Design Method Toolkit Introduction (1 day)

Set your goals, choose your methods, work your magic!

The Design Method Toolkit enables you to get started and enrich your design process. Plan and execute your design research, ideation, experimentation and creation within short iterations.

A collection of design and research methods: categorised to help you select, time based to help you plan. Detailed task descriptions help teams divide and assign tasks between team members. This makes the Design Method Toolkit perfect for lean, agile environments and multidisciplinary teams.

This course will make you and/or your team effective and creative for complex challenges in a digital era. The Design Method Toolkit optimizes the flow and balance between research and creation for multidisciplinary teams and innovative organisations.

BONUS: it goes without saying that you will leave this course with your very own Design Method Toolkit (worth €50)!

What you will learn

• How a basic design (thinking) process works;
• How to choose the right methods for your challenge(s);
• Work in iterations while making sure each choice is evidence-informed;
• Use the design methods as a standard documenting your process;
• Think big, start small and act fast! 🚀

Covered DSS competencies
Applied Human Centred Design Interdisciplinary Systems Thinking Collaboration and Co-creation Create solutions for social impact

What you will do

Morning

You will dive into the human-centered part of design thinking and designerly ways of working. What are people’s real problems, challenges and concerns and how can you best design for those? We will work on real-life cases that relate to the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN.

Methods examples
The Break-up Letter Actors Map Empathy in Action Concern Mapping Persona User Experience Map

Afternoon

In the afternoon you will use to make the challenge more tangible by exploring solutions.

Methods examples
The KJ Method Dot Voting Concept Sketch Paper Prototyping

Whom is this course for?

The widely used Design Method Toolkit has been developed and refined over the course of 6 years and has since been distributed across the globe to thousands of designers, researchers, digital professionals and just about anyone who cares about human centered design.

You 👇:

• Are a professional who works in an innovative environment or you are someone who wishes to structure your own design process.
• Want to reach a maximum impact on the more complex challenges your organization and our world in general faces.

Questions you may have

Q: What if I am not “creative”, or a maker, or a designer?
A: Perfect, then this is for you. We’ll show you that anyone can make things tangible with easy-to-implement tools and steps.

Q: Design methods? What do you mean? 🤔
A: Don’t be scared! Design methods are never only used by designers. Design is naturally good in glueing disciplines together, sensing what people need and building empathy with target users. Therefore we use design methodology to make working across disciplines or within multidisciplinary teams more effective and more natural.

Meet your instructors

Marco van Hout
Experienced trainer and design lead with over 15 years of experience. Co-founder of DSS and Global Goals Jam, community liaison for World Design Organization. In the past 15 years I have trained hundreds of designers, researchers and creative professionals all around the world in using designerly ways of working and design methodology. Before co-founding the Digital Society School I lead a digital agency and a strategic design agency with a focus on ‘experience-driven and emotional design’. I initiated the Design Method Toolkit in 2014 and have seen how it changed and improved the team-based and individual design process of about anyone who started using it.

This course is connected to the Design Method Toolkit by Digital Society School.