Fully funded places available
Tay Cities SME Skills Fund
For small to medium sized businesses
Less than 250 employees
Located in the Tay Cities region
Angus, Dundee, Fife, and Perth and Kinross
Overview
A 12-hour course over 4 in-person sessions which has been designed to adapt to the needs of your business.
Learn with our expert educators how to use the design process to tackle the issues that are holding your business back.
Be supported to take a deep dive to fully understand the reasons behind barriers and blockers.
Who is this course for?
This course is designed for 4-8 people who work in a small-to-medium enterprise (SME). Your business can be in any sector.
Anyone from your management team to your frontline staff can take part – it’s for you to decide who would benefit from learning new skills and working on your challenge together.
Your staff will learn by doing, using new tools and methods, involving colleagues and customers.
How will this course help your business?
Upskill your staff with new tools and methods to:
- Engage with people
- Identify problems
- Create the right solutions
Course structure
This course takes places over four 3-hour in-person classes.
On award of funding
Pre-course session
Meet with our experts.
We’ll dig deeper into your problem to understand the impact it is having.
We’ll help you to agree who from your business is best to attend training.
Staff survey
Gather the evidence.
We’ll send a snappy survey to your staff to gather more information about your business.
During the course
Session 1 - Your business
What’s your purpose, value, and business model?
You’ll identify together what services you provide and who they are for, before completing a value proposition and business model canvas.
You will gain
- Knowledge of service design and its key principles
- Methods to document what your customers need, and how your business answers those needs
Session 2 - User research
Practise the tools needed to understand people and processes.
You’ll complete a knowledge capture to kick-start your discovery, before sorting your data into themes.
You’ll be introduced to three user research methods and create a plan for how you’re going to use them.
You will gain
- Ability to complete a user research plan
- Experience of knowledge capture, affinity mapping, listening sessions, journey mapping, and empathy walks
Session 3 - Defining problems
Reconvene with your collected research, taking time to understand what it means.
You’ll build a user research wall, before taking time to pause, reflect, and understand what you’ve gathered.
You’ll identify key themes and problem areas, thinking about their causes and effects.
You will gain
- Experience building a user research wall
- Skills in analysis and synthesis of research
- An understanding of the problems present in your business, including their causes and effects
Session 4 - Sparking solutions
Make sure you’re set up to design the right thing before you design the thing right.
You’ll take a deep dive into your identified problems, assessing the size and impact of each one, alongside where they show up.
You’ll create clearly defined problem statements and a plan for success – ready to create solutions.
You will gain
- In-depth analysis of the problems which exist in your business
- Evidence-based problem statements detailing what issues your business needs to resolve
- A plan for success, setting out the next steps for your staff after the course is complete
Mentoring sessions
Check in with our educators on your progress.
We will schedule two short sessions with you.
After the course
The work continues
Your staff continue to use what they’ve learned.
After each session, you will build on progress to practice new tools and methods in the workplace.
Reflection session
We’ll support you six weeks down the line.
We offer a 1-hour reflection session 6 weeks after completion.
Teaching and assessment
This is an interactive course delivered by service design experts who are highly experienced in training with a learn-by-doing approach. This course is taught in English.
This course is not assessed, but you will receive a digital certificate from the Service Design Academy.
We were the first organisation in the world to be accredited by the Service Design Network, which means our courses are accredited by them.
Location
We can provide our training in the best location for you.
On-site
Depending on your location, we can come to you, and deliver our training on your premises.
How to book
Arrange your funding
Speak to our Business Partnership Team for a free training needs analysis and support with applying for funding.
Arrange your training
Speak to our Business Manager, Maralyn Boyle, to discuss this course and its suitability for your business.