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Design Thinking Workshops

2 Year PGDM | Admissions Closing Soon | Apply Now

The Design Thinking (DT) Workshop is a mandatory process for students to undergo as part of their admissions process. The DT workshop is a hands-on, activity-based session built around the Design Thinking process.

The DT workshop aims to find students who are extremely good and efficient at real-time working environments rather than identifying students solely based on their past academic performances and entrance exam scores.

Design Thinking Workshop Process

The Design Thinking Workshop is a group-based immersion activity where students are asked to work on real-life problems using design thinking tools.

The need for business leaders who are innovative, agile and adaptive to change have redefined the MBA education system. For a workforce demanding such leaders, the first step towards creating leaders of such quality starts with the selection of suitable students into an MBA program.

An example of a Design Thinking workshop is given below.

09:00 AM – Students arrive at the Interview Centre

09:30 AM – Completion of Registration & Verification Process

09:45 – 10:15 AM – Design Thinking Masterclass

A SOIL facilitator takes students through the 5 step process of design thinking. SOIL follows the 5 steps Design Thinking process developed and mastered by Stanford D school. The masterclass is an interactive training that aims at making the participants understand methods, techniques and tools into innovating and create compelling service experiences. Through illustrations and simple exercises, participants will learn about the art and sciences of empathising with people, generating ideas, embracing collaboration.

09:45 - 10:15 AM - Design Thinking Masterclass

10:15 – 10:30 AM – Refreshment Break

10:30 – 10:40 AM – Forming teams & Problem Brief

10:30 - 10:40 AM - Forming teams & Problem Brief

The participants are divided into teams of 4 or 5, and a real-life problem is given as a problem statement to the participants. The workshop facilitator also provides a background to the problem brief such as the economic conditions, social problems, regulatory issues and other constraints which would help the participants in finding a solution to the problem.

Ex – How to solve Delhi’s water crisis? , A flight company wants to increase its profits by redesigning the seating arrangement. How?

10:40 – 11:15 AM – Empathise with user & Brainstorm Ideas

10:40 - 11:15 AM - Empathise with user & Brainstorm Ideas

Teams indulge in a brainstorming exercise. Individual Ideas are written down as to why the problem has occurred and what could be possible solutions.

During this stage, participants undergo a process of empathising and understand the user who faces the problem and has to think from his POV. During this process, participants are advised to go for quantity rather than quality. Please remember, brilliant ideas are most often the crazy ones.

Design Thinking Steps Involved – Empathise & Ideate

11:15 – 11:30 AM – Converge on a single solution

11:15 - 11:30 AM - Converge on a single solution

Teams, after identifying all the possible solutions to the problem, are required to cluster their ideas into feasible and non-feasible buckets. Additionally, teams are required to identify a single possible solution to move forward. This will be ideal for the team’s future prototyping and testing models.

Participants are required to work on their negotiation skills and leadership skills during this phase.

Design Thinking Steps Involved – Empathise & Define

11:30 – 11:40 AM – Refreshment Break

11:40 – 12:15 AM – Diverge on creating Prototypes

11:40 - 12:15 AM - Diverge on creating Prototypes

After the idea selection, teams are required to work on a tangible prototype using the design props that would be available at the workshop location. Students create a miniature product of their final product to identify what is working and what is not. Participants identify the drawbacks of their finalized idea and carry out changes to their prototype to improve the design.

This is largely a divergent step where students often create more than two or three prototypes

Design Thinking Steps Involved – Prototype & Test

12:15 – 1:00 AM – Converging through Presentation & Feedback

12:15 - 1:00 AM - Converging through Presentation & Feedback

Once all the prototypes developed by the teams, they are required to present their ideas and the prototypes to all the teams and the facilitator. This round is similar to a critique round where anyone can raise a query to the presenting team. With this feedback, the participants understand how they can further improve their idea and prototypes.

This ends the Design Thinking Workshop Process

Design Thinking Steps Involved – Prototype & Test

12:15 – 1:00 AM – Workshop Feedback

The participants are required to submit their constructive feedback to the Admissions team and share their learnings and experiences.

12:15 - 1:00 AM - Workshop Feedback

Student Work in the past

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