Design Thinking for Local Businesses

Join our Design Thinking workshop series to turn your product or service ideas into market-ready solutions.

Through two user-centred workshops - Inspiration and Ideation - combined with follow-up support and 1-to-1 guidance, you’ll gain deep customer insights, create and refine prototypes, and test them for real-world impact. Led by Dr Camilo Soler Caicedo, Lecturer in Critical and Historical Studies at Kingston School of Art, this workshop series is perfect for small, local, or growing businesses to learn how to innovate with confidence and bring their ideas to life faster.

These workshops are brought to you as part of the BIG South London Business, Innovation & Growth Programme, delivered by Kingston University and funded by the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.

Key outcomes of the workshops include:

• A developed sense of empathy for customers/users with a Customer Insights Plan (CIP).
• An approach to gather customer insights via observation, interaction or informal conversation for Customer Insight Analysis (CIA).
• A first low-resolution Product Initial Prototype (PIP) test to verify assumptions in interaction with customers.
• A prototype to test in real conditions and a Plan for Iteration and Actioning (PIA) guide to keep testing and improving it.

1-hour follow-up meetings with participating businesses will commence on a first-come, first-served basis between:

• 1-to-1 sessions, First round: 28/09/2025 - 13/10/2025
• 1-to-1 sessions, Second round: 11/11/2025 - 01/12/2025

In these 1-to-1 meetings, businesses can:

• Track their success in the deployment of the CIP and the analysis of feedback.
• Track progress in testing their prototypes and follow up with changes to the new product/service prototype.
• Finalise the report on the final product and adjust their idea to changing conditions.
• Access guidance to maintain testing