Reference no: EM132364679

Design Thinking for Managers

You will have the opportunity to experience and apply relevant tools and techniques throughout the term and you are STRONGLY encouraged to actively and creatively make use of opportunities provided in-class (on-campus students) and online (distance students) to practice and refine your Design Thinking skills.

Presentation and Report

• Oral presentation of Design Thinking process
• Written report, critically discussing critically discussing what you would do differently if you had to do Design Thinking again

At the start of term, you are required to join a team (3-5 students per team). Throughout the term, teams will undertake the following activities:

• identify a problem that could be addressed/improved through Design Thinking (the problem may be of a social, service, commercial or digital nature);
• use Design Thinking tools, techniques and mind-set to develop ideas for innovations that address/improve the problem you have identified;
• consider future steps to launch potential innovative solutions to your chosen problem;
• present the Design Thinking process that you have applied to identify the problem and reach potential innovative solutions; and
• develop a written report critically exploring the use of ONE tool or ONE phase of the Design Thinking process that your group utilised to undertake and complete the assessment.
You will have the opportunity to experience and apply relevant tools and techniques throughout the term and you are STRONGLY encouraged to actively and creatively make use of opportunities provided in-class (on-campus students) and online (distance students) to practice and refine your Design Thinking skills.

Presentation:
The presentation reports on the Design Thinking activities your team has carried out to deeply understand the problem you have chosen and to achieve potential innovative solution(s) to said problem - there is no maximum of activities you should carry out as this depends upon how you progress with your problem finding and deep dive, and whether you have repeated some activities multiple times. However, as an absolute minimum, you are expected to report on 10 activities as per the prescribed textbook. Your presentation must cover the following:

1. What activities have you carried out and why?

2. What were the outcomes of each activity?

3. What outcome(s) did you choose to bring into the next activity and why?

4. Where - within the Design Thinking process - are you at the point of presenting?

You should ensure that you go beyond purely describing the activities and instead include some critical evaluation of the tools' merit to your particular Design Thinking process. The description of activities, tools and techniques requires references to relevant literature and evidence of your involvement with these activities. You can evidence this, for instance, by including photographs of your activities that you should be compiling for your blog in assessment 3 anyway, but please remember that this group report deals with your ACTIVITIES and their OUTCOMES, not with the REFLECTIONS on your personal learning - the latter is the content of assessment 3. An absolute minimum of 10 academic references is required. Further supporting material is available in Moodle.

Presentations should be between 13 and 15 minutes in duration - presenters will be stopped if they go over the 15 minute mark. Each team member should contribute roughly equally. Presentations should make use of PowerPoint slides, which have to be submitted via Moodle by the given deadline. You are STRONGLY encouraged to utilise other visual aids (printed diagrams, prototypes, etc.) to support your presentation.

On-campus students: You will present live in class during the workshop in week 10 or 11. Students who do not attend their timetabled workshop class or are late for their presentation will receive a mark of 0 (zero) for the entire presentation component; if unforeseen emergency situations occur, clearly evidence thereof is required to avoid this penalty.

Distance students: You may choose to deliver your presentation live to the unit co-coordinator via video conference in week 10 or 11 or record your presentation and submit the video file via Moodle or YouTube. If you select the latter option, you should record each team member presenting their part of the presentation and then combine the recordings into one single video file. Please note that it is important that you are visible in the presentation video - hence, submitting slides with voice-over is not sufficient for this assessment. It is recommended you use software such as Camtasia or zoom, which allows you to be in the video, while also giving you the opportunity to share your PowerPoint slides with the audience. It is your responsibility to ensure appropriate video and audio quality.

Report:

This is a GROUP report, which should be 1,500 to 2,000 words, excluding preliminaries, tables, figures, references and appendices. The report will differ in content to the presentation. To successfully complete this part of the assessment, you must critically reflect on your group's experience of carrying out Design Thinking tools for your project. You must then answer this question: Reflect on ONE tool or ONE phase of the Design Thinking process that your group utilised for Assessment 2. In this reflection, critically evaluate your group's experience of completing this Design Thinking tool/phase for your group assessment. In preparing the report for this assessment, your group is required to specifically discuss what worked well and what did not work well, and where improvements might have been made. You must also refer to the relevant literature explored towards understanding this ONE tool or phase. An absolute MINIMUM of 10 academic references is required.

Presentation:

• Ability to describe and critically evaluate a minimum of 10 suitable Design Thinking tools/techniques that your group has utilised, alongside their outcomes
• Presentation of evidence that your group has utilised these tools/techniques
• Ability to identify how far your group has progressed in their Design Thinking process
• Demonstrate a breadth and quality of research by using a minimum of 10 academic sources
• Correct use of the APA referencing system
• Ability to work co-operatively in a work-based team to prepare a professional presentation (appropriate personal professional standards in terms of dress, verbal and non-verbal communication consistent with standards expected of professional leaders and managers in the work context) in the nominated format

Report:

• Ability to critically evaluate own Design Thinking experience
• Demonstrate a wider understanding of Design Thinking tools/phases by the use of reflection and critique.
• Ability to construct a complete and professional report in the nominated format consistent with standards expected of professional leaders and managers in the work context
• Demonstrate a breadth and quality of research by using a minimum of 10 high-quality academic sources
• Correct use of the APA referencing system