1. Certificate
Stefan Irmler
successfully completed
the massive open online course at Deutsche Telekom
Magenta MOOC “Tap into Design Thinking”
from January 15th
to March 11th
2018
(with an average workload of 3 hours per week)
Deutsche Telekom AG
Dr. Reza Moussavian
Head of HR Digital & Innovation
Berlin March 11th
2018
TELEKOM DESIGN ACADEMY HR DIGITAL & INNOVATION
2. Course Outline
Participants started to tap into Design Thinking by studying the course materials explaining what Design
Thinking is all about and why it matters for Deutsche Telekom. They made their choice for one of three
business challenges the course provided, and got ready to work on it based on Design Thinking methods
and mindsets throughout the course.
Participants made their very first step in the Design Thinking process and gained a better understanding
of their chosen business challenge. They defined the core topic, open questions and the main users
involved with the help of a “User Map”. At the end of this course phase they rephrased their challenge,
and thus set their scope for the upcoming weeks.
In this course week, participants exchanged directly and personally with potential users and conducted
“Exploration Interviews” to reveal their users’ thoughts and emotions around their challenge. They
collected as many information about their users as possible and built up data stocks including answers,
remarkable quotes, facial expressions and other observations.
Participants condensed and interpreted what they have heard and seen in the Explore phase with the
help of an “Interpretation Map”. They reframed their challenge from the point of view of their users by
defining their users’ need in a “Need Statement”, and thus set the focus for the solution space.
In the Ideate phase, participants generated a broad spectrum of ideas to solve the specific problem they
focused on. They used creativity techniques to stimulate their brain by breaking old thinking patterns,
building new links and remixing known and unknown. Finally, participants selected one of their ideas
and worked it out with the help of an “Idea Napkin”.
Participants learned about different types and examples of prototype methods and selected the one that
was most appropriate for making their idea solution tangible. They started with creating a storyboard to
show their idea in interaction with their user, and then built either a “Material Prototype” or a “Wireframe
Prototype”.
In the Test phase, participants engaged again personally with their potential users and conducted “Test
Interviews” to test their prototype and learn from their users. With their users’ feedback, participants
iterated their solution and developed it further. The refined prototype marked the end of their work on the
business challenge in this course.
In the final course week, Magenta MOOC gave valuable tips on how to implement Design Thinking into
one’s personal working environment. Participants worked on the question of how to further tap into
Design Thinking after the course has ended.
