Beyond Design Thinking

Beyond Design Thinking

The Future of Creativity, Communication and Collaboration
Talk about disruption. The digital age has fundamentally changed the way we connect with customers, clients and competitors. But have our tools and practices kept pace? Whether you’re a manager at a healthcare startup trying to enroll patients through a new app or an executive hoping to design a new social media campaign, leaders are faced with challenges that require bold ideas for innovative products, services and systems to be swiftly developed, tested and deployed.

These ideas often don’t come from the top-down. They’re borne from the collaborative process, coaxed out of creative mind sets, literally sketched out on the drawing board. And throughout the process, as those ideas change and grow, they must be communicated effectively to engage and persuade diverse audiences.

With this environment in mind, we here at Northeastern Toronto are excited to host “Beyond Design Thinking,” a new one-week summer institute that will immerse leaders in the core techniques of creativity, communication and collaboration. In seminars, workshops and hands-on activities led by Northeastern’s nationally-recognized faculty in creative process, experience design and data-driven storytelling, participants will learn comprehensive strategies for approaching the complex problems faced by their organizations.

Why “Beyond Design Thinking?”

The weeklong bootcamp will teach the tools and techniques of advanced design thinking – the human-centered process for solution-finding – while also focusing on visual and data-driven storytelling and the rhetorical process – because what good is an innovative service idea if you can’t convey it?

“The idea is to pair the methods of design thinking with the latest techniques in digital storytelling,” says Aleszu Bajak, who teaches data journalism and design at Northeastern’s School of Journalism. “Our participants will develop an idea from concept to deployment while also learning the best digital tools for collaboration and communication.  

Can I bring a problem my company is facing?
Yes, and you will have access to subject experts to help you better understand how to approach it. By the end of the one-week institute, you will have a suite of tools and techniques ready to be applied, and will have learned systematic models and methods to better communicate, collaborate and innovate within your organization.

You will be given the opportunity to learn:

  • To discover the power of applying design thinking and data-driven visual storytelling in the search for solutions to complex problems faced by your organization.
  • To employ a range of models and tools of experience design, and be able to freely apply them to specific needs and design phases.
  • To hone tools and techniques for community engagement, rhetorical persuasion and succinct, powerful communication to drive innovation.

What if I don’t have a specific challenge I want to focus on?
Not a problem, we’ll have several themes with which to work.

Beyond Design Thinking; The Future of Creativity, Communication and Collaboration

July 10-14, 2017

About:  Learn More      Register Here 

About Northeastern Toronto Summer Institutes

Northeastern Toronto Summer Institutes are one-week intensive experiential courses with leading faculty of Northeastern University, focused on interdisciplinary approaches to critical issues in business and leadership. Each institute distills experiential learning, theory and practice, led by Northeastern faculty experts in entrepreneurship, innovation, global initiatives and renewable energy. Participants will join colleagues from across North America, along with Toronto partners and faculty experts who bring to life innovative solutions that combine such disciplines as entrepreneurship, digital storytelling, project management, design thinking and sustainability.

About Northeastern University – Toronto

Northeastern University – Toronto is the first international campus in Northeastern University’s regional campus network, which includes Silicon Valley, California; Seattle, Washington; and Charlotte, North Carolina. Northeastern University was founded in 1898 in Boston, Massachusetts. The mission of Northeastern Toronto is to connect the university to the larger international community while delivering high-quality professional education programs in a vibrant and growing urban setting. Northeastern Toronto seeks to partner with local and international companies and organizations to provide Canadians with Northeastern’s unique form of experiential and globally oriented learning methods.

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