Design Thinking

Step inside your customers’ heads. Then blow their minds.

What is design thinking? And how might you apply it to your work? How can you use human-centered design to be strategically creative and find better answers, faster?

By using this creative problem-solving approach that is focused on empathy, you can more quickly and easily understand the needs and wants of your users and customers. Through design thinking, you’ll learn to practice divergent and convergent thinking, “fail fast”, and iterate your ideas to find more effective solutions before you spend too much time and money.

Because design thinking brings a human-centered perspective to your work, you’ll be able to focus on the people you’re creating with/alongside: students, customers, faculty or other stakeholders. By starting with the end-user in mind and meaningfully engaging with them throughout your process, you’ll reduce your risk and ultimately create better and more usable products, services and outcomes.

Liz Chen, PhD, assistant professor at the Gilling School of Global Public Health and Innovate Carolina design thinking lead, shares why and how this creative problem-solving method works.

Explore our design thinking services

Innovate Carolina offers in-house expertise and consultation in design thinking based on the world-renown IDEO method. Our team works with UNC faculty, staff and students – as well as external businesses, governments, educational institutions and nonprofit organizations – to integrate this methodology into how you research, teach, and solve business and social challenges. Whether you’re creating new technologies, research initiatives, curricular approaches – or even launching a new venture, product or program – our resident design thinking team can co-create and facilitate design thinking learning experiences for you or your team to apply to your projects.

Request Services for UNC Organizations

Request Services for Non-UNC Organizations

Workshops and accelerators

Our workshops and accelerators are great ways to get started with design thinking. You’ll not only discover what design thinking is, but also learn how to start putting design thinking into action within your own team. We conduct virtual or onsite workshops for private groups at their locations. Workshops are priced per the number of participants. Two-hour, half-day and full-day workshops provide an overview of design thinking (methods, tools and mindsets) or focus on one specific phase of the design thinking process (inspiration, ideation or implementation). For each workshop, we tailor content to meet your organization’s specific needs.

Our three-day accelerator is co-planned with your organization and offers an immersive, guided experience to solve a specific issue relevant to workshop participants. This can be done in three consecutive days or spread over a longer period of time. Content builds a solid understanding and skills in each of the three design thinking phases (inspiration, ideation, implementation).

After our design thinking sessions, you’ll have the ability to:

Describe the design thinking process, tools and mindsets.
Apply the design thinking process, tools and mindsets to address relevant and pressing issues at your organization.
Identify elements of the workplace environment (physical and cultural) that facilitate or hinder creative collaborations.

UNC Fee Schedule

Number of Participants	Introductory Workshop (2 Hours)	Half-Day Workshop (4 Hours)	Full-Day Workshop (8 Hours)	Three-Day Accelerator (24 Hours)
Up to 6	$1,250	$2,050	$3,650	$10,050
Up to 12	$1,700	$2,500	$4,100	$10,500
Up to 18	$2,350	$3,350	$5,350	$13,350
Up to 24	$2,800	$3,800	$5,800	$13,800

Prices do not include facilities, catering or travel.

Non-UNC Fee Schedule

Number of Participants	Introductory Workshop (2 Hours)	Half-Day Workshop (4 Hours)	Full-Day Workshop (8 Hours)	Three-Day Accelerator (24 Hours)
Up to 6	$1,500	$2,575	$4,575	$12,575
Up to 12	$2,125	$3,125	$5,125	$13,125
Up to 18	$2,950	$4,200	$6,700	$16,700
Up to 24	$3,500	$4,750	$7,250	$17,250

Prices do not include facilities, catering or travel.

Strategic advising and coaching sessions

Our team offers strategic advising and coaching sessions that are tailored sessions for individuals and teams who want to build knowledge and skills in how they can begin to apply design thinking mindsets, methods and processes themselves. Examples of topics covered in these sessions may include how to frame design challenges, keys for building effective teams or how to select the right design thinking tools. The sessions may also provide individual coaching on specific tools. Our strategic advising and coaching sessions are good fits for clients who are planning new or ongoing projects, researchers preparing grant materials for upcoming submissions, or faculty preparing IRB materials for research that involves design thinking. Following these sessions, clients implement the actual design thinking activities themselves.

UNC Fee Schedule

Number of Hours Coaching/Advising	Price
5-10	$3,000
11-20	$6,000
Per Project	$15,000

Non-UNC Fee Schedule

Number of Hours Coaching/Advising	Price
5-10	$3,750
11-20	$7,500
Per Project	$18,750

Design thinking execution

What if you need someone to actually implement design thinking activities for you – within your organization or with your key external stakeholders? Our Innovate Carolina design thinking experts can work directly with your own organizational team or external constituents to facilitate one or more design thinking activities connected to your real-world projects. These services are best for clients who don’t want to undertake design thinking themselves, but want our Innovate Carolina team to implement design thinking methods on their behalf. For example, Innovate Carolina can facilitate brainstorming or idea generation sessions that include members of your own team. We can also lead design thinking activities directly with your intended audiences, including prospective customers, patients, students or program participants. Whether we’re working with your own team or your key external audiences and constituents, we can apply a variety of methods, including interviews, journey maps and co-creation sessions, that will immediately infuse the power of design thinking into your work.