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3 - The fundamentals

Design UX - Design Thinking (12h-16h)

Description

Design Thinking is a human-centred, evidence-driven way to move from messy problems to clear solutions. We work in two rhythms—diverge to explore widely and converge to focus—across four phases:
  1. Discover — look with fresh eyes, talk to users, observe context, gather insights.
  2. Define — synthesize what you found, choose what matters, frame a sharp How Might We… challenge.
  3. Develop — generate options, prototype, and test quickly to learn what works.
  4. Deliver — package an MVP, capture learnings, and plan next steps.

Topics

  • Design Thinking
  • The Double Diamond
    • Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver
    • Diverge and converge
  • User interviews
    • Open vs leading questions
  • Personas and empathy maps
  • Point of view and How Might We
  • Crazy-8s and other ideation methods
  • User flows
  • Usability testing
  • MVP scoping

Goals

Knowledge

Understand the Double Diamond, and why you deliberately open up before you narrow down
Understand what a point of view and a How Might We statement are, and why a sharp problem beats a clever solution
Understand what user research is for — finding out you were wrong before you build the wrong thing
Understand what an MVP is, and what it is not

Skills

Be able to interview someone without leading them to the answer you were hoping for
Be able to turn what people told you into a persona or empathy map, and then into a How Might We
Be able to generate many options quickly (Crazy-8s) instead of committing to the first idea
Be able to map a happy-path user flow and test it on someone
Be able to cut a big idea down to an MVP you could actually build

Idea for return

Submit one FigJam/Miro board (with a Figma prototype link) that documents your process and what value each method added:
Problem statement (one line) and target user.
Evidence from users — two interviews with real people. Classmates, friends, family, anyone who is not you. Use ChatGPT to draft your questions beforehand and to practise asking them without leading the answer, then go and ask an actual person. Note down one thing that surprised you. If nothing surprised you, the questions were probably leading — that is worth writing down too.
Analysing (user persona or empathy map) + How Might We at the end.
Ideation (Crazy-8s on paper or a whiteboard) — take a photo and upload it to FigJam.
User flow — create a "map" of your prototype.
Usability summary and your MVP scope / next steps.
You can use all of this research in the next guide: Moodboard. And if your group runs a design sprint in the Module 4 project, this is exactly the material you bring to day one — a sprint with no research behind it is five people guessing in a room.