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Design Thinking

Complex challenges require new ways of thinking.

This masterclass introduces the design thinking process and equips you with practical tools to create solutions that are grounded in user insight and real world needs. You will learn how human centred methods support innovation and apply the design thinking phases to a challenge from your own workplace.

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What to expect

Organisations today face problems that are multi layered, unpredictable and often difficult to define. Design thinking offers a structured yet creative approach to meeting these challenges by grounding solutions in a deep understanding of human needs. This mindset encourages curiosity, experimentation and a willingness to reframe long standing assumptions.

This masterclass will guide you through the full design thinking methodology. You will explore how leading organisations such as GE Healthcare, Netflix and UberEats have used these principles to generate breakthrough ideas. Through hands on activities, you will practise the core phases of design thinking: Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. The experience is practical and immersive, with opportunities to apply each concept to a real problem from your own workplace or team.

You will learn how to observe customers and users to build empathy, turn insights into opportunities and rapidly develop and test new ideas through prototyping. The workshop also highlights the mindsets that support design thinking, such as curiosity, openness, iteration and learning through doing. By the end of the masterclass, you will have a clear picture of how to integrate design thinking into your own work and assess your organisation’s readiness for this approach.

Is this program for you


This program is designed for a broad range of professionals, in particular it will suit individuals involved in procurement, enterprise bargaining or workplace discussions.

Design Thinking

What you will explore

By the end of this masterclass, you should be able to:

  • Identify human centred challenges and observe users to build empathy

  • Generate insights based on real observations and design learning oriented experiments

  • Understand the mindsets and behaviours that support design thinking

  • Apply design thinking techniques to a workplace challenge

  • Recognise barriers that limit design thinking in organisations and explore strategies to overcome them.

Where this program can take you

During this masterclass you will explore:

  • The design thinking phases of Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test

  • Techniques for user observation and insight generation

  • Mindsets that support creative, human centred problem solving

  • Practical tools for rapid idea generation, prototyping and experimentation

  • Organisational readiness for design thinking and the cultural shifts that enable it.

Facilitator Profile

Jenny Hoffman

Leadership development practitioner and executive coach

Jenny is a leadership development practitioner and executive leadership coach who has been introducing individuals and organisations to design thinking for more than ten years. She is a certified facilitator of the ExperienceInnovation and ExperienceChange workshops developed by ExperiencePoint and IDEO and was one of the first people in Western Australia to be trained in this prestigious suite of programs. These workshops combine practical tools with the design mindsets that support creative problem solving and leading change.

Jenny focuses on individual and collective leadership development and cultural transformation. She works across the public, private and not for profit sectors and brings a strong evidence based approach to her programs. As a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School program on the Art and Practice of Leadership Development, she designs and delivers customised leadership development programs that draw on adaptive leadership, leadership maturity frameworks and contemporary thinking in leader development.

Jenny is also a faculty member of the UWA Business School where she teaches several leadership units in the Master of Business Administration program.

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