thinking falls under the umbrella term of User Experience (UX) design. UX design is your fast-track to a meaningful, secure, and rewarding career.
Worried You'll Lose Your Job to AI? UX Design Skills Make You AI-Proof
UX design builds on your core human strengths such as emotional intelligence, deep human understanding, critical thinking, intuition, and imagination.
AI can't replicate your uniquely human ability to design for real emotions and needs such as joy, comfort, curiosity, safety, and a sense of belonging. These deeply human insights are your superpowers. With UX design skills, you'll turn them into products and experiences people truly love. You become irreplaceable, confident and in demand.
And yes, we'll also show you how to use AI to accelerate your results.
Feeling Stuck in the 9–5? Design Your Freedom
Tired of feeling undervalued, anxious, or trapped in your career? UX design skills open doors to freedom, flexibility, remote work, and a career you're excited about—without starting from scratch.
Stop wondering if you could be more. Start realizing your full potential today.
UX Design is Booming: Accelerate Your Career to Higher Salaries and Impact Across All Jobs and Industries
Salaries for people with design skills are soaring, often surpassing $200K in cities like San Francisco, and job growth is strong (13% globally). Why? Because companies thrive when their users are happy. Companies that invest in great design outperform the S&P 500 Index by a whopping 228%.
Design a Life You Love
Great design is all about helping people meet their needs and achieve their goals through intuitive, meaningful, and delightful experiences. Skills in design will empower you to create experiences and products that make people's lives easier and more fulfilling. And when people love what you create, your business thrives, and your salary potential grows. You get the ultimate double win:
You'll feel deeply fulfilled by designing experiences and products people love.
You'll be financially rewarded for your real-world impact.
Course Overview: What You'll Master
- Each week, one lesson becomes available.
- There's no time limit to finish a course. Lessons have no deadlines.
- Estimated learning time: 28 hours 22 mins spread over 7 weeks.
Lesson 0: Welcome and Introduction
-
0.1: An Introduction to Courses from IxDF (37 mins)
-
0.2: Get Help, Career Advice, and Job Opportunities (2 mins)
-
0.3: How to Get Your Course Certificate (16 mins)
-
0.4: Grow Your Global Network and Build Your Brand (12 mins)
-
0.5: Global Skills, Local Jobs: Build Your Network in Your Area (2 mins)
-
0.6: Gain Timeless Skills Through Courses from IxDF (21 mins)
-
0.7: Mandatory vs Optional Lesson Items (7 mins)
-
0.8: Learn Smarter: The Perfect Mix of Video and Text (6 mins)
Lesson 1: What Is Design Thinking?
-
1.1: Welcome to Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide (18 mins)
-
1.2: What is Design Thinking and Why Is It So Popular? (50 mins)
-
1.3: The History of Design Thinking (26 mins)
-
1.4: 10 Insightful Design Thinking Frameworks: A Quick Overview (38 mins)
-
1.5: The 5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process (48 mins)
-
1.6: Design Thinking: How to Solve Problems in an Innovative Way (28 mins)
-
1.7: What Are Wicked Problems and How Might We Solve Them? (46 mins)
-
1.8: Three Steps to Facilitate Design Thinking in Your Team (15 mins)
-
1.9: Essential Design Thinking Videos, Methods and Tools (56 mins)
-
1.10: Conversations: Share Your Initial Thoughts on the Design Thinking Process (7 mins)
-
1.11: Congratulations and Recap (4 mins)
Lesson 2: Stage 1: How to Build Empathy With the People You Design For
-
2.1: Welcome and Introduction (7 mins)
-
2.2: What Is Empathy and Why Is It So Important in Design Thinking? (57 mins)
-
2.3: How to Develop Empathy for Your Target Group (47 mins)
-
2.4: 9 Ways to Become a More Empathic Designer (24 mins)
-
2.5: 10 Techniques to Develop Empathy With Your Users (35 mins)
-
2.6: 7 Simple Ways to Get Better Results From Ethnographic Research (21 mins)
-
2.7: How to Conduct User Interviews (38 mins)
-
2.8: Cultural Probes: How to Design and Use Them (27 mins)
-
2.9: Conversations: Start to Build Empathy With Your Users (7 mins)
-
2.10: Build Your Portfolio: Empathize (13 mins)
-
2.11: Congratulations and Recap (1 min)
Lesson 3: Stage 2: How to Define the Problem
-
3.1: Welcome and Introduction (7 mins)
-
3.2: The Define Phase in Design Thinking (19 mins)
-
3.3: Affinity Diagrams: How to Cluster Your Ideas and Reveal Insights (18 mins)
-
3.4: Personas – A Simple Introduction (14 mins)
-
3.5: 10 Steps to Create Your Engaging Personas (11 mins)
-
3.6: Deep Dive Into How to Construct and Describe a Persona (36 mins)
-
3.7: Personas Allow You to Focus on Individuals (47 mins)
-
3.8: Empathy Maps – Why and How to Use Them (28 mins)
-
3.9: How to Create Your Point of View (POV) Problem Statement (19 mins)
-
3.10: Why Are “How Might We” Questions So Important? (18 mins)
-
3.11: Stakeholder Mapping: The Complete Guide to Stakeholder Maps (14 mins)
-
3.12: Conversations: Share Your Design Challenge (6 mins)
-
3.13: Build Your Portfolio Project: Define (14 mins)
-
3.14: Congratulations and Recap (3 mins)
Lesson 4: Stage 3: How to Ideate for Solutions
-
4.1: Welcome and Introduction (5 mins)
-
4.2: What Is Ideation and Why Is It So Important in Design Thinking? (20 mins)
-
4.3: How to Prepare for Ideation Sessions in 5 Steps (28 mins)
-
4.4: Learn How to Use the Brainstorming Technique (1 hour 2 mins)
-
4.5: Learn How to Use the SCAMPER Ideation Method (22 mins)
-
4.6: Learn How to Use the Worst Possible Idea Method (12 mins)
-
4.7: Learn How to Use the Challenge Assumptions Method (11 mins)
-
4.8: Learn How to Use the Analogies Method (15 mins)
-
4.9: Learn How to Use Sketching as an Ideation Method (50 mins)
-
4.10: How to Select the Best Idea by the End of an Ideation Session (28 mins)
-
4.11: 14 Barriers to Ideation and How to Overcome Them (28 mins)
-
4.12: Exercise and Discussion: Share Your Reflections on Ideation (9 mins)
-
4.13: Build Your Portfolio: Ideate (16 mins)
-
4.14: Congratulations and Recap (3 mins)
Lesson 5: Stage 4: Prototyping Your Ideas
-
5.1: Welcome and Introduction (6 mins)
-
5.2: The Key Benefits of Prototyping (11 mins)
-
5.3: Why You Need to Prototype and How to Start Off Right (22 mins)
-
5.4: What Is a Prototype? (27 mins)
-
5.5: How to Gain Insights From Prototyping: Stage 4 in the Design Thinking Process (25 mins)
-
5.6: 5 Common Low-Fidelity Prototypes and Their Best Practices (40 mins)
-
5.7: 6 Common Pitfalls in Prototyping and How to Avoid Them (20 mins)
-
5.8: From Prototype to Product: Ensure That Your Solution Is Feasible and Viable (56 mins)
-
5.9: Conversations (6 mins)
-
5.10: Build Your Portfolio: Prototype (13 mins)
-
5.11: Congratulations and Recap (3 mins)
Lesson 6: Stage 5: Testing Design Solutions
-
6.1: Welcome and Introduction (5 mins)
-
6.2: Stage 5 in the Design Thinking Process: Test (43 mins)
-
6.3: 6 Different Types of Evaluative Research and When to Use Them (26 mins)
-
6.4: Why Usability Test? (48 mins)
-
6.5: Heuristic Evaluation: How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation (34 mins)
-
6.6: Test Your Prototypes: How to Gather Feedback and Maximize Learning (28 mins)
-
6.7: 4 Common Pitfalls in Usability Testing and How to Avoid Them to Get More Honest Feedback (21 mins)
-
6.8: Conversations (7 mins)
-
6.9: Build Your Portfolio Project: Test (13 mins)
-
6.10: Congratulations and Recap (3 mins)
Lesson 7: Course Certificate, Final Networking, and Course Wrap-Up
How Others Have Benefited
Emma Brazil, Netherlands
“I love the diversity of approaches in teaching. Videos, images, graphs, handbooks, additional articles, multiple choice questions, and discussion topics. It kept me engaged and alert throughout the entire course. It was not just a 'walk in the park' course, and for that, I actually feel like I've learned many new valuable things - patting myself on the back with my completion.”
Mahar Nazir, India
“The instructor's major strengths are her enthusiasm for the subject, her ability to make the material accessible to students of all levels, and her commitment to engaging students in an interactive learning experience. She is also flexible and accommodating when it comes to helping students work through challenging concepts. Her course is well-structured and organised, and she provides a variety of resources to support student learning. She takes the time to get to know her students and is available to answer any questions they may have.”
JINTO KACHIRAYIL MANI, Canada
“The instructors have a deep understanding of the course topic and possess expertise in the subject matter they are teaching. Their knowledge and experience contributed to the credibility and quality of the course.”
How It Works
-
Take online courses by industry experts
Lessons are self-paced so you'll never be late for class or miss a deadline.
-
Get a Course Certificate
Your answers are graded by experts, not machines. Get an industry-recognized Course Certificate to prove your skills.
-
Advance your career
Use your new skills in your existing job or to get a new job in UX design. Get help from our community.
Start Advancing Your Career Now
Join us to take “Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide”. Take other courses at no additional cost. Make a concrete step forward in your career path today.
Advance my career now