Bring AI to the Design Thinking Process

AI x Design Thinking Self-Paced Course

At IDEO, we believe human creativity is resilient. It will always be central to who we are as humans and how we solve problems. As we see it, using AI is not about replacing your creativity but enhancing it to help you explore more possibilities and tackle more complex challenges than ever before. Generative AI is a powerful tool in your toolbox.

In this self-paced AI course, you’ll see practical applications of AI across the different phases of the design thinking process, including examples and advice from IDEO designers using these tools in their day-to-day work. You'll get a peek at IDEO projects, learn from IDEO experiments, and discover new ways to integrate generative AI into your practice. Learn how to leverage generative AI in your design thinking process to work faster, think bolder, and push the boundaries of what's possible. Your curiosity, intuition, and empathy are more important than ever. Generative AI gives you another tool to express and utilize those uniquely human qualities.

*Only available when you purchase a cohort course or certificate.

Course Outcomes
  • Augment your capabilities: Extend what you do well, enhancing your existing skills and building on your current strengths. 
  • Improve your workflows: Move through the design process more quickly and spend less time on mundane tasks so you can focus on what matters to you. 
  • Amplify your output (and impact): Expand the range of ideas you generate and consider more options and directions.
  • Develop essential mindsets for working with generative AI tools, reframing your relationship with AI to be more collaborative, responsible, and human-centered.
  • Use AI to speed up research and synthesis and get insights faster.
Who's This For
  • People who want to gain comfort and confidence using AI in their day-to-day work
  • Beginner AI Users 
  • People who value human-centered design
  • Facilitators and Consultants
  • People in Leadership and Strategy Roles
  • People in Customer Experience and Research
  • Designers and Creative Professionals, Product and Innovation Teams
What We Won't Cover
  • Specialized tools for specific domains
  • Extended prompt crafting 
Skills You’ll Gain
Inspiration x AI Brainstorming x AI Synthesis x AI Prototyping x AI
Format Online Self-Paced Course
Start Date Start Anytime*
Quantity
Time 8-10 Hours
Price
Regular price
$299
Sale price
$299
Unit price
per 
Download Syllabus

*90-day access from date of purchase.

Enroll in any cohort course or certificate for FREE access to our new AI x Design Thinking Self-Paced Course. Add to your cart to redeem.

Find the AI Training That's Right for You

AI x Design Thinking

AI x Design Thinking Workshop Series

3-Part Live Workshop Series

Duration: 3 sessions 1 hour each
Price: $299 USD
  • 3 one-hour live sessions
  • Step-by-step demonstrations
  • Downloadble workshop
  • IDEO case studies

AI x Design Thinking Self-Paced Course

On-Demand Self-Paced Course. Only available with purchase of a cohort course or certificate.

Duration: 90-Day Access
Price: $299 USD
  • 90 day access
  • Step-by-step demonstrations
  • Downloadable workbook
  • IDEO case studies

What You'll Learn

Introduction: Overview of Design Thinking with AI

Leverage Generative AI to enhance your creative capabilities and transform your approach to design thinking.
2 Video Lessons
  • Augmenting Human Creativity — Learn about how you can take advantage of AI's unique strengths to accelerate your workflows and amplify your impact in creative problem-solving.

  • Making Sense of AI — IDEO designers share their unique perspectives on AI, revealing the diverse ways we can understand this emerging technology.

3 Articles
  • What is Design Thinking? Get an overview of the key phases and learn where Generative AI can be embedded in this process.

  • What is Generative AI? Get a breakdown of how large language models work, what they can and can't do, and explore real-world applications across different fields and industries.

  • Working With and Alongside AI — Compare the unique capabilities of humans and AI systems and understand how they can work together and complement each other.

1 Activity
  • Explore Your Relationship with AI — Surface your current mental model of AI and define its role in your work, and frame your ideal relationship with AI.

Lesson 1: Using AI Responsibly

Learn to use AI tools thoughtfully and responsibly by understanding how they work, evaluating their risks, and checking for potential harms and bias.
1 Video Lesson
  • A Mentor Moment with Jenna Fizel — As IDEO’s Managing Director of Emerging Technology, Jenna Fizel explains why having a basic technical understanding of how AI models work helps you have more meaningful and responsible interactions with AI systems.

2 Resources
  • The Landscape of AI Tools — Learn about the growing landscape of AI tools, which ones we chose for this course, and why. Get a handy framework to help you evaluate and experiment with AI tools in your own practice.

  • Responsible AI Guide — Generative AI can cause widespread harm when used in the wrong ways. Consider the ethical implications and understand the potential impacts and risks of using AI in your work. Learn critical questions to ask and best practices to follow for responsible and ethical use of AI.

1 Activity
  • Checking for AI Harms and Bias — Practice ways to uncover and address possible harms of using AI tools, including biases in their inputs and outputs, and consider the ethical implications and unintended consequences of designing with AI.

Lesson 2: Gathering Inspiration with AI

Use AI to expand your sources of creative inspiration while complementing traditional design research methods.
3 Video Lessons
  • A Mentor Moment with Zach Hobbs — How do you get inspired when you're stuck in a creative rut? Meet IDEO Design Director Zach Hobbs and see how he takes an experimental approach to incorporating GenAI into his hands-on practice—and why we need to maintain a healthy skepticism about these tools.

  • A Mentor Moment with Amina Jambo — IDEO Design Researcher Amina Jambo and her team experimented with AI-based user personas on a healthcare project. Here’s what they learned about using AI to understand the healthcare experiences of rural communities, and why real human stories remain essential for rich and nuanced insights.

  • AI in Practice: Gathering Inspiration — Follow along as we demonstrate how to use popular GenAI tools as starting points for finding inspiration and understanding context, and learn how to start applying them in your own practice.

2 Resources
  • Gallery of AI Experiments — Step into IDEO's playground of AI experiments and see how designers use these tools to feed their curiosity and find new perspectives. Explore real examples that showcase the intersection of human creativity and AI, revealing new possibilities and provocative questions about this emerging technology.

  • AI in Design Research — AI is not a replacement for talking to real people. Explore the promises and perils of using AI in user-inspired research. Learn to thoughtfully blend GenAI tools with traditional human-centered methods.

1 Activity
  • Get Inspired for Research with AI — Work alongside AI to jump-start your design research and enhance your process while keeping people at the center. Practice using these tools to explore topics, plan interviews, and draft discussion guides that lead to rich, insightful conversations.

Lesson 3: Synthesizing with AI

Use AI to speed up research and synthesis and get to insights faster while making sure to evaluate and validate AI outputs throughout your process.
3 Video Lessons
  • Synthesizing with AI — Save time in your synthesis process by using AI for basic data analysis tasks, freeing you to focus on deeper sense-making and insights-building. Discover ways to leverage GenAI's strengths in processing, transforming, and summarizing data.

  • Thinking Critically with AI — AI is a powerful but imperfect and unpredictable tool. Learn why critical evaluation and validation of AI outputs is essential.

  • AI in Practice: Synthesizing — Follow along as we demonstrate how to use popular GenAI tools to perform basic analytical tasks with both quantitative and qualitative datasets, and learn how to start applying them in your practice.

1 Resource
  • A Deep Dive into LLM’s — Dive deeper into the capabilities of large language models, along with their limitations, and learn best practices for working with your data.

1 Activity
  • AI-Assisted Synthesis in 4 Steps — Practice a four-step process for synthesizing your research with AI. Learn to leverage AI’s data processing capabilities and use these tools to help you capture learnings, identify themes, craft insights, and define opportunities for design from your data.

Lesson 4: Brainstorming with AI

Use AI to develop ideas faster and explore many options, learning to prompt and guide these tools toward more innovative solutions.
4 Video Lessons
  • Brainstorming with AI — Understand where AI shines and falls short in ideation. While it's great at generating lots of ideas, it tends toward generic outputs. Learn why we need to guide and push these tools beyond their default behaviors to get to more novel and surprising ideas.

  • A Mentor Moment with Jenna Fizel — IDEO’s Managing Director of Emerging Technology, Jenna Fizel, shares strategies for moving beyond basic prompts to get more creative ideas from AI tools and align your interactions more closely with your intentions and goals.

  • A Mentor Moment with Zoey Zhu — AI is good at combining knowledge from different domains to help you find creative solutions to complex problems. IDEO Designer & Creative Technologist Zoey Zhu shares how this capability is opening up new and exciting possibilities for collaboration across research fields and industries.

  • AI in Practice: Brainstorming — Follow along as we demonstrate step-by-step how to use popular GenAI tools for brainstorming with specific prompting techniques, and learn how to start applying them in your practice.

2 Resources
  • Tips for Talking to AI — The way we engage with AI can influence the quality of its responses. Learn simple tips and techniques to improve your interactions and get better outcomes from GenAI models.

  • Strategies for Crafting AI Prompts — Explore different approaches for building prompts to brainstorm with AI. Learn strategies for structuring your prompts and providing context to help you produce more interesting and compelling ideas.

1 Activity
  • Spark Unexpected Ideas with AI Mash-Up — Spark fresh ideas from unexpected pairings by leveraging GenAI's ability to combine unrelated concepts in realistic ways in this AI mash-up activity.

Lesson 5: Prototyping with AI

Use AI to augment your prototyping abilities and bring concepts to life quickly while staying intentional about the design choices behind your prototypes.
3 Video Lessons
  • Prototyping with AI — AI gives us a powerful new way to make ideas tangible. Learn how these tools can help you express concepts visually, iterate quickly, and accelerate your prototyping process.

  • A Mentor Moment with Takashi Wickes — A common critique of AI imagery is that it lacks human intention, creating visuals that are too polished and high-fidelity to invite meaningful feedback. But IDEO Interaction Designer Takashi Wickes shares tips for using GenAI to create low and medium-fidelity sacrificial concepts that allow you to get great feedback.

  • AI in Practice: Synthesizing — Follow as we demonstrate how to use popular GenAI tools to visualize concepts and create low-fidelity prototypes, and learn how to apply them in your practice

3 Resources
  • Simple, Consistent Visuals with AI — Getting AI tools to create concept sketches with a simple, consistent style can be tricky—their outputs are often too detailed, varied, and finished-looking. Learn techniques for guiding these tools iteratively toward the right level of fidelity, plus guidelines for using AI-generated images responsibly in your prototypes.

  • Case Study: If These Pants Could Talk — What if you could learn everything about a product just by asking it directly? Follow a case study where AI was used to bring this speculative concept to life. Learn how the team prototyped a chatbot that lets people talk directly with a pair of vintage jeans.

  • Case Study: Designing Materials for Better Storytelling with Generative AI — What if we could design materials before they even existed? Follow a case study exploring how GenAI lets anyone visualize new materials with imagined properties and aesthetics—helping tell more impactful stories while pushing the edges of what's possible in product design.

1 Activity
  • Make Ideas Tangible with AI — Bring your ideas to life by using AI image generators to build low-fidelity prototypes. Create quick and simple concept sketches and storyboards that you can present to people to spark conversation and invite feedback.

Conclusion: Looking Ahead to the Future of AI

Explore diverse perspectives on AI's future and shape your own vision for responsible, human-centered design with AI.
2 Video Lessons
  • A Mentor Moment with Savannah Kunovsky — We have an opportunity to create a future we want to live in. Rather than react with fear, Savannah Kunovsky, IDEO's Managing Director of Emerging Technology, believes now is the moment to step bravely into the unknown. She shares three key indicators of what’s coming and what to consider as we build emerging tech like GenAI, so we can design a better future together.

  • Perspectives on the Future of AI — What's next for AI? IDEO designers from a range of domains and disciplines share their visions and predictions for how AI might evolve and shape our future.

1 Resource
  • Case Study: LLM Mediated Manifesto — We can all shape how AI defines our future by participating in how we use and build these tools today. Learn the story of how one IDEO team used an LLM to help 75 people from different backgrounds come together and collaboratively author a manifesto about AI's future.

1 Activity
  • Create Your Own Mini-Manifesto — Take the first steps toward creating a more responsible, inclusive and human-centered future for AI by writing your own mini-manifesto. Capture your beliefs about the responsible use of AI, where and how you plan to use it in your practice, and collaborate with AI to outline guiding principles and commitments that align with your values.

Deepen Your Learning

Product FAQs

We offer three types of courses: self-paced courses, cohort courses, and certificate programs. Self-paced courses are fully online and flexible, so you can take them from any time zone, anywhere in the world. These courses take between 1-8 hours to complete, and you can complete the course any time within 90 days. Courses consist of a series of videos, activities, and small assignments.

All of our self-paced are fully online and flexible, so you can take them from any time zone, anywhere in the world.

All course materials, including videos, activities, and assignments will be available while you are enrolled in a course. We provide 90 days of access from the date of purchase, so you may spread your learning over multiple weeks, or refer back to it multiple times during your access period. You will only have access to the course materials while enrolled.

Self-paced courses are flexible courses meant to be completed independently. While you will watch videos from an instructor, there won’t be any feedback given on assignments.

If you’d like to take a course where you can get feedback and coaching from our teaching team, check out our cohort courses.

After completing a self-paced course, you will be able to add it to your “licenses and certifications” on LinkedIn.

We also have certificate programs that consist of multiple courses. After completing a certificate, you will receive a certificate of completion via email as a downloadable PDF within 1-2 weeks of completing the final required course. Certificates are configured for uploading and sharing on LinkedIn.

We offer a discount when you enroll in multiple courses at the same time through some of our certificate programs, including Foundations in Design Thinking, Business Innovation, Human-Centered Strategy, and Communicating for Impact.

You can also enter your email address at the bottom of this page in order to receive updates on future offers or possible discounts.

You can purchase a course on our website using a credit card, PayPal, or Shop Pay. For US customers, we also offer installment plans at checkout if you use the Shop Pay method of payment.

We typically are not able to accommodate bank transfer or invoicing. However, if your order includes 10 seats or more, please contact hello@ideou.com and our team will be happy to review your request.

Here's What Past Workshop Attendees Have Said

AI x Design Thinking Alumni
AI x Design Thinking Alumni
AI x Design Thinking Alumni
Bring AI to the Design Thinking Process
Self-Paced Course

“It was valuable to practice the IDEO methods with my own tools to see the opportunities and limitations. The tips and tricks were especially useful.”

AI x Design Thinking Alumni
Bring AI to the Design Thinking Process
Self-Paced Course

“An enhanced framework that will help me accelerate the design process in my work for clients.”

AI x Design Thinking Alumni
Bring AI to the Design Thinking Process
Self-Paced Course

"I enjoyed learning about what is possible and really appreciated the ethics portion. Gave a balanced perspective on the limitations of Gen AI."

AI x Design Thinking Alumni

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