Sustainable Design Thinking

Earlier this year, Apple reached the highest brand valuation of any company on Earth. They didn’t invent the tablet computer, and they didn’t invent the mp3 file. Both of these technologies had existed for a decade before Apple used design thinking to create interface to these geeky concepts that made them delightful, made them cool, made them change our world.

Register

“Everyone is now a designer.”

David Berman, Do Good Design: How Design Thinking Can Change The World

Learn the successful and straightforward methodology that has helped hundreds of organizations repeat their successes. Participants gain hands-on experience as they learn the principles of applying sustainable design thinking to their project and organizational objectives.

Attend this course to learn a step-by-step system that will apply a sustainable, creative approach to planning any project. Design thinking is part of our celebrated strategic approach that addresses strategic issues and builds buy-in from everyone along the way, resulting in solutions that don’t just work right: they get the right things done.

You will become more valuable to your organization by equipping yourself with a powerful technique. The result will reduce repeated successes, organizational risk, avoid hurdles, and optimize measurable results. With a strong strategic framework, you’ll get the results you deserve.

This event explores a step-by-step approach to framing a problem and identifies design thinking”s key role in results-oriented management … in language that anyone can understand.

 

The Problem

Any project, no matter how well executed, can fall short of delivering highly useful results. Underwhelming results are most often most often due to skipping the important step in the project has been skipped: strategy … and especially the design thinking that makes strategies sustainably excellent.

What Makes This Course Unique

This course starts where every project should: not with graphic design sketches, sharp writing or whiz-bang technologies, but rather with investing the time (which always comes back to you) to think creatively in the same process the design masters do.

Your course leaders include an internationally-known expert speaker who has owned and operated several successful firms. He is considered an expert in strategy, and has provided senior communications and branding consultancy to many of Canada’s largest federal departments and agencies.

Through a step-by-step approach, you will learn the power of design thinking and how to make it happen for any project, avoiding hurdles, fully exploiting opportunities, repeating successes, and building better culture.

What You’ll Learn

You will be instructed in an exciting, straightforward and thorough approach to use design thinking to get sustainable results.

• Where sustainable design thinking fits in the overall strategic process
• The benefits of design thinking, with vivid examples both local and global
• How to build time into your schedule to invest in sustainable design thinking and convince others
  to do the same
• How to lead a design thinking process
• How to know when you’re done
• What to do next
• How to gain buy-in for the process
• How to classify and quantify the limitations you must work within
• How to avoid common hurdles before you reach them

 

Benefits to You

By taking this course, you will seize the opportunity to evolve your role into the most important one for any project: the person who makes sure you avoid the opportunity cost of not thinking like a designer, and not thinking sustainably. If you can gain a handle on these skills, you will be sought after for future projects, wherever you work.

“inspiring and informative”

-participant, RGD Ontario Creative Business Summit, Toronto, Ontario

Benefits to Your Organization

• Better results by doing things better, and developing truly sustainable creative solutions … and culture
• More effective use of time and other resources
• Previous unrealistic goals become within your reach
• Stronger team, with higher morale, eager for the next challenge

 

Course Goals

At the end of this course, you will know how to:

• Recognize excellent design thinking
• Understand quadruple-bottom line sustainability
• Participate effectively in design thinking processes (such as brainstorming)
• Lead design thinking processes
• Develop better solutions
• Identify the stakeholders and resources required for sustainable design thinking
• Manage change more effectively
• Continuously improve your processes

 

Who Should Attend

This seminar is targeted to all senior executives, managers, project officers, project managers, brand managers, marketing officers, production coordinators, and financial controllers responsible for delivering on corporate, program, branch, or departmental mandates:

• People who are responsible for the success of programs or product
  lines
• People who direct projects

 

What You Get

When David Berman Communications hosts this course*, each participant receives:

• a complimentary, comprehensive learning guide (also available separately for $89 with optional 1-on-1 distance coaching)
• complimentary meals, snacks and beverages throughout
• a thirty-minute personal coaching tele-session within a month of the course
• the option to attend this course again in the future, as a refresher
  at no additional cost
• a money-back guarantee: if, after coaching and refresher, you don’t think you’ve got your money’s worth, we’ll refund your entire registration fee

(*If you are attending one of our courses hosted by another organization, confirm with them which of these items apply.)

 

About the Expert Speaker

David Berman is the principal of David Berman Communications in Ottawa. He has over 25 years of experience in graphic design and strategic communications. David brings both graphic design and information technology expertise to his work. He has been involved in the strategy or project management of numerous web projects, including strategy for the World Bank, Canada Revenue Agency, Health Canada, the National Research Council, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Industry Canada, Statistics Canada, and Treasury Board as well as many other government, private sector and non-profit organizations. He has worked extensively in the adaptation of printed materials for electronic distribution, including Web design and plain writing and design. He is also the architect of project management software applications.

David is an internationally-celebrated speaker, having taken engagements in over 10 countries. In recent years he has also recommitted his career toward sharing his knowledge and unique talent as a designer and strategist through professional development seminars for creative organizations. David is a National Professional Member of the Canadian Association of
Professional Speakers (CAPS) and the Global Speakers Federation (GSF). He is the Ethics Chair of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada, and was named a Fellow (the highest professional honour for graphic designers in Canada) in 1999. David has been featured in the Financial Post, Marketing, and Applied Arts magazines.

Prerequisites: No experience necessary

Language: English (French adaptation available)

Duration: 1-day or 1/2 day course

Take This Course On-Site: This course is also available customized and on-site for your organization. Please contact us for details.

If you would like to be notified via e-mail of when new instances of seminars are scheduled, subscribe to our Events e-blasts.

 

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Reviewed July 23, 2012