Our next monthly lunchtime meet up for people interested in user experience-related matters is Wednesday 21 February, with presenter Chris Nodder providing a beginner’s guide to Design Thinking.

This session is being delivered through the magic of Lynda.com, the fantastic online learning resource available to all staff and students.

So you could watch this 40 minute session right now, or better yet watch with a group of like-minded colleagues and join a post-talk open discussion group.

Talk synopsis

UX consultant Chris Nodder introduces his Design Thinking course on Lynda.com

Curious about design thinking? It’s the design methodology on everyone’s mind. While it’s not magic, design thinking can help you save time and find more creative solutions to your customers’ needs. Having a good understanding of the process will help you explain the benefits to management and clients and implement design thinking at your organization.

Chris Nodder explains where design thinking fits into product development and what it can help you achieve. He describes each step in the process, from identifying the problem you want to solve and brainstorming solutions, to prototyping, development, and release. Learn about the pros and cons of this approach and how to overcome challenges such as organization inertia and silos.

Done right, design thinking can start your organization moving toward broader user-centered design techniques such as information architecture, content testing, usability testing, and marketing research.

Topics include:

• Agile, lean, and design thinking
• Preparing to sell design thinking to your organization
• Finding the real problem
• Ideation
• Prototyping
• Correcting course
• Offshoring and outsourcing
• Getting past organizational inertia and silos
• Tracking your success

Group discussion

As ever, we’ll follow up the talk with about 45 minutes of discussion following a group-organised agenda.

Find out more about how we run discussions from this previous post about a UX Meetup

Session timings

12:00 – Welcome
12:15 – Talk: Understanding the Design Thinking Process
13:00 – Discussion group
13:45 – Close

Bring your lunch if you wish to eat through the session. I’ll supply some drinks and nibbles.

Book a place

Where: Argyle House
When: Wednesday 21 February
Time: 12:00 – 13:45

This session is open to University of Edinburgh staff.

Book a place (University login required)

Previous sessions

We do a write up of every session.

Find out about previous UX Meetup sessions

Can’t wait?

I’ve previously written about the great learning resources available via Lynda.com and created a playlist.

Read my previous post about learning UX techniques via Lynda.com