Design Education Goes Digital
At its core, design brings an important human perspective to technology. Designers engage with end users to understand their pain points, wants, and needs so that they can create useful and delightful solutions. Many organizations that use design thinking to solve problems and create innovative products continue to flourish. The Design Value Index (DVI) has recognized leading design organizations all over the world, including Apple, Ford, Nike, and most recently, SAP. These companies have outperformed the market by 211% over the past ten years and are expected to continue to succeed. But for one to practice design thinking, they need to learn the skills and creative mindsets. But how can some one learn these skills if they don’t have access to an educational institution that teaches the concept? One can learn through books or watch YouTube videos that explain what design thinking is. But experiencing design thinking firsthand with assignments and feedback from experts is the most valuable form of learning.
Over the past 12 years, Design Thinkers at SAP worked together to create in-person design thinking workshops, known as d.camps, that were held at major office locations around the world. Originally, these camps were hosted at SAP so product teams could experience how to be more design minded in creating software. But as the d.camps became more popular, the Global Design Thinking team wanted to reinvent and expand the course portfolio essential to applying design thinking. This included software design, design research, business model innovation, and copy. Their goal was to make the experience available to anyone, regardless of their location, including designers, non-designers, developers, SAP employees, and SAP’s extensive partner ecosystem. But they needed a platform that could reach these people all over the globe who were looking to transform their businesses and develop their skillsets.
The notion of eLearning and massive open online courses (MOOCs) has been around for several years, but the team found very few learning examples that met the needs of an engaging, experiential, virtual learning experience. The team outlined their ideal learner’s journey for a design related course, what they wanted learners to take away when participating and what virtual teaching styles would be conducive to online learning.
SAP’s openSAP online learning platform was a good starting point because it allowed the Design Thinking team to not only deliver their first MOOC, but also influence the design and development of the platform.
One of the most attended courses in the team’s portfolio of Design Thinking lesson programs is entitled Software Design for Non-Designers. So far, it has had an attendance of over 14,000 participants. It is an online course that aims to teach people software design, regardless of their background. The team’s other course, Basics of Design Research, focuses on how to conduct design research. That includes everything from finding users, to conducting an interview, to turning concrete information into actionable insights worth designing around. When designing these courses, SAP wanted to make sure that they would stand out — something interactive. They wanted to refrain from creating another traditional eLearning course, comprised of content projected on slides and voice-overs. Instead, they wanted to mirror the experience of top design schools around the country, which includes hands-on projects and expert feedback.
Much of the course design inspiration came from Don Norman, the Director of the Design Lab at the University of California, San Diego. Professor Norman instructs his own online course on the principles of design, which caught the attention of SAP course designers Sylvie and Andrea. His videos did a great job of taking abstract concepts and grounding them in concrete examples. Also, the tone of the content was conversational, which made the material approachable for a general audience.
The process of creating their online course, such as Basics of Design Research, was much different from the process of creating an in-person d.camp. Before anyone had enrolled, SAP’s DesignX team, which focuses on developing design education content, hosted a workshop with user research experts to understand the ins and outs of their profession. During the workshop, they talked about the goal of the course, who the targeted users were, how long the course would be, what exercises students would work on, the topics of each week as well as the topics of videos, and scenarios for the videos. Once everyone agreed on the subjects and goals for the course, a pilot course was created. Over three weeks, participants tested it as actual users and gave feedback at the end through a survey. The feedback allowed course creators to see what worked and what could be improved on so that the course could be perfected.
The Design Thinking course portfolio has grown to include about 6 different design-related classes. Last year, Basics of Design Research and Software Design for Non-Designers had more than a combined 22,000 participants with a completion rate of 32.75%. Ages ranged from 16 to 67, with a large percentage of learners coming from outside SAP. In the feedback section of the Basics of Design Research course, one student wrote:
“Overall the course exceeded my expectations. The material and videos were informative and helpful, but the real value was in the experience of the weekly challenges and the engaged feedback process that took place.”
The success of these openSAP Design courses has made learning design thinking more accessible than ever. The courses are available through self-paced or moderated versions. Users who experience the self-paced versions can take the class at any time that fits their schedule, while the moderated versions have more access to interactive exercises and feedback. These online design courses are free to anyone looking to hone their skills and develop a diverse skillset when it comes to software innovation.
