Whatever your level of design interest or expertise, this short course at the world’s leading university for art and design will equip you with a robust design thinking model to apply in your own working life.
Design Thinking and Innovation in Practice is led by Clara Gaggero Westaway and Adrian Westaway – renowned inventors, educators and co-founders of innovation and design studio Special Projects. Blending rigorous research with a playful, optimistic approach, they bring delight and a profoundly human quality to a wide range of complex challenges.
Over two days, you will learn theoretical principles and practical building blocks for design thinking, strategies for improving decision-making by reframing innovation challenges, ways to co-create effectively with others, how to drive innovation within a team and global best practices in how other organisations have used design thinking.
The Royal College of Art views Design Thinking as a form of human-centred innovation. By reframing challenges from the user’s perspective, we incorporate empathy and real-world engagement with people’s lived experience.
Design Thinking is a means of resolving the contradictions between the real world, with its barriers and constraints, and the abstract world of imagination and creative ideas. This design thinking executive course provides the tools and frameworks to bridge this divide.
Clara is a designer, inventor and educator leveraging human-needs to create meaningful innovation.
Her mission is to improve lives through hopeful and sustainable design solutions that encourage well-being and a healthy relationship with technology.
Whether this means empowering the elderly to use their mobile phones, reimagining the playground, or helping us focus on the present through calm technology, Clara’s concepts bring optimism and clarity to where society needs it most.
Clara has designed award-winning products for the likes of BBC, Braun, Nokia, Google, Samsung, Sonos, Lego, Logitech.
A thought-leader shaping the narrative on human-centred design, she has given talks and led workshops globally.
Her critically acclaimed designs have been exhibited at MoMA in NY, Design Museum London and WAGNER:WERK Museum, Vienna.
She is a Course Leader of the Design Thinking & Innovation in Practice Executive Masterclass at the Royal College of Art, a faculty member of Oxford University Said Business School OSLP, and has recently been appointed to advise on the Prince of Wales’ environmental initiative, Terra Carta Design Lab, mentoring young and emerging designers as they create credible and sustainable solutions to the climate crisis.
She advises entrepreneurs on how to transform compelling ideas into successful businesses as Business Coach at InnovationRCA, the Royal College of Art’s centre for entrepreneurship and commercialisation.
Adrian is an award-winning designer and inventor whose unique approach to design draws on his two biggest passions: magic and technology.
Fascinated by the similarities between the two disciplines, he joins them together in products and experiences that have the ability to not only surprise and delight but prompt positive change for individuals and communities.
His commitment to using design to address the complex challenges we are faced with has seen him consult with and design for Sonos, BBC, Nokia, Google AI, and, most recently, advise for the Prince of Wales’ environmental initiative, Terra Carta Design Lab, mentoring young and emerging designers as they create credible and sustainable solutions to the climate crisis.
A thought-leader on design thinking and sustainable innovation he has led workshops and given talks at Innovate UK, Design Museum, FitBit, Google Creative Lab, MIT Architecture, and is on the Advisory Panel for the UK Design Innovation Network, helping deliver the UK Government’s innovation strategy.
Adrian is a Course Leader of the Design & Innovation in Practice Executive Masterclass at the Royal College of Art in London, and a Visiting Faculty at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design.
In 2007 Adrian became the first ever James Dyson Fellow, and in 2012 a Fellow of the Royal Commission of 1851. He is also a full member of the Magic Circle.
Thu, 15 May 2025, 10:00 - Fri, 16 May 2025, 17:30
RCA Rausing Research & Innovation Building,
City of London
RCA Battersea campus, London, UK
£1080
