Free Design Thinking Courses & Certifications

Design is an emerging discipline that has gained recognition in the last two decades. It is the study of the transformation of utilitarian products to fit the needs of a service or system. It bridges the gap between technology and the needs behind using said technology. Design Practice programme is an online postgraduate beginner course that will dive into the various concepts of product design. 

Design Practice certification is an industry-supported course that will be ideal for faculty and students studying mechanical engineering and product design. It is an elective course of eight weeks, where participants will be provided with assignments and video lectures to help them capture the maximum benefit this course has to offer. 

Design Practice course syllabus has been designed by IIT Kanpur in association with NPTEL. The course will be taught by Professor Shantanu Bhattacharya of IIT Kanpur. This is a free audit programme that offers certification to interested candidates who qualify for eligibility.

Design Thinking is a systematic yet flexible process for defining and solving problems. The Design Thinking Fundamentals program offers an introduction to the elementary activities related to the design thinking process. A common misconception about design thinking is that it requires artistry, but does not revolve around artistic principles. It is not just a strategy, but a mindset that you can apply to solve any industry problems.

The Design Thinking Fundamentals certification syllabus will help you explore various methods for developing better ideas, evaluating complex problems, and establishing innovative solutions with a user’s requirements in mind. It provides an end-to-end overview of the design thinking process, focusing on the significance of understanding the user and developing viable, feasible, and desirable ideas.

The Design Thinking Fundamentals certification is a component of the Design Thinking MicroMasters course, offered by the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). You can complete this course comfortably within six short weeks if you study around six to eight hours/week. The self-paced programme can be pursued by the learners either by paying the fee or free of cost. When enrolled in the free audit mode, the learners can get a limited duration of access to the course. 

Ideation and iteration are critical steps in the design thinking process. They are what differentiates design thinking from linear and traditional problem-solving techniques. The Design Thinking: Ideation, Iteration, and Communication certification syllabus will cover all the useful ideation techniques including brainstorming, role-playing, storyboarding, mind mapping, model making, strategic idea mapping, and concept sketching.

To design an innovative and successful solution, you need to think of creative ideas and iterate them. And after the ideation stage, you need to select the best solution(s) to address the problem, and present/communicate it to stakeholders. The Design Thinking: Ideation, Iteration, and Communication program will introduce you to the best practices for analyzing and selecting solutions, and common mistakes that people make while communicating these solutions to clients.

The Design Thinking: Ideation, Iteration, and Communication certification course is brought to you by the Rochester Institute of Technology, and it is part of their MicroMasters in Design Thinking. If candidates wish to receive a course completion certificate at the end, they can do so by paying a nominal fee. They can also share the certificate on their LinkedIn account, or attach it to their resume or portfolio. While taking the course in the free mode, the learners can audit it for a limited period. 

After proposing a solution, the first thing you need to do to put it into action is to create a prototype. Prototyping and user testing are critical elements of the design-thinking process, and you can learn about them in the Design Thinking: Prototyping and User Testing certification course. It houses video lectures and English transcripts to allow for self-paced learning. 

Prototyping is an iterative process, and you will appreciate it better by examining the case studies that are a part of the curriculum. In the Design Thinking: Prototyping and User Testing programme, you will learn how to implement user testing and evaluate the results obtained from it. You can complete the programme comfortably in six weeks if you study eight to twelve hours a week.

Design Thinking: Prototyping and User Testing training is an intermediate-level programme. Surveys, focus groups, interviews, and other methods, tools, and best practices for assessing solutions are part of this online course. Moreover, this course is part of the Design Thinking MicroMasters programme offered by the Rochester Institute of Technology. EdX offers two different enrolment options to join the programme; paid and free mode. In the paid mode, the learners will get unlimited access and a certificate whereas in the free mode, they can get only limited access to the programme. 

Design Thinking Capstone online course is an intermediate course in Business and Management. It is six weeks long, shareable, and a part of the MicroMasters Design Thinking series available on the edX website. This course will provide candidates with a cumulative experience of all the aspects of end-to-end design thinking processes.

The Rochester Institute of Technology developed the Design Thinking Capstone program. It is an instructor-led course taught by Dean Emerita Lorraine Justice, Professor of Design at RIT. This course emphasizes practical problem-solving methods, allowing students to better understand the course material. Towards the end of the program, candidates will demonstrate their understanding by submitting a final project and documentation that support their findings. 

Design Thinking Capstone by edX requires a weekly effort of eight to twelve hours. Post-training completion and fee payment, a verified and shareable certificate is obtainable. The certification includes the Rochester Institute of Technology logo and is signed by the instructor. 

Strategical skills are important for the development of any business, and to provide a broader vision. Design thinking is the broader process that helps businesses by providing an approach for the better working of the organization. Design thinking is the concept that helps to represent a set of cognitive, strategic, and practical processes by which design concepts are developed. It is a progressive approach when entrepreneurs and board members have a pre-defined design that can take their company to heights of success. The course on Design-Led Strategy: Design thinking for business strategy and entrepreneurship is an initiative by the University of Sydney for the candidates who have an interest in learning about the design-led strategy. 

Design-Led Strategy: Design thinking for business strategy and entrepreneurship training is delivered by the experts through online mode on the platform Coursera. This is an online course of 5 weeks which can be completed in 19 hours of classes. The candidates will be exposed to different activities, assignments, and tutorials for the overall development. The candidate will also receive Design-Led Strategy: Design thinking for business strategy and entrepreneurship certification by the University of Sydney and Coursera at the end of the course. 

Many business and non-business organizations are starting to adopt design thinking as a practice and as a strategy to develop solutions for their problems. Business schools and other institutions have also made design thinking a part of their curriculum. To learn more about design thinking, take the Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s Design Thinking: Theories and Applications online course.

The Design Thinking: Theories and Applications program demystifies design thinking, and breaks it down into its five stages: Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. It will help you develop a holistic, human-centric, and non-linear approach. It defines design thinking not as a problem-solving process, but more as the behavior or the attitude when dealing with a complex problem.

The Design Thinking: Theories and Applications training will help you develop the personal traits that all design thinkers must possess: human-centeredness, a creative and flexible thinking style, high self-efficacy, and being comfortable with intuitive and subjective judgment. Not only will you be able to solve problems, but you will also be able to find opportunities. The introductory course in design is self-paced.

The Design Thinking and Global Startup Training Course focuses on the systematic engineering design methodology which is the Stanford Design Thinking process. During this course, students will learn about 4th industrial revolution technologies such as Factory as a service (FaaS) with Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big data and 3D printing. Students will also learn about the tools such as one-liner, lean-canvas and global investor relations (IR) in this course.

The Design Thinking and Global Startup Online Course is of 6-weeks in duration which will be instructed by Yoon Yong Jin, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). The course will be taught through expert lecture videos and assessed through module quizzes. The course will be beneficial for learners who are aspiring to become entrepreneurs or those who wish to start their own global innovative startups. Learners will be rewarded with a certificate after successful course completion.

The Design Thinking in Data Science online course is developed to present to the candidates the domain of data science and the techniques and strategies involved in the field. It is offered by the research and consulting educational institution concerned with data science. This online course helps develop data science skills based on engineering and business. The Design Thinking in Data Science online programme has a course schedule of 20 classes that are held live for 1 hour per week and the candidate will be required to spend an additional four to five hours per week. 

The course study is about learning programming and the fundamentals of data science with regard to the coding, mathematics, and business aspects beneficial for those who aspire to become data scientists. The online course instruction is done by qualified professional Dr. Dakshinamurthy V Kolluru, the founder, president, and chief mentor at INSOFE. The course modules and lectures provide an experiential learning process to the candidates.