Course for Businesses and Professionals

Design Thinking & Creative Problem Solving

Name: Hereford College of Arts
Price range: $

Date

Tuesday 17th February 2026
Duration

1 Day
Cost

£95 - £125
Tutor

Lucy McGill

Funded by UKSPF, this one-day course will guide you through the principles of design thinking, and teach you how to put your skills into practice.

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Overview

This focused one-day workshop introduces the essential principles of design thinking and shows participants how to apply them to real workplace challenges. Blending clear explanation with hands-on creative problem-solving, the session guides teams through the five core phases — Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. It's an adaptable toolkit that once learned, can be applied across disciplinary areas, be used to bring diverse stakeholders together, and is robust enough to solve complex problems.

Across the session, participants learn how to understand user needs more deeply, generate ideas quickly and turn rough concepts into simple prototypes that communicate solutions effectively. Through interactive exercises, collaborative ideation and rapid making, they gain a toolkit of methods they can take straight back into their everyday roles.

Whether you want to spark fresh thinking, improve problem-solving across departments or build confidence in creative decision-making, this workshop offers an accessible, high-impact introduction to design thinking that equips teams with skills they can use immediately.

£95 for Herefordshire businesses.

£125 for businesses based outside of Herefordshire.

What you'll learn...

• The five phases of design thinking
Understand the Empathise–Define–Ideate–Prototype–Test framework and how it applies to real workplace challenges.

• Creative problem-solving mindsets
Learn how to approach tasks with curiosity, openness and user-focused thinking to generate more meaningful solutions.

• Empathy-driven insights
Use simple tools like empathy mapping to uncover user needs and reframe problems more effectively.

• Practical workplace application
Discover how to translate these methods back into your day-to-day role to improve processes, spark innovation and solve problems more confidently.

Who is this for?

Participants:
Gain confidence using design thinking methods, learn how to understand user needs more clearly and develop practical tools for generating, testing and refining ideas in a fast, structured way.

Employers:
Benefit from staff who can approach challenges creatively, solve problems more efficiently and contribute to a culture of innovation — leading to smarter decisions, improved processes and more effective teamwork.

Why is this important?

Creative problem-solving is one of the most hireable and future-proof skills in today’s workplace. As AI automates routine tasks, the ability to think creatively, understand user needs and generate original ideas is what sets people apart.

Design thinking helps individuals tackle challenges with curiosity, clarity and confidence, turning problems into opportunities and ideas into simple, testable prototypes. In a rapidly changing world, these human-centred creative skills are what keep organisations innovative, adaptable and ahead of the curve.

About the Tutor

Lucy McGill is an expert in Design Thinking and the use of creative and participatory research methods. Based in the Medical School, University of Exeter, she is currently involved in research projects working with multi-disciplinary teams and applying her design expertise to investigate problems across health, technology and user needs. Having previously worked at HCA, lecturing in creative subjects including BA (Hons) Graphic Design and BA (hons) Illustration, and being involved in projects such as the development of HCA's creative strategy, Lucy is excited to be back to share her enthusiasm and expertise with local professionals.

See more of Lucy's work

FAQs

All materials will be provided, you won't need to bring anything with you unless you want to.

Courses like these can look great on your CV and are great for professional development. Therefore, we award certificates at the end of the course.

All of our short courses are non-credit bearing programmes.

This course will be held at our College Road Campus, in a ground-floor space.

If you have any questions about accessibility, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

You will need to arrive at our campus at 9am to sign in and register for a 9.15 start.

There will be a break for lunch at 12.15 - 1pm.

The day should finish at around 4pm.

We keep our class sizes small so that you benefit from a lot of contact time with the tutor. There will be a maximum of 10 people attending this course.

Yes, there is free parking available on campus. You'll just need to make sure to register your car at reception when you sign in.